John found out that he was infertile when he was in his early thirties. He and his wife Sheila had been trying for a baby for more than a year when test results confirmed that John’s sperm count was only 40 million per millilitre.
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The doctor who imparted the information was pretty matter-of-fact about possible causes. He asked John whether he cycled. Check. John had been cycling to and from work for the last 15 years. Had he ever had any major trauma in any part of his body? Check. An accident in a swimming pool at the age of eleven had left him with a ruptured spleen and a damaged testicle.
And had he ever done recreational drugs? Naturally, the answer John gave to this question was no. But in reality, John, like his friends, was a social cocaine user. He also drank quite a bit, was partial to the odd joint and occasionally he smoked cigarettes.
John felt that the specialist didn’t offer him very much advice as to how he could improve the fertility situation. However, when he told his friends that he was infertile, it turned out that they were all experts on the subject. Despite the fact that all the medical knowledge they had between them would have fitted on a postage stamp, John was inundated with tips and tricks that were “guaranteed” to get his wife pregnant.
Staying away from sandwich wrap was vital - apparently – as there was something in it that supposedly smothered sperm. And he should eat Brazil nuts. If he had eaten five of them every day since puberty, he would never have had this problem but it wasn’t too late to start now.
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The gem came in the form of the psychotherapist, who was charging him £90 an hour to resolve issues in his childhood that were apparently contributing to the stress that was causing his sperm to self-destruct.
A Scottish friend told him that if he stopped masturbating, his sperm would build up again. This was doubly beneficial because, apparently, if a man refrains from doing it, women can smell the sperm on him and they become desperate to have sex.
Acrobatics won’t help conception
When 31 year-old Sarah decided to try for a baby, she met a similar barrage of well-intentioned misinformation from her friends. Women tend to be better informed about health issues than men and many of her friends already had children so a lot of their recommendations were pretty sensible. She was encouraged to quit smoking and drinking, to go on a diet, to take folic acid supplements and to minimise the stress she was under at work.
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However, she was also advised to do shoulder-stands after sex to let gravity assist the sperm towards her womb, to have sex at midnight during her natal lunar phase (something to do with the sun, the moon and the time of her birth), and to have sex in the late afternoon because that’s when female hormones that affect fertility and sperm count and potency are at peak levels.
Other friends recommended alternative therapies, and although she suspected that most of them were nonsense, she was willing to pay just to hear the therapist tell her that everything was fine and she would soon be pregnant. She tried aromatherapy, Chinese herbs, reflexology, hypnotherapy and acupuncture, but nine months and nearly £1,000 later Sarah was no closer to conceiving.
She eventually consulted her GP who asked her whether she had worked out exactly when she ovulated. Uh, no. £20 and one ovulation testing kit later, Sarah discovered that she was ovulating closer to the end of her cycle than she should have been. She is now six months’ pregnant.
But living a clean and sober life will help fertility
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John and his wife have now been through three rounds of IVF without success and he continues to be irritated by unsolicited advice. His pet hate is people who say ‘relax, it’ll just happen’, or the ones who talk in slightly reverend tones about close friends who had been told that there was no hope of them having a baby and then, as soon as they signed up for adoption, found out they were pregnant.
John has learned to take everything he is told with a pinch of salt because his own research has revealed that common myths are often derived from obscure studies that have little or no relevance to him or his life.
For example, infertile men are often advised not to wear Y-fronts because they heat up the testicles, but as it turns out, this information originated from a small Dutch study showing that tight leather trousers and tight plastic underpants negatively affected sperm quality, but only when worn together, not alone.
That’s of no help to John, but staying clean and sober has been. For the last year, he has avoided alcohol and drugs and recent tests reveal that his sperm count has improved considerably, so he and Sheila are keeping their fingers crossed.