How do I know I am fertile?

WHEN SHOULD YOU BECOME CONCERNED ABOUT FERTILITY?

A normally fertile couple who use no birth-control measures and have intercourse whenever the spirit moves them start a pregnancyin about ten months on the average. However, the laws of probability have a good deal to say about exactly when conception will occur. Ten months is average, but two years is common and three years far from rare. Unless advancing age makes the situation unusually urgent, you should not worry about failure to get pregnant for some time.

The home measures described ab.ove are worthwhile if you are anxious to have a youngster, but the situation is neither so grave as to cause concem nor so pressing as to call for medical examinations and care until three years of unhampered marital relations have failed to initiate pregnancy. After three years of unsuccessful attempts to conceive, thorough medical examination of both partners is worthwhile. About half of the couples who have been infertile this long prove to have difficulties which can be corrected. The other half occasionally have children later, but have a suffidently remote chance of doing so to begin thinking about other ways of building a family, such as by adaption.

A great many couples use birth-control measures for a few years, then find that pregnancy does not occur promptly when they decide that the time is ripe. If this happens to you, do not let guilt feelings or recrimination add their burdens to the problem of infertility itself. None of the birthcontrol methods discussed above cause infertility once you stop using them. Fertility may decrease with the passage of time or with progression of otherwise undetectable disorders, so that it is wise to start having your family as soan as you find it convenient. Family-spacing measures do not themselves cause this problem, however, and you should not blame yourself for it. In most cases, people who experience difficulty having a child when they stop using birth-control measures would have had just as much trouble if they had tried to reproduce right at the start of their marriage, with no one whatever at fault.