Sponsored by Organon. Visit FertilityJourney.com for infertility resources and information.  Jennifer "Jay" Palumbo is a writer, public speaker, infertility advocate, author of the blog "The 2 Week Wait," and a proud in vitro fertilization (IVF) mom of 2 boys. This article is based on her own fertility journey. Fertility can be impacted by many different things – your diet, your age, how healthy you are, whether or not you smoke – but what about your DNA? According to The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 6.7 million women in the United States are unable to...

At 17, I created a five-year plan for myself. It was a Google Doc, color-coded with defined “life categories": school, career development, side hustles, and wellness. Anytime I felt overwhelmed, my knee-jerk reaction was to bullet my anxieties and carefully outline my plan of attack in the “wellness” category.  Something that was not in the plan: blood cancer at 18.  I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma about four years ago. When they told me the news, I opened up my laptop in my hospital bed and tried to adjust the plan. It didn’t work, of course,...

A fertility journey can involve many steps between you and your future baby. Some are in your control, some aren’t, but all usually provide a certain amount of information. PGT-A testing is one way to gain valuable knowledge to help you move forward on your path to parenthood. It can be especially helpful for couples trying to build their families who have experienced prior losses, want to decrease the time to pregnancy, increase chances of success, or are over age 35.  The team at Genomic Prediction, who created the LifeView testing platform, has studied and continues...

Vaginal infections, like all other infections, are no fun. But the last thing anyone wants to think about when dealing with a vaginal infection is whether or not their ability to conceive has been compromised.  Bacterial Vaginosis, or BV, is a common vaginal infection that, regrettably, has been linked to infertility.  But this is due to a variety of factors: Even though BV doesn’t directly cause infertility, it can increase your risk of developing fertility issues, particularly tubal infertility. Before we delve into this topic further, however, it’s important to establish what exactly BV is. What...

When we talk about abortion rights in a post-Roe world, we often talk about the importance of reproductive choice. As we should: Giving people, particularly people with uteruses, autonomy over their bodies is absolutely crucial — frankly, it feels dystopian to have to even make that point. But the need for universal abortion access isn’t always about choice. Sometimes, people who very much want to carry out their pregnancies are abortion patients — and it’s time we include them in the conversation. Their stories highlight a crucial point: In our post-Roe world, we can’t just fight...

You’ve done so much hard work. You’ve given yourself injections, gone to countless appointments, endured blood draws and ultrasounds, and made it through an egg retrieval. Now what?  A lot has to happen for the egg and sperm to become a blastocyst, from fertilization to the various stages of embryo development. In fact, only about one in four harvested eggs may reach the blastocyst stage, and only about one in eight eggs may actually be genetically competent to become a baby (depending on your unique circumstances). Fortunately, many experts, like Dr. Karine Chung of California Fertility...

If you are a menstruating human, you are no stranger to the period poops. They are unpredictable, always unwelcome, and seem to come as a surprise almost every month, even though you’re kind of expecting them.  It turns out, that if you get a hint that your period’s on its way based on how many times you’re running to the bathroom, it’s not just a coincidence. And for all you IBS girlies out there, you really know what we’re talking about. There are hormonal reasons behind this: Your bowel habits fluctuate along with your hormones throughout...

As women, many of us may have historically viewed our cycles, especially our periods, as “curses.” But it turns out, they can be our superpower if we’re willing to fully lean into each stage and give our body what it needs in those moments.  Part of what sets women apart is that we operate off of two biological rhythms instead of one.  Woman’s second biological rhythm: The menstrual cycle  Everyone has a circadian rhythm, aka your 24-hour “biological clock” that controls your sleep-wake cycle, hormone production, energy, metabolism, body temperature, and more. However, women have a...

After spending your teenage years dealing with the predictable hormonal changes that come with puberty, the last thing anyone wants as an adult is a bunch of pimples. Unfortunately, acne is extremely common in adulthood. Not only does this skin condition affect 80% of the U.S. population during their lifetime, but about 50% of women experience acne in their 20s, and 25% of women report breakouts in their 40s. What can be deeply frustrating about adult acne – also known as “hormonal acne” – is that sometimes it feels like it just won’t go away. “I...

Everyone’s fertility journey is unique and different. But if you’re going through in-vitro fertilization (IVF), there’s probably one thing that you have in common with everyone else: how much you hate those meds. IVF often entails taking lots of hormonal medications, via pill and through injection. When preparing for embryo transfer (the final step in the IVF process), the medications help your uterus prepare properly for pregnancy and ensure that an embryo has the best chance of implanting. But even the purest, clearest desire for a baby doesn’t quite take the edge off of stabbing yourself...