Infertility Part Three

The first step in many infertility treatments for women is a drug that stimulates ovulation. This means it stimulates the ovary to release an egg, which gets captured by the fallopian tube and deposited into the uterus. This is a fascinating process—the egg is floating around in the pelvic cavity and the fallopian tubes have little fingers and they literally grab the egg and swallow it, where it passes through the Fallopian tubes to the uterus. There it waits patiently to choose its sperm. A healthy woman should have healthy, ovulatory, menses. This means that about every 28 days the period should come, without PMS or cramping of course, and that at the middle of the cycle (around day 15), the ovary should release an egg. A woman can cycle without releasing an egg. This is called an anovulatory cycle and is not normal. What can we do about this? The drug given (called Clomid) can force a woman’s body to ovulate. However, it does nothing to address the cause of why a woman is not ovulating.