Health: Common Reasons And Causes For Not Getting Pregnant

Have you been long trying for a baby and yet have not been able to conceive? It is high time to step back and take a look. First and foremost, it is important not to give up and think too much. There is always a solution to all your problems, thanks to the advancement in science and modern technological innovations that happen each day!

Above all, it is also important to understand that you are not alone in this. There are many couples who face similar issues, problems and eventually find a way out of it. The important thing to remember and analyze here is that you have a problem that needs to be fixed.

7 Common Causes and Reasons for Not Getting Pregnant

Have you often questioned yourself why am I not getting pregnant? Then, here are few simple day to day things that could be affecting your chance to get pregnant and or could be one of the causes and reasons for not conceiving.

1. Too Much or Too Little:

It is perhaps the most vital and basic of human needs to have sex and reproduce. However, it is essential to ask yourself-
It is perhaps the most vital and basic of human needs to have sex and reproduce. However, it is essential to ask yourself-

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Are you having intercourse enough number of times to be able to improve chances of getting pregnant?
Are you having too little intercourse that could be hampering your chances of conception?
Either way you swing on the above question, the result won’t be good. It is important to have proper and healthy sex life, with ensuring that the timing is according to the female partner’s ovulation cycle. There are many applications available today that can help track the approximate accurate time for ovulation. However, if you do not have a healthy sex life, it is important you consult a doctor and work towards overcoming any apprehensions and inhibitions that you may have, in order to conceive.
Do you have sex when you are think you are ovulating? It is very easy to skip the fertile period if you are just having sex when you are ovulating. Samuel Wood, the medical director of Reproductive Sciences Center at La Jolla CA, advises to have sex as often as they like, and more frequently during few days before ovulation. If you have irregular periods or problem tracking your fertile windows use an ovulation kit. If the result show that ovulation will happen within 1 or 2 days then make sure to have sex during this time. Keep in mind, that if you just have sex for having baby in mind, then you can’t enjoy the process.

2. Are You Stressed?

A little bit of stress is very normal during pregnancy. However, if you are stressed day in and day out, then you should contact your midwife or doctor right away. Since, constant anxiety can affect the baby directly. The stress hormone cortisol can cross the placenta and affect the building blocks of your child’s emotional and physical development.
Many complex factors can influence the child’s ability to learn and his cognitive ability to relate to the world. So for your baby’s sake you need to control your stress levels.
Here are some ways you can reduce your stress levels:

• Take enough rest and don’t feel guilty about it. Your body is working extra hard to nourish your baby and you. So you feel fatigued most often and need sleep. So go to sleep early.
• You can sing or read to your baby because he or she can hear you from about 23 weeks. This is a great time to bond with your unborn baby. This will give you great joy and reduce stress immediately.
• If you are having a personal problem or you are concerned about for baby’s wellbeing talk to your doctor or midwife. If you are honest while expressing your concerns you will get proper help.
• Talk to your partner about these fears and you may find that he might have similar fears and other thoughts that didn’t occur to you before. Talking it out is a great way to reduce stress.
• You can also communicate or chat with other moms to be in the antenatal exercise class and who are in the same stage of pregnancy as you are. This will help you to understand how others are tackling the same problem and you will get some ideas to solve your problem too.
• Eating well is essential for both your mind and body. Nothing looks good on an empty stomach! A healthy diet of omega 3 essential fatty acids, vitamins and minerals can lift your mood. Omega 3 fatty acids are found in fish like tuna and salmon. So try two portions of oily fish every week. You can have yummy preparations made from tuna, salmon, sardines, mackerel, pilchards and trout. Always eat freshly cooked fish and make it at home to avoid food poisoning.

It is also important to have essential amino acid tryptophan to boost your mood. The body can’t produce tryptophan and gets it from food you eat. Tryptophan raises the levels of brain chemicals like melatonin and serotonin that helps you to sleep well and lifts your mood. Having nuts, seeds, freshly cooked chicken and turkey, yogurt, cheese, fish and eggs helps to introduce tryptophan in your body and helps to make you feel rested and cheerful.

• Stay hydrated by drinking enough water because dehydration can cause headache and make you irritable.
• Exercise, though gentle, can improve your mood drastically. It is perfectly safe to exercise during pregnancy and helps to keep your stress under control. Pranayama or breathing exercises and prenatal yoga works magic in improving your mood. It also helps you to look at life from the positive angle and promotes a general sense of overall wellbeing.
• Take a relaxation massage and if you are using essential oils then ask the doctor whether it is safe to use during pregnancy.
• If financial stress is bogging you down then make a list of things you need for your baby post-delivery and see whether you can use them by borrowing it from friends or cousins, this will save a lot of money.
• Read enough but not overload yourself with information. You can clarify whatever you read with your doctor and find out if the claims made by certain book are true.
• If you are working while you are pregnant then talk to you employer about commuting. Talk an early maternity leave or try to work from home. Don’t let work stress eat into you and cause stress.
• Gradually prepare for your family life and express your concerns to the close members of your family and take their advice.
• Read comics or share a good joke with your friends and chat with friends who have great sense of humor. Since laughter is the best medicine to dissolve stress.
• Don’t let negative thoughts and worry take an upper hand stay positive.

Ask yourself this simple question, are you under a lot of stress. Stress affects us in more ways than we recognize and understand. There are a whole lot of online tests available today to assess if you are under stress.
Stress affects the way a woman’s body functions, affects the ovulation and menstruation cycles that could cause a whole lot of timing issues to get pregnant. Also, stress in men affects their sperm count and it often reduces the count by a considerable amount than is normally required for successful conception. Identify your stress level by:
Take a stress test and visit a doctor. See if you are under stress and take action to reduce that stress to cut one of the reasons of not getting pregnant.

3. Are You Running To The Bathroom After Sex?

Many women tend to rush to the bathroom after having sex to clean up, wash or just to relieve them. It is important to mention here that, it is essential to stay in bed for at least a minimum of 20 minutes post the sex activity to ensure that you can conceive and the sperm gets a chance to reach the egg. If you rise, rush and run as soon as you are done with the act, you are letting Mother Nature’s gravity drag the sperm out and the rest of it is washed away when you clean up.
So, it could be one of the reasons for not getting pregnant. Focus on relaxing and lying in bed for a while after the sex so that you can improve your chances of conception and getting pregnant.

4. Are You Drinking And Smoking Too Much?

Sometimes excessive smoking and drinking can reduce the chances of getting pregnant. Both these addictive habits have the ability to reduce the chances of getting pregnant by affecting the reproductive system in the body. To improve chances of getting pregnant, make sure you both quit or reduce smoking and drinking.

5. Are You Both Wearing Undergarments A Tad Too Tight?

Many a times we wear undergarments that are too tight to get the shape right or feel better. It is important to understand that while you are wearing these tight undergarments to accentuate your body and figure and feel good, you might unknowingly be damaging your body’s production of sperm in a man, and reduce the breathing and comfort when it comes to a woman.
Wear well fitted, but prefer cotton undergarments to avoid any kind of infections, reduce sweating and related problems, and allow your privates to breathe and relax.

6. Are You Working Out Too Much?

While you might be a health freak and working out to sweat it all out in the gym, it is important to understand that extreme exercise can be one of the major contributing factors for not getting pregnant. If you are working out too much, you are reducing your fat percentage in the body and as a result sending your menstrual cycles into a toss, leaving your body in a state of not being able to get pregnant. Overweight and underweight are both a problem area for conception.

7. What To Do If You Need Your Daily Dose of Exercise?

While you might feel it is okay to work out as much as you do, it could be important to reduce your exercise levels just a little to be able to get pregnant. Check with your doctor to understand the optimum level of exercise you should undertake to stay healthy and get pregnant.

• Reduce the use of treadmill to an optimum speed and time to get pregnant
• Exercise in moderation
• Don’t stop exercising once you conceive
• If there seems to be side effects, contact and reach out to your doctor

Besides the above given reasons, there might be a steep chance that you are doing everything right and leading a balanced lifestyle and taking good care of yourself, but the ability to conceive still evades you. It could then be a case of a medical condition that can exist in either of the partners. It is important to note that though sometimes, there are cases where lifestyle, living and work patterns become the causes and reasons for not conceiving, at other times there are underlying medical conditions that might need the advice and guidance of an expert.

Medical Conditions:

There are cases where the egg gets aborted naturally or there can be chances of impotence. But, it is important to give this a time frame of a year when you are planning on having a baby. So, even if after a year of trying to get pregnant, as a couple you fail, you should definitely reach out to a doctor for a consultation first, checkup and treatments later if required.
Once you reach out to your general physician or a gynecologist, the underlying medical problems are also related to other health diseases that can be traced with the following tests based on the doctor’s recommendation:-
a. Doctors often start with the basic tests and ask for the couple to get an ultrasound to ensure that all reproductive organs are as they should be and create and image so as to check anatomical details:
b. If the doctor feels that there needs to be a closer examination following the above ultrasound, then the doctor can recommend having a Laparoscopy to observe the reproductive organs more closely.
c. Test for progesterone levels to ensure that as a woman you are ovulating and body is in its normal cycle to ensure that conception can happen.
d. Have a test for Chlamydia to ensure that if it exists and is not letting you conceive, you can proceed with antibiotic treatments.
e. Sometimes, an abnormal thyroid can also be one of the many reasons a couple is unable to conceive or get pregnant, getting a thyroid test done will rule out this possibility as well.
f. Sometimes, there are some blockages in the fallopian tubes that don’t allow for the eggs to travel to the womb and hence couples are unable to conceive. The doctor might recommend a Hysterosalpingogram to detect these blockages.A hysterosalpingogramis an x- ray test that looks inside the uterus and fallopian tubes and the area around them. This is done for woman who is having difficulty in conceiving.
During a hysterosalpingogram a dye or contrast material is put through a thin tube into the vagina and into the uterus. Since fallopian tubes and uterus is fixed together the dye flows into the fallopian tube. This fluoroscopy or X-ray can show injury and abnormalities of the uterus and fallopian tube. It also shows blockages in the fallopian tube that prevents the egg from travelling from the fallopian tube to the uterus. If the egg can’t reach the uterus there are chances of ectopic pregnancy. A blockage can also prevent the sperm from fertilizing the egg. This x-ray can also help to detect any problem in the uterus that is preventing successful implantation of the fertilized egg.
A hysterosalpingogram is done to check for a blocked fallopian tube. Often infection is responsible for scarring and blocking the fallopian tubes, thus preventing pregnancy. The dye used in hysterosalpingogram often helps to open the blocked fallopian tubes.This test helps to detect the presence of polyps, fibroids, adhesions, any foreign object in the uterus, any signs of injury and the abnormal shape of the uterus. Since problems with the uterus often cause painful menstrual cycles and repeated miscarriages.

You need to prepare before a Hysterosalpingogram. You need to give the doctor this following information:

• Whether you are pregnant or not.
• Whether you have a pelvic infection (pelvic inflammatory Infection) or sexually transmitted disease like gonorrhea and chlamydia.
• Whether you are allergic to iodine dye or any substance that contains iodine.
• Tell your doctor whether you suffer from asthma and have allergic reaction from any substance like venom of a bee sting or eating shellfish.
• Whether you are suffering from bleeding problem and taking blood thinning medicines like warfarin or aspirin.
• Whether you suffer from kidney problem and diabetes. It is important to inform whether you have medicines like Metformin (Glucophage). Since the dye used in Hysterosalpingogram can destroy the kidney in people who already have kidney problems. So before doing a hysterosalpingogram make sure you do a blood test to check the creatnine levels and blood urea nitrogen to check whether your kidneys are functioning properly.

You should do this test two to five days after the menstrual cycle to be sure that you are not pregnant. It should be done before you ovulate the next month (unless you are using birth control pills) to avoid using the x-rays during early pregnancy. You should carry a sanitary napkin with you since there can be leakage of the dye used during the X-ray and slight bleeding.
However, sometimes the inability to conceive can also be attributed to some deep seated medical conditions that could need deeper analysis and prolonged treatment with proper health care. Some of the common medical conditions are listed below:

1. Irregular Periods:

As mostly, we start with women when it comes to getting pregnant, women should monitor their cycles more carefully to note if there are high levels of irregularity. If there are irregular periods, the couple should reach out to the doctor to find out the underlying reason(s) and get treatment if required. Irregular periods are the most contributing factor when couples are unable to conceive a baby.

2. Adhesions:

Sometimes, the inability to get pregnant can also be due to adhesions in the reproductive organs of the female. Sometimes, these adhesions exist, but women might not have any symptoms at all. These can also be caused due to some injury or trauma to the cavity of uterine. Sometimes, usage of intrauterine devices to avoid pregnancy can also lead to this medical condition. The only way to fix this is to contact your doctor for treatment.

3. Blockage in Fallopian Tubes:

In many cases, the biggest reason couples are unable to get pregnant is due to some lockage in fallopian tubes. How does this affect conception? Well, the egg and sperm might not be able to unite if the fallopian tubes are blocked. Alternately, sometimes the pregnancy occurs in the fallopian tubes which gets terminated on its own or can lead to medical trouble as well. Sometimes, causing the fallopian tube to burst which is a cause of grave concern.

4. Cervical Mucus Problems:

Sometimes the mucus does not change its consistency during the time of ovulation and provides a natural barrier for the sperm from entering the female reproductive organ. Also, there are cases where the body reacts by producing antibodies that kill the sperm and lead to failure in pregnancy despite repeated efforts. For this to be deduced for sure, there are some pretty complex tests that a professional doctor will advise to undertake.

5. Endometriosis and Fibroids:

While the first is a medical condition in which a woman’s endometrial tissue implants itself outside the uterine cavity which causes pain and leads to inability to get pregnant, the second scenario is one in which there are tumors that grow in the uterine wall.
These are a few reasons and causes for not getting pregnant, though there could be a more complex problem at hand that needs more evaluation and understanding. Having a kid is perhaps one of the most satisfying and gratifying experience in one’s life and no person would love to forgo this, until and unless all possibilities have been exhausted.
As a couple being unable to conceive, might make you feel that maybe there is no hope, but sometimes getting a second opinion, doing some personal research and putting efforts on making sure that you get a good treatment at the best place can work wonders.
Many a times, a few changes to daily lifestyle needs to made to ensure that your body, mind, heart and soul are all ready and willing to take the pregnancy ahead. One has to make a conscious effort to reduce the stress and start living healthy. More than we understand and accept, psychological factors also play a crucial role in having a child.
If you are trying for a long time now, you should straight away, knock at a doctor’s place for a second opinion. If it has been less than a year or closer to that you should pay more attention and observe your own lifestyle and make changes and amends where required.
All in all, by now your questions regarding what are the reasons for not getting pregnant are cleared. We all hope for the best and wish no complexities exist and pray for a wonderful parenthood for all.