[.ca] Six Steps to Increased Fertility: An Integrated Medical ... (ISBN 0684855232)

From Amazon.com:
It's time to make a baby. You and your partner ditch the birth control, chart your cycle, pinpoint Ovulation Day, and then proceed to make wonderful love, reveling in the joy and excitement of creating new life. Later, you make lists of names, even daydream about your child going to your alma mater. Then reality hits. You don't get pregnant. In high school, they warned, "It only takes one time." But age, health problems, and the anxiety that often builds around an inability to conceive can turn that early admonition into a mocking refrain. Today, about 20 percent of couples find themselves riding the cyclone of fertility frustration, alternately flying high on hope, then plunging into despair as each month passes without a positive pregnancy test. For anyone who's been trying to get pregnant for at least a year (the current definition of infertility), Six Steps to Increased Fertility is a must-read. Written by the Harvard Medical School team Robert L. Barbieri, M.D., Alice D. Domar, Ph.D, and Kevin R. Loughlin, M.D., Six Steps guides you through the conception process, explaining what can derail it and detailing the vast range of treatment options for boosting conception odds--from simple lifestyle adjustments to fertility drugs to more aggressive therapies like in vitro fertilization. Along the way, there are supportive tales of couples who've survived the infertility ordeal and checklists of questions for your doctor. A medical glossary and a list of organizations that deal with infertility, mental health, miscarriage, and adoption are tucked in the back. But what makes this book so appealing is the authors' refreshing six-step philosophy, one that melds natural methods with conventional medicine. Their perspective: technology can be wonderful, but it should rarely be the first step. Oftentimes, depending on one's age and health, changes in diet, exercise routine, and stress levels can make all the difference. Indeed, the cornerstone of the book is the do-it-yourself version of the successful Harvard Behavioral Medicine Program for Infertility that includes easy-to-master relaxation exercises and other stress-reduction techniques. In study after study, research has definitively shown that as stress, anxiety, and depression levels go down, pregnancy and birth rates rise. Six Steps offers sensitive advice and coping strategies meant to help couples understand that while being "infertile" can be all-consuming, it is not the sum total of their lives. --Norine Dworkin

Useless:
If you had problem with conception for some time, chances are that you already did your 'homework' and read about all possible causes and treatment on the Internet, or discussed it with your doctor. This book is a very general summery of infertility problems, and mainly a big ad for the authors' treatment plan that is available, I assume, in the hospital where they work. I would not recommend this book to anybody - you can definitely find more useful info online, and definitely cheaper!

This book contains many important fertility secrets:
My doctor told me and my husband that we needed IVF. We were a little concerned about the use of a high technology treatment so early in our quest to build a family. This book helped us identify many important life-style issues and stressors that probably contributed to our fertility problem. Fertility treatments can cause a lot of emotional stress, and this book helped us to cope with these problems. We think it helped us to get pregnant.

It helped me get pregnant:
As a chef, i was in a high stress job, that required me to work over 60 hours per week. I followed the advice in chapters 1 and 4 and became pregnant in 3 months. Following the advice in this book was a lot better than going through IVF.

I owe my pregnancy to this book!:
I never write book reviews, but I owe the birth of my daughter to the advice given by this book! After 6 years of no contraception, my husband and I finally decided that we were going to REALLY TRY to have a child, so I bought this book, as a starting point to figure out what we--both over 35-- needed to do to get pregnant. In our case, the changes in lifestyle recommended in the book were all we needed; I got pregnant 3 months after putting its advice into practice. This is the perfect book to start with if you want to create a lifestyle that gives you the best chance for getting pregnant, without starting with the infertility drugs. Note that the medical options are also discussed in the book, as well as how much time is reasonable for trying to get pregnant "naturally." Good Luck!

"just relax and you'll get pregnant?":
This comes so dangerously close to blaming infertility on things like inability to relax. How many IVF and other patients with serious medical conditions have had the insulting advice, "if you just relax you'll get pregnant". The best advice anyone can get is to get to a top quality medical specialist as soon as possible, not to get distracted or be given false hope by this nonsense.