Unfortunately it's hard to really provide resources without knowing more information. Fertility is different between women and men, and while I do have some experience in this category and so does my wife, the biggest thing I can think of is that communities (such as lemmy but mainly facebook) really helped give perspective to my wife who was diagnosed with PCOS and we ended up going through the IUI and IFV process. I was also told on my end that my sperm had low mobility which added more complications but was remedied with medicine. Sorry for the mini lecture that doesn't actually provide a ton of info but I'm willing to try to answer any questions you might have if I'm able to!
this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2025
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We are at a stage where we’ve been trying for over a year, we’re both seemingly healthy, we exercise(swimming, gym), we don’t smoke and are being mindful about stress - so far so good - yet with each period, we both get beaten up a bit more. We’re both under 35
My partner (F) is generally terrified of hormone treatments (she never had any) so anything leading up to an IUI, let alone IVF is scary from her POV - and then mine as well, as I see myself as fairly clueless and without a frame of reference really.
In general, I want to learn as much as I can about what tests there are for her before embarking on hormone treatments so I can perhaps build up her confidence, in addition to understanding what is there beyond not sitting a lot + applying ice packs and so on I can do on my end to up our odds.
My hope was that, given more folks out there are struggling with this, someone put together some non-for-profit oriented set of resources aimed at educating and reassuring couples embarking on this seemingly scary journey :)
I completely understand. The journey is a long one, in most cases with devastating moments hoping to beat the odds which are almost always stacked against you both. Really what was the first step in this whole thing (beyond the initial "trying" period) was going to the doctor. They were able to diagnose the PCOS in my wife which explained a lot more to her beyond just fertility issues and after that I figured getting checked myself made sense just to see what I was bringing to the table. Beyond that, ultimately it's a bunch of trial and error, typically you do go through IUI first as it's not as invasive but then IVF if that didn't work. The big thing is to not get discouraged. Everyone's story is different. My wife would "spiral" and read these stories of women who tried for 10+ years and it took 3 IVF attempts before it worked for us (granted we had to use 2 embryos and only one ended up making it all the way) so there is a lot to unpackage there. While I don't have a reference myself, I'll ask my wife if she has anything of use and pass it along. I wish fertility wasn't a thing anyone needed to deal with and wish your family nothing but the best in this situation.
You're embarking on a very deep literature journey! I'm aware that the most common form of male and female infertility is rooted in insulin resistance. PCOS, and ED.
Ben Bikman covers female infertility https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZCDl1NPk6g
And male infertility https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgH1qsZKZs8 I posted my notes from this lecture on Lemmy https://hackertalks.com/post/5634787
What to do about insulin resistance? The fastest way to resolve insulin resistance is to not eat any sugar or carbs (a ketogenic diet). Eat a nutritionally complete diet (use something like cronometer to map it out), and you should see fast improvements in a few weeks/months.
Happy to provide more references and guides on request, just let me know how technical you want them to be.
The defacto medical text on ketogenic ( The Science of Therapeutic Carbohydrate Restriction in Human Health) has a chapter on the endocrine impact the intervention. You can see a abstract here https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B9780128216170000103 . The book is very dense
You can check your last lipid panel to see if you have insulin resistance, the TG/HDL ratio is strongly related to insulin resistance, you want it to be less then 1, the lower the better. If your annual checkup measured fasting glucose as well as fasting insulin (uncommon) you could compute your homa-ir.