Preparing for fertility treatments? Learn about the steps you can take to get ready
When you first start thinking about preparing for fertility treatments, it can feel a little overwhelming. After all, most people don’t have experience with starting fertility treatment. Thankfully, the team at Texas Fertility Center has spent the last four decades helping patients who are new to fertility care.
Erika Munch MD knows what questions patients have when they first visit our San Antonio infertility clinic. She also knows what steps are the most helpful when patients are first starting their parenthood journey at our clinic.
Tips for preparing for fertility treatments at Texas Fertility Center
When starting fertility treatment is on your to do list, it’s important to take a few steps to get ready for the journey ahead. This involves focusing on your physical and mental health.
When it comes to your physical health, our San Antonio infertility clinic suggests that you follow all the advice that you’ve heard from your doctors in the past. Eat a nutritious diet and get at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise each week. This is important for all patients, especially if having a higher than average body mass index (BMI) is an issue. If you’re overweight, losing just 5% to 10% of your body weight can sometimes help improve fertility.
You should also cut back on caffeine, and completely avoid cigarettes, alcohol and recreational drugs. All these substances have been shown to have negative effects on fertility, and some of them can even result in health and developmental issues in a baby.
In addition to cutting certain substances out of your life, you’ll also want to add a daily prenatal vitamin before you start trying to conceive. To prevent your baby from having neural tube defects, you should take a prenatal vitamin that has at least 400 mcg of folic acid.
As for your mental health, reducing stress is an important part of preparing for fertility treatments. Stress appears to have an adverse effect on both female and male fertility. As a result, Dr. Munch often recommends incorporating stress-reducing practices like meditation, yoga, massage, acupuncture and counseling.
It’s also important to do your research
Before starting fertility treatment, you want to make sure that you’ve found the right clinic for you. You should look for an experienced fertility practice that has a reproductive endocrinologist (fertility specialist) and offers a variety of different fertility treatments. You’ll also want to make sure that you feel comfortable when you visit the practice and the fertility doctor. After all, this is the person who will be helping you on your path to parenthood.
Our San Antonio infertility clinic is a part of Texas Fertility Center, which has helped bring more than 25,000 babies into the world. Dr. Munch compassionately works with men and women to develop customized treatment plans that address their unique family-building needs, budget and goals.
If you would like to learn more about preparing for fertility treatments with Dr. Munch, please contact us for an appointment. Our team looks forward to helping you start or grow your family.