Infertility and Egg Donation.

Essay by sweetcheeks925College, UndergraduateA-, December 2005

download word file, 11 pages 0.0

An infertile woman is unable to get pregnant and have children naturally. There are many reasons why a woman may be infertile. One reason is a woman's weight. The fat cells in your body absorb and slowly release the female hormone estrogen. Therefore, if a woman is obese, she has a lot of estrogen stored in her body that is slowly and gradually released constantly in a random fashion from places other than her ovaries. At the time of menstruation she will not get as rapid and as high an increase in FSH (follicle-stimulating hormone) production from her pituitary gland, because the estrogen constantly coming out of her fat cells is actually suppressing her pituitary gland. Without an early burst of FHS from the pituitary, the ovarian follicle gets a slow start and all of the hormonal events leading up to preparing the eggs chromosomes for ovulation and fertilization can be out of synch (Silber, 1991).

Irregular periods are also a sign of possible infertility. When a girl first starts her periods, a stage known as "menarche," they are naturally very irregular. However, by the age of fifteen or sixteen they should have stabilized so that they come about every twenty-eight days. There is precise hormonal clockwork that regulates the development of the follicle, secretion of estrogen, buildup of a thick lining in the uterus prior to ovulation, the pouring out of large quantities of clear cervical mucus, and the conversion to a soft lining in the uterus after ovulation when the rupture follicle starts making progesterone. If this intricately synchronized clockwork of hormonal events is messed up, the periods may be irregular. Woman with irregular periods can ovulate and get pregnant, but if they are ovulating, they may be ovulating late, or they are not ovulation each month (Sibler,