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19 Foods that Increase Fertility When You're Trying to Get Pregnant


If you make a Greek yogurt parfait, include berries, a tablespoon of unsweetened nut butter, and a few walnuts on top for the full effect.

10. Pomegranates

As an extra-flavorful topper, Becker reaches for pomegranates. “Antioxidant-rich pomegranates are also rich in many nutrients, including vitamin C, vitamin K, folate, and several other vitamins and minerals that aid in fertility,” she says.

It’s really easy to enjoy them too. Simply sprinkle them onto your oatmeal or Greek yogurt in the morning, or enjoy them plain, she says. You can also enjoy them on top of that salmon and spinach salad.

11. Eggs

Eggs are a great source of protein, and they can also help boost your fertility. “Eggs are rich in choline, which studies have shown can have significant positive effects on fetal development,” says Becker.

The easiest way to have them is first thing in the morning. “Supercharge your breakfast with a veggie-packed omelet or an egg baked inside of half an avocado,” Becker recommends. Just make sure you avoid the egg-white omelet option and never skip the yolk, she says, since that’s “where all of the good nutrients are.”

12. Bee Pollen

Bee pollen is another fertility food that’s great for reproductive health in both men and women. “Bee pollen has shown promise to promote sperm quantity and help boost fertility in women,” says Williams. “But make sure you get your bee pollen from a reputable source to ensure efficiency.”

While you can take it on its own, Williams says, it can also be added to smoothies “and used as a topping to your favorite parfait and breakfast bowl.” So get out your Greek yogurt and add the bee pollen.

13. Maca

Another food to add to your fertility diet is maca. “Superfoods like Peruvian maca may even boost sperm count,” says Williams.

This one might be best for your partner for that reason, but it certainly can’t help to incorporate some into both of your diets. A great way to do it is by adding it to your healthy smoothie for breakfast, along with avocado, spinach and maybe even a bit of Greek yogurt and bee pollen. Since it has a slightly bitter nature, Williams says, this is a great way to have your maca and eat it too.

14. Eggs

Eggs are one of the most nutrient dense foods that exist, especially eggs from pastured hens. They are abundant in fertility-enhancing omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin A, vitamin E, and choline—a nutrient that helps fetal brain development. Eat 8-12 eggs per week to get enough choline in your diet, and if you can, get organic eggs from pastured hens.

15. Asparagus

Folic acid is critical for women who are trying to get pregnant and asparagus is full of it: One cup of asparagus gets you more than half of your daily recommended dose of folic acid, plus all your daily vitamin K. Asparagus also contains glutathione, an antioxidant which improves egg quality. So stock up on asparagus—and opt for fresh or frozen, if possible, since canned asparagus has a lot of sodium.

16. Watermelon

Watermelon is another solid source of glutathione. It’s also known to help alleviate morning sickness, heartburn, swelling, and even third-trimester cramps, so it’s a good thing to keep on your plate even after you get pregnant. Watermelon also helps male fertility, since it contains lycopen—an antioxidant that helps sperm motility.

17. Liver

Contrary to popular belief, liver is not the “toxic organ,” rather it is the “detoxifier.” The liver helps remove impurities from one’s system, but it does not hold onto those impurities. It can help women get pregnant because it’s an amazing source of folate (the active form of folic acid), all your B vitamins, choline and loads of antioxidants like inositol (which has been shown to improve egg quality in women undergoing In Vitro Fertilization procedures). Add three ounces of liver to your diet per week, or if you can’t imagine eating liver, you can take it as a supplement in a pill form.

18. Cod Liver Oil

Cod liver oil is technically an oil from fish, but it’s different from regular old fish oil. Both fish oil and cod liver oil are great sources of omega-3 fatty acids, however cod liver oil also contains vitamins A and D, which are fat soluble vitamins important to fertility and conception. If you’re suffering from a vitamin D deficiency (and many people are), reach for cod liver oil instead of fish oil. You can take cod liver oil in capsule or liquid form daily—and be sure to take an amount that delivers 2,000 IUs of vitamin D.

19. Sunflower Seeds

Male fertility can get a boost from sunflower seeds, which are great for improving sperm motility and sperm count. It’s easy to get more in your diet—sprinkle sunflower seeds on salads or try a sunflower seed butter slathered on toast.

Now that you know the foods that increase your fertility, check out the foods you should avoid if you’re trying to get pregnant.



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I Lost My Fertility to Breast Cancer—But I Gained a Best Friend


It’s just a plugged milk duct, I thought, as I stared at my bumpy breast in the bathroom mirror. I had just stopped breastfeeding my nine-and-a-half-month-old son, so this was bound to happen. But when the lumpy area on my miniature mound was still there a few weeks later, I made a doctor’s appointment to check things out. “It’s probably infected,” I told my family physician as I undressed, talking nonstop and ignoring the look of panic in her eyes as she felt the suspicious area on my right boob. She ordered an urgent ultrasound and mammogram. A follow-up biopsy confirmed: It was cancer.

They caught it early, I had a double mastectomy, it didn’t spread. Really, I’m a lucky gal. But due to the hormonal treatments, which I will be on for many years to prevent a recurrence, I’m unable to carry another baby. My husband and I were ready to start trying for a buddy for our first bundle of joy, so as you can imagine, this was, shall we say, a bummer.

But then we remembered the Fabulous 14—our fertility Hail Mary.

Several years back I’d read about the rising trend of couples in their 30s freezing their embryos, giving them more time to save money and work on their careers. At that point, my husband and I had been talking about having kids but weren’t quite ready. Freezing our future chances seemed like a brilliant idea. I shot needles in my belly for several weeks, had my eggs retrieved, and we were able to freeze 14 embryos, aka the Fabulous 14. After it was confirmed I wouldn’t be bearing our next love child, we did some research, met with a lawyer, and decided surrogacy would be a great way to complete our family.

Green tea latte in hand, I went where I always go when I need an answer in a hurry: Facebook. A few keystrokes later, I found a handful of very active groups dedicated to surrogacy in Canada. I figured I had nothing to lose, so I posted my story. Within minutes I had multiple responses, including one from a surrogate who was currently pregnant but had a close friend who was looking for IPs (intended parents). “I think you two would really get along,” she wrote. “She has a great sense of humor.”

She passed along my info, and this gal, let’s call her Rose (after my favorite Golden Girls character), and I start messaging each other daily, getting to know each other and feeling things out like some weird surrogacy version of The Bachelorette. A fellow Scorpio, she’s hysterical and whip smart (like me, right?). She texted me pictures of a coworker napping at the office, and I of my son having a meltdown. We shared details here and there about our surrogacy expectations, but mostly it just felt like two girlfriends catching up. I flew to see her one Monday—as much as I love a good text, an IRL meeting seemed like a prerequisite to asking this lady to carry my baby—and we spent the entire day at a Swedish spa laughing, drinking, and almost getting kicked out of the “quiet meditation pool.” Silent Scorpios, I think not.

We made it official when she popped the question: “Listen, I was wondering, would you like to go out with my uterus?” We were a perfect match.

She’s the first person I reach out to when I wake up, oftentimes with a video of me singing Queen off-key in the car on my way to Starbucks. When she came to Toronto, where I live, for the medical screening, she brought her husband and kids. I fell in love even more. It was so easy to be around them all, almost as if we had been in each other’s lives forever—the oldest and dearest of family friends.



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Modern Fertility Launches Annual Fertility Tracking That Puts Women In Control


Cheryl was 23 when she got married and always assumed she and her husband would have kids down the line. “We talked about having two to four kids. There were all these different periods where we set an age or a stage but then we would get there and it would be like ‘oh not yet,’” she says. “We had originally said for sure when I turned 30 we’d start trying—and then the year I turned thirty he decided to get his MBA.”

By the time Cheryl hit 32, kids still weren’t on the horizon. “He asked to wait another three to five years, and I was like oh my gosh, that’s not a part of my plan and now I kind of feel like it’s never going to be a part of our plan together,” she says.

As every cliche about biological clocks will tell you, fertility declines with age, dropping sharply around 35. But the curve doesn’t look the same for every woman—your individual hormone levels and factors like when your mom went into menopause all help to create a more personalized view of your fertility future. But historically, getting this information about your body has been out of reach unless you’re actively trying (and failing) to get pregnant. That means women like Cheryl who are trying to be proactive about making major life decisions have been left without all the info. “I was like this information is there, and it’s mine, and it’s my body,” Cheryl says. “So why wouldn’t I have it?”

Cheryl heard about Modern Fertility, one of a handful of femtech companies (and Glamour’s partner in the Modern State of Fertility survey) who are putting fertility insight straight into the hands of women with an at-home test that gives you a real time look into key measures of egg quality and quantity. “Let’s be realistic—as much as I can climb a career ladder, I only have certain years that are my fertile years. So why aren’t I learning more about my body and what’s possible and what my options are?” Cheryl says.

Modern Fertility’s at home blood test measures key hormones that can tell you if you have more or fewer eggs than the average woman your age, when you’re likely to hit menopause, and give you insight into potential egg freezing or IVF outcomes. Cheryl’s test results were promising—she could likely have kids if she wanted to. So she had a choice to make: stay in a marriage where kids were uncertain or take control. Eventually, Cheryl and her husband got a divorce.

At 33, she was back on the dating scene, armed with new insight into her reproductive future. For the first time in over a decade, she was dealing with all the uncertainties that come with finding a partner but now there was one other uncertainty: how long could she wait before trying to have kids?

A fertility test like the one Cheryl took is a helpful tool—one data point that gives you a good idea of your chances of getting pregnant right now. But the real power comes from understanding how your body is changing over time. This is where Modern Fertility’s latest resources, launching today, come in. To give women like Cheryl the information they need to make major life plans, the company overhauled its fertility reports to support annual testing, allowing women to get specific insight into how their reproductive curve has changed from the previous year. “We periodically check up on our daily steps, nutrition, and financial savings, not to mention cholesterol and blood pressure—why shouldn’t we routinely check in on our reproductive health?” Afton Vechery, co-founder and CEO of Modern Fertility, said in a statement. “This isn’t just about planning for kids or having them, it’s about owning an important piece of our body that impacts our overall health and future.”



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Fertility Insurance Is the Workplace Benefit Women Deserve


Not all fertility treatments result in pregnancy. According to the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology, 77 percent of assisted reproductive cycles performed globally every year fail. Without coverage, women are left to cope with the bitter combination of not having a baby and the tremendous costs of trying for one. “IVF has helped a lot of people, but there is a silent majority of people who haven’t been helped by it and don’t talk about it,” says Miriam Zoll, author of Cracked Open: Liberty, Fertility, and the Pursuit of High-Tech Babies, and a health and human rights advocate.

Kati, 32, from Columbia, Maryland, strategically maneuvered her career based on insurance coverage. “I was willing to downgrade what I was doing,” she says. “I was willing to do office work or work as an administrative assistant or do whatever I needed to do just to have that insurance.” She got lucky though, eventually landing a dream job with dream fertility benefits: 100 percent coverage for IVF up to three attempts per live birth.

But after three IVF retrievals and six embryo transfers, she hasn’t had a successful pregnancy. “I’ve had seven miscarriages. We’re exploring surrogacy or thinking about living child-free—it’s heartbreaking at this point,” she says. “I didn’t think we’d be here, but at the same time, I feel grateful for our insurance coverage. If I didn’t have it, we couldn’t even consider surrogacy—all of my money would have gone to one IVF cycle and that would be it.”

Fertility insurance does have its restrictions: Insurers require a medical diagnosis of infertility, which is defined as an inability for a heterosexual couple to conceive within 12 months. That excludes same-sex couples and single women who want to pursue IVF with donor sperm.

But some Silicon Valley companies are setting a new standard for fertility coverage. Female-founded benefits company Carrot works with companies like Foursquare and Coinbase to provide fertility benefits regardless of an employee’s diagnosis or treatment needed. Companies choose how much coverage they want to provide each employee (which could range from $10,000 to $50,000 or more per person) giving them full access to fertility testing, IUI (intrauterine insemination), IVF, egg freezing, sperm freezing, donor eggs, donor sperm, gestational carriers (surrogates), and adoption—regardless of age, gender, or sexual orientation.

A woman’s family planning goals should be respected just as much as her career goals, says Tammy Sun, CEO and co-founder of Carrot. She suggests that if you’re already in a role you love but your company doesn’t offer fertility benefits, advocate for them: “Go to leadership at your company or to your HR or benefits team and say, ‘Hey, here is the problem that we see with the lack of fertility coverage at work—we see fertility as a fundamental part of healthcare.’” If you’re job hunting, Fertility IQ, Glassdoor, and Monster compile lists of companies that offer remarkable fertility benefits. And when you’re in the negotiation phase for a new job, ask if fertility coverage is on the table. “We have many companies come to us and say that they have a candidate and she’s asking for fertility benefits but they have nothing, so they want to set something up right away,” Sun says. “Just by asking, you could get what you want.”

Fertility benefits should be considered as standard as any health insurance—treating infertility shouldn’t leave women broke or forced to derail their careers to find coverage, advocates say. “We are not choosing to be infertile, we’re not choosing to need this treatment,” Kati says. “The body is not working in the way it should be—that should be covered just like heart disease, diabetes, or any other illness.”

Minhae Shim Roth is an essayist, journalist, and academic. Follow her on Instagram @by_minhaeshimroth and on twitter @minhaeshimroth.



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Fertility Week: Everything Women Need to Know About Their Current and Future Fertility


The major exception to the rule: smoking. A cigarette habit will do a number on just about every major health system—your heart, your lungs, even your skin—including your reproductive system. Smoking kicks egg loss into overdrive—women who smoke enter menopause an average of one to four years earlier than non-smokers. (The verdict on vaping is still out: “The problem with vaping is that everyone thinks it’s not as bad as cigarettes but we don’t really know what it does yet,” says Dr. Knopman.)

Weight can also impact your chances of having a baby (that goes for male partners too). “Obesity in women increases the rate of miscarriage, and is associated with worse outcomes for fertility treatments,” Dr. Brady says.

Success rates with IVF—often hailed as a magic bullet—hover around 5 percent for women in their early 40s. “People are really shocked to hear that,” Dr. Brady says.

Really shocked. Fertility doctors see women every day who’ve been led to believe that egg-freezing and IVF are insurance policies with limited risks and hopeful guarantees.

IVF is revolutionary science that has allowed over 8 million births to women who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to get pregnant, since the procedure was first pioneered in the 1980s. But “most of the success of IVF is based on the age of the female,” Dr. Knopman says. “The younger you are when you make the embryos the better chance those embryos are going to be viable and lead to a viable pregnancy.”

It’s far from a fail-safe promise, but the technology (and the ad campaigns surrounding it) has given an inflated sense of confidence about what fertility treatments can and can’t do. “People come in at 40 and say, ‘Oh I’m going to do IVF,’ and I tell them okay but this may take us a lot of rounds and it may not work,” Dr. Knopman says. In other words, you can’t just throw money at the problem: “It’s not always a slam dunk,” she says.

It also matters where you do your IVF. It’s a technically challenging procedure, part art, part science, and not all IVF clinics are up to the challenge. “Not all labs can do egg retrieval and storage the same way,” Dr. Knopman says. “Lab conditions can alter the embryo.” Before handing over your credit card, your body, or your dreams of future pregnancy, ask the clinic the right questions: How many eggs have you frozen? How many eggs have survived the thaw? How many eggs have made embryos?

Look for a clinic associated with the Society of Assisted Reproductive Technology, which provides oversight and keeps tabs on a clinic’s success rate.

“One of the biggest myths I hear is that the pill hurts your fertility and that long-term pill use is not good,” says Dr. Knopman. That’s not true. Let us repeat: Hormonal birth control—whether you use the pill, the ring, the patch or a hormonal IUD—doesn’t hurt your fertility.

“What birth control won’t protect you from is egg loss,” Dr. Knopman says. “Most of us are born with about one to two million eggs. By the time we get our first period, most of us have about 350,000 eggs—you lose a significant amount before you even menstruate.” Each month, regardless of whether you’re ovulating or not, around a thousand eggs die off, their cells absorbed back into your body. “From the first period to the last period, you’re constantly losing eggs no matter what you do,” says Dr. Knopman.



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Do You Need a Fertility Test—Even If You’re Not Trying to Get Pregnant?


My feet in stirrups, I stared at the eerie black-and-white images projected on the screen in front of me, as Hailee Steinfeld’s “Love Myself” bumped energetically in the background. My ovaries, the squishy bean-shaped blobs on the screen, bounced in and out of shadows as my gynecologist shifted the ultrasound probe, searching for the follicles that produce eggs.

This was not your typical ob-gyn exam, to say the least. I’m not trying to get pregnant—quite the opposite, actually—but I paid a visit to Trellis, a new “fertility studio” and egg-freezing clinic in New York City, to learn just how fertile I am now, and will be in the years to come. With an in-house juice bar and a quote from Michelle Obama (“It’s up to each of us to invent our own future”) displayed prominently in the well-lit lounge, Trellis is one of several new startups launched in the past two years garnering attention and investor dollars for adding fertility to the list of health stats you can easily track.

The idea behind making fertility testing cheap, convenient, and trendy, stems in part from data: Women are increasingly putting off having children—for the first time, women in their thirties are now having more babies than women in their twenties, according to the CDC. But because fertility naturally starts to decline in your 30s, these companies assert information is power. “We help you understand what’s going on in your own body so you can use that information to make the decisions that are right for you,” says Afton Vechery, co-founder of Modern Fertility, an at-home fertility testing service launched in summer of 2017. Armed with your fertility stats, the idea is that you can eliminate (or at least reduce) anxiety about putting off baby-making, adjust your timeline if your proactive tests reveal any red flags, or make a more informed decision about egg freezing.

But after my procedure, I was skeptical. Is this just millennial marketing—complete with an Instagram-worthy reception area, socially-conscious brand mantras (“empowered egg freezing”), pink take-home brochures, and sleek apps—at its best?

Marketing Fertility

If you’re having trouble getting pregnant, a trip to any traditional fertility clinic will generally follow a few key steps: a look at your medical history, an ultrasound to examine your ovaries, a blood test to measure key hormones tied to egg production. No one test can tell you with 100 percent certainty if or when you’ll be able to get pregnant, but for now, the combined results of these tests are the closest you can get to a crystal ball.

The problem these startups—all led by women—have with that approach? It comes too late. Many ob-gyns or specialists won’t run these tests unless a woman is already having issues, which means the game may already be decided, or the options for action limited.

Piraye Yurttas Beim, who has a Ph.D. in molecular biology, first went to her doctor for a fertility assessment at 32. She was told, based on her fertility hormone tests, that her chances of getting pregnant using her own eggs was less than one percent. “I felt like, wait a minute, I did all the right things,” she says. “I went to my ob-gyn every year for my annual screens. Why wasn’t I screened for [fertility]? Why wasn’t I given a heads up that this was a possibility? Why was this sprung on me when it was effectively too late?” As a scientist and founder of Celmatix, a company that tests fertility-related genetic markers to help predict a woman’s baby-making odds, Beim knew that hormone levels don’t always tell the whole story. The proof? She went on to conceive her three kids naturally.

Still, hormone tests can be a starting point to getting insight into your fertility potential, which is why startups like Modern Fertility and Future Family analyze the same exact hormones traditional clinics do. This gives doctors an idea of your egg quantity, aka your “ovarian reserve” and can help a fertility specialist assess how many eggs you likely have in the bank. (Trellis operates more like a traditional fertility clinic that’s been given a chic makeover—they perform blood tests and ultrasounds, like the one I had, conducted by doctors specializing in reproductive medicine at their NYC clinic. From there, a “fertility coach” can walk you through the company’s egg freezing packages and “fertility wellness” plans.)

The science behind these tests isn’t new. But these founders hope streamlining the process of getting them will help women move from being reactive to proactive about fertility. Now, you can order a hormone test online (you can either prick your finger at-home, or get an order to have blood taken at a local lab) for under $200. Old school fertility testing would require jumping through hoops to find your way to a fertility specialist, where you may be socked with a hefty bill—potentially reaching into the thousands—that may not be covered by insurance.

Getting Answers Without Fear

Conversations about fertility have long felt like scare tactics, pressuring women to have kids ASAP or shell out cash to freeze their eggs before time runs out. Past awareness campaigns even included an upside down baby bottle as a rapidly dwindling hourglass. The fear-mongering around fertility isn’t just uncool, evidence suggests it can be costly—only 6 percent of women who froze their eggs went on to actually use them, in one small 2017 study. (Most women in the study who were pregnant at some point, conceived naturally.)

The modern conversation, as I experienced, has gotten a major course correction. These days doctors really, really don’t want the results from these tests to cause any panic. “It’s incredibly complicated,” says Paula Brady, M.D., a fertility specialist the Columbia University Fertility Center. “We can’t take one value and say, ‘This is great, don’t worry,’ or ‘This is bad, you should be worried.’”

My blood tests (one from Modern Fertility and another from Trellis) and ultrasound revealed that, while I’m still technically within the “normal” range for a woman in her late 20s, I have a less than stellar ovarian reserve. My AMH level, perhaps the best indicator of how many eggs I have, is “lower than expected for [my] age,” Trellis found.

My first reaction: Holy shit. Do I need to freeze my eggs?

It’s surprisingly hard not to panic about these results. But as I made more calls, almost every expert I spoke with stressed that my ovaries’ meh report card was no reason to freak out. “The low edge of normal is still in the normal range,” assured Nataki Douglas, M.D., director of translational research for the department of obstetrics, gynecology and women’s health at Rutgers University and chair of the medical advisory board at Modern Fertility. A below average test result, in other words, doesn’t mean you should rush to put your eggs on ice.

The Fertility Prediction Blind Spot

Not only is the science of predicting fertility imperfect and complex, it also has a major blind spot: Even the techiest and trendiest fertility assessments look only at the quantity of eggs you have when evidence suggests the quality of your eggs is equally important. Last year a team of reproductive researchers led by the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill found women with signs of “diminished ovarian reserve” were just as successful at getting pregnant as women with a normal reserve. Basically, an underwhelming ovarian reserve result might mean something about your ability to get pregnant in five years—or it might not. (The best predictor of egg quality doctors have is your age.)

These new companies believe the services they provide could add another layer of data to your family planing calculations. Testing early, they suggest, means you can track your fertility stats over time—one AMH test might not tell you much on its own but a drastic drop in the hormone year-over-year is a more reliable red flag, Dr. Douglas says. “The key is to have the information so that you’re empowered to make decisions and have informed discussions with the right people,” she adds.

Still, experts don’t recommend all women start tracking AMH levels with the same rigor as you might track your steps or your sleep. “I always say check a value if you would do something with the result,” says Dr. Brady. If your mom went through early menopause, for example, getting your hormone levels tested could give you a little more insight about having kids earlier or freezing your eggs. Or if your period is irregular, a fertility assessment might help shed light on conditions like PCOS that could impact your baby-making plans. But if seeing ambiguous below-average hormone levels will only make you stress, Dr. Brady says it might be best to pass.

After two hormone tests, one ultrasound, and nearly a dozen interviews with reproductive experts, I still don’t know if I can confidently put off pregnancy for another five years or whether I should sign up for egg freezing at Trellis (estimated cost: $12,850 plus $600 per year in egg storage fees). I have my results, but I don’t exactly have answers. “It would be awesome if we could have a single blood test or an ultrasound that could really lay out your future,” says Alan Penzias, M.D., chair of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine’s Practice Committee. “But right now, I don’t think we’re quite there.”

I’ve wrestled a lot with how I feel about that. Unlike years ago when that baby-bottle-as-hourglass campaign got major backlash, women today know more than ever about our bodies. We track our steps, our sleep cycles, our periods right on our phones. We’re fluent in data about our bodies, ourselves. This whole panoply of information about our bodies helps us make more “empowered” decisions—so why wouldn’t the same be true about fertility data? Now, rather than remaining in the dark about what my ovaries are up to, I’m armed with baseline information that I can use to start a conversation with my gynecologist about the choices I’ll be making for my body over the next five, even ten, years.

Testing early means I don’t feel like I’m at the mercy of my biology—I feel like I’m in the driver’s seat.



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