What is secondary infertility?

What is secondary infertility?

Hi!  I’m Dr. Marc Sklar, the Fertility Expert and welcome back to Fertility TV. 

In this episode we’re going to be talking about secondary infertility, so if that’s what you have or you’ve got questions about it then stay tuned to this episode. Oftentimes this is something that gets missed or people don’t know enough information about it so they don’t know where to turn or what to look for.

So secondary infertility is exactly that, you’ve been able to conceive in the past and when you’re trying for your second, or third, or fourth, or whatever number of children, you’re having difficulties. Now those difficulties could be widespread, it could be that you’re able to get pregnant but now you’re having miscarriages or you’re not able to get pregnant at all. So that’s really what it is.

Now things that we can do if you have secondary infertility.  You’ve got to look in four key areas when we’re dealing with secondary infertility cause these are the things that tend to come up the most.  Now does it mean that this is all encompassing? No, by no means.  But I’m going to focus on four and I actually just thought of a fifth, so I might even add in a fifth.

Okay, so first and foremost – stress.  Our life after we have children, certainly as that number increases as well, is no longer the same.  So the time that you had prior to spend on yourself, to make a nutritious meal, to spend with your partner, to go and exercise with friends, family, whatever it might be, you don’t have the same amount of time anymore.  So everything compounds and you’re trying to do…potentially trying to do a lot of things all in a short period of time and that increases your stress levels.  So Number One is we have to find a better way to manage our time and our stress.

Two – We do have to look at our thyroid.  It’s very often that after an initial pregnancy that our thyroid doesn’t recover in the same manner and now we have potentially thyroid issues, and there is a link between thyroid and fertility issues, and certainly between thyroid and miscarriage.  So your thyroid needs to be evaluated by an expert and a specialist to see if there’s any issues there that need to be addressed.

Three – Sleep.  Once you have kids, unless your kids are perfect sleepers you might not be sleeping as well, it’s difficult to get the eight hours when they go to bed and now you’re trying to accomplish more during that time so you go to sleep a little bit later, there’s all sorts of issues.  Focus on your sleep and getting good quality sleep and a good quality length of sleep.

And then Number Four is nutrition. We don’t spend…as I mentioned earlier, we don’t spend as much time cooking for ourselves and so we tend to eat a little bit more on the run or we’re eating what they’re eating and not what we want to eat when it should be the reverse, we should be making what we want to eat and they should be eating that.  So focus on your nutrition and getting that back in order.

And Number Five – If you are having miscarriages then we definitely want to look at your immune system and see how we can support that. 

If you want to find out how fertile you are take my free fertility quiz right here to find out what level of fertility you’re at and potentially get some help. 

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