Are the rumors true, that if you get pregnant using assisted reproductive technology, you might also later conceive via the old-fashioned way? An article on the Huffington Postwebsite by reporter Catherine Pearson offers up several women's stories with a conclusion of “Maybe.”
The stories, while excellent accounts of what many infertility patients struggle through to have a baby, amount to what we call “anecdotal evidence,” individual's experiences that don't necessarily hold up statistically for large groups of people. Some of my patients have said to me with hope in their voices, “Dr. Kristiansen, I have a friend who finally adopted a baby – and then got pregnant on her own!”
The reporter cites a couple of studies that build on the rumor:
- a French study published in 2012 in Fertility & Sterility, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine's journal, and
In the French study, 24 percent of women who attempted IVF unsuccessfully went on to conceive spontaneously (that is, without fertility treatment.) The German study looked at patients who had successfully used ICSI with IVF (and so had a child), finding that 20 percent of them later conceived intentionally without fertility treatment, most within two years of their “ART baby's” delivery.
The still-untested theory is that the state of pregnancy, itself, may be healing for some forms of female infertility. Some also say that components of the fertility treatment process may also have a hand in kickstarting a woman's natural fertility levels, beyond the treatment cycle.
Both ideas make a sort of intuitive sense. I and my staff at Houston Fertility Center would love to be able to tell patients that spontaneous conception is something they can look forward down the road, should they want to have another baby. But even the French study's authors, after surveying more than 2,000 couples, call for conservative reason with their conclusion that “it should be remembered that the BSP [spontaneous pregnancy] rates are cumulative rates observed over a long period of time and that these couples have a very low monthly probability of conceiving.”
~ Dr. Sonja Kristiansen MD
Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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