Fertility and the Forgotten Sex

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[Music]

hello my name

is andrea byrne and i’m 42 years old

i’ve spent nearly

a quarter of my life trying to conceive

i’m a news reader and i wish i had an

auto cue today i’m also a podcaster i

have a podcast

called making babies which is all about

trying to normalize

the fertility conversation so let me ask

you a couple of questions uh to get us

started what do you think about when i

say the word

fertility well sex maybe babies possibly

pregnancy

perhaps what do you think about when i

say the word

infertility let me run you through some

quotes just to get you started so about

eight years ago i found out i was unable

to have children it pretty much

changed my life to be honest the whole

process was

heartbreaking you go into ivf

all positive and then it doesn’t work

and you end up feeling depressed

and the last one i really struggle going

to to christenings

and to weddings and i am trying to get

better though

who are you imagining what are you

imagining when i was going through those

emotions those

words well if you were imagining a woman

then you would probably be

in the majority but you would be wrong

in fact

all of those clips were said by a man on

an episode of my podcast and what i want

to talk to you about

today is fertility’s forgotten sex

i started by saying to you that i’d

spent a quarter of my life

trying to conceive well actually that

should have been my husband and i have

spent

about a decade of our lives trying to

start a family because this is a journey

that a man

and a woman go on together and it can be

very individual

and really complex and i think we all

talk about this banner of oh they’re

doing ivf or we’re having to have

ivf but we don’t talk much about the

complexities

behind that so i wanted to map that a

little bit onto my personal journey

for you to begin with so we got married

and we wanted to try to start a family

and we had

lots of tests um eventually because

things just weren’t happening

and i was told that i had a chronically

thin womb lining so what does that mean

i didn’t know at the time so when the

sperm

and the egg meet to create that

all-important

embryo which is needed to implant

somewhere to embed somewhere to develop

a pregnancy well

if the lining of the womb isn’t thick

enough there’s nowhere for that to

happen

so i was told that it was improbable if

not impossible that i would be able to

carry

my own children and what ensued was

years of fertility treatment of barrage

of fertility treatment

to try and desperately change that so i

had

multiple operations i had an mri scan on

my brain would you believe it to see if

i had

a benign tumor which was somehow

affecting my hormone production

there were loads of different drugs

protocols thousands and upon thousands

of injections i think

over time in all sorts of parts of my

body and

as part of that i was even prescribed

female viagra

would you believe it it is a thing and i

can assure you it isn’t

pleasurable but that’s something that

they do prescribe in some fertility

treatments

these days so we had multiple failed and

cancelled cycles of

assisted um reproduction treatments and

and also

within that sadly we had two

miscarriages so we lost

two pregnancies and you’re constantly

playing this game of

what if throughout the time that you’re

trying to conceive what if i can

get to that goal what if we can start

creating a family

and get that long awaited child

and for a lot of people you just feel

totally out of control not knowing what

the answer to that is going to be

throughout that time now for us we did

have

a very fortunate wondrous ending and

this is she jemima aged at two and a

half

and she is an utter joy and she is quite

miraculous because in the end in fact

she was conceived naturally now i don’t

tell you all this

out of any sense of victimhood or

sympathy

it’s to just try to normalize the

conversation

and individualize the complexities of

that journey that so many couples go

through

because it is normal let’s have a look

at the figures it’s one

in six heterosexual couples in the uk

that has trouble

conceiving at any one time it’s 3.5

million people

and i’m going to talk about the

heterosexual side of things today

because that’s my lived experience but

of course

there’s lots of other ways of shaping

families which all come

with their own challenges but just look

at those figures 3.5

million people so it is likely to be

someone you know or someone you love

or perhaps even you and let’s look at

another figure

within that now which is very specific

to what i want to um raise awareness of

today and that’s

that of all those couples trying to

conceive 50 percent

of the time so that’s half the time it

won’t be anything to do with the woman’s

body or the woman’s reproductive system

it will be a male factor so it’ll be to

do with the

man’s sperm and be to do with um sperm

health

so it’s really important that we raise

awareness of that but it might be a

surprise to you that it’s 50 50 because

actually

the issues around fertility in our

society very much remain

female ones and maybe that is because

physically with biology it is a woman

who has to

try and get pregnant and carry a baby so

the treatment

falls very much onto her but at least i

guess

that means there is a conversation

around it it’s certainly not loud enough

it’s certainly not positive enough but

it is happening for men

it seems that that conversation is very

much well and truly turned down the

volume is turned down it’s barely a

whisper it’s hardly there

and this is something we really really

need to change to remember fertility’s

forgotten sex for two

really big reasons that i want to talk

about today the first of all

that is to do with the physical side of

things with sperm health sperm count

sperm quality we don’t talk about it

enough

and also the mental health side of

things suicide rates

are rising amongst men mental health is

a real issue it’s a taboo subject again

and we don’t

talk about that so let’s start with the

first one let’s start with

sperm health now i think we have lots of

cliches around fertility don’t we and

one of the things we hear about a lot in

in that chatter is things like oh

her biological clock is ticking old

time’s running out

my body’s getting old my i’m running out

of eggs all

of these things around the female side

of the conversation but actually

sperm ages as well and it’s a bit of a

myth that men can carry on

impregnating women and fertilizing eggs

maybe well

into their 90s sperm ages and sperm

counts and quality can vary throughout

the adult life

as it gets produced and it’s all got to

do

with the count the number of sperm per

milliliter of

semen and once that starts to drop that

can be really worrying when it goes

below

40 million but also the motility and the

morphology of the sperm so that’s the

ease and speed at which it moves

through a bit of science in there and

also the size and shape of the sperm so

it can get to that all-important egg

um quickly enough to do its job

so what can we do about all of this it

could be um pretty serious there’s a

study

that was done over 40 years which

reported back a few years ago and it

said that

sperm counts has fallen in the last uh

uh 40 years by more than

50 percent and it was going down by 1.4

every year so if you sort of throw

forward another 40 or 50

years and you think oh goodness we could

be in serious

trouble with this and there was a book

that accompanied

that study the lady who was integral in

that study was a lady called professor

sharna swan from the mount sinai school

of medicine in new york

and there were lots of headlines that

came with the attention around that book

which was recently published

things like spermageddon and it was all

got to do with how

external factors in our environment

might be affecting

our fertility so pesticides chemicals

all these things which

exist around us but we might not really

be able to control and it’s really

important science and it’s something

that’s

all being looked at at the moment but

actually there is also science

which goes back decades which scientists

agree on

which is perhaps more personal to us

which we can control simple lifestyle

factors which we can grasp a hold of

and make big changes in a small amount

of time when it comes to fertility

so basic things like making sure we keep

a check of our weight

making sure that we don’t smoke if we’re

trying to conceive cutting alcohol

and you know things like anabolic

steroids which are really dangerous

particularly

in men who might be into their training

and need to think about their fertility

as well there’s also stuff which

we think are kind of urban myths which

are always talked about so

keeping the nether regions cool so if

you’re in a job where you work in a hot

place like a chef at an oven all day or

you’ve got your laptop on your lap all

day

um you need to make sure you take breaks

to make sure that everything’s kept cool

and

don’t wear tight underwear yes that is

really a thing

and i know you’re probably thinking well

women can do all these things too you

know in terms of the general health

stuff the weights

the not drinking all of that kind of

thing and yes that’s really true

but actually men do have more power

over their fertility because men keep

reproducing sperm throughout their

adult life on a cycle whereas women have

their eggs

determined right from when they are born

the number of eggs they have are

determined

right from when they are born so maybe

if we just talked a little bit more

about it then we’d all be more aware

maybe we can get to the point where

having a fertility check is just as

normal a conversation

as going to the dentist to look after

our teeth for the future is really

important for our life to look after our

fertility for the future

could be if you want a family really

important

for your life so maybe we’re not at the

point just yet if we raise some more

awareness where we’re going to have to

harvest a load

of healthy sperm and send it to the moon

to protect

the human race maybe it’s just about

talking a bit more and talking is what i

want to do a bit more

talking about with you today

now we know don’t we that yes there’s a

physical side of things but there’s also

the mental health side of things and

that’s the other thing

i want to raise today about why it’s so

important to remember

fertility’s forgotten sex it’s about the

mental health

we know that 12 men in the uk ends their

life

every day and we also know that men

just don’t talk as much and it’s suicide

is on the rise

in men under the age of 45 and that’s

just the sort of time that all these

problems might be starting to happen

around fertility as well and it might be

two years

before a man discloses a problem to

their loved ones or those

close to them a study was done a few

years ago with the mental health

foundation

it found that women might talk about

things within maybe two or three months

with people close to them

but men would wait years and maybe never

disclose it

so this is all really crucial and i can

map it all

onto my own personal journey because my

husband lee very much fits

this picture he didn’t want to tell

anyone about what was going on

in our lives with our fertility but it

was really important in the end

that he did share and he got some

professional help because after all

in life not only do we have this

fertility journey going on and we might

be able to having to cope with all of

those things

but also life throws lots of other crap

at you so you’ve got two parallel things

happening and we had

parental bereavements we had a family

member with cancer

we had lee being retired from his job

playing professional sport

and his best friend died in a car crash

so he was dealing with an awful lot

all in one time so it was really

important that he did get the help

that he needed but i think the

breakthrough really came when he

communicated in a different way you

remember the podcast that i spoke about

at the beginning

and you remember the quotes which i

spoke about well they were from a man

called kevin button also known as the

man cave

on social media who is one of the few

people who is starting

that chatter on social media and that

supports for men and men around

fertility

and i was recording a podcast with him

and i said to my husband wouldn’t it be

really great if you jumped on and spoke

to him and he was really reluctant

but i managed to persuade him and i went

out the room and when i listened to that

conversation back he revealed some

things in a different way really

a different way from how he’d ever

really spoken to me about it

he said just how hard it had been

probably the hardest thing in his life

he told kevin um he also

said to um kevin that’s um

he had found that he developed this

paranoia about was it a problem with him

even though

i had had this medical diagnosis maybe

it was still something he’d done he

couldn’t get that out of his head

and he also spoke um and this was

probably one of the most um distressing

ones for me to hear that he got really

upset

when i used to say to him oh do you know

what let’s just split up and go our

separate ways and you go and find

someone who

who can have a baby with you more easily

and sort all of this out

so it was really interesting to know

that at that point in his life

he found some empathy um somebody to

have a conversation with

on a level um in a way that they they’d

been on the journey in the same way as

him and they perceived things in a

similar way to him and he really opened

up

so it was the power of men talking

to men now just before um i conclude

and wrap up i just want to talk to you

about one other analogy which i think

maps onto this quite well you know when

you’re on an airplane and in that safety

briefing on the airplane i know we don’t

do much flying around anymore at the

moment but you remember it

you’re told to put your own oxygen mask

on before you help your children

well that can be the same with men and

women infertility women go through all

these

really harsh problems with the physical

side of the treatment which they’re

having to cope with

and who did they turn to who did i turn

to when i was going through

my treatment well i turned to lee and

people turn to their husbands their

boyfriends their partners

so a man needs to find a way of being

equipped with his oxygen mask and

breathing and surviving through that

journey to be able to help his wife his

partner

to do the same and breathe and survive

through

that journey it’s a really tough journey

as i’ve said

for everybody to go on and we need to

remember that it’s normal let’s just

return to those figures for one more

second it’s one

in six heterosexual couples in the uk

has trouble

conceiving so let’s normalize the

conversation

around conceiving and infertility and

fertility

because it is normal the problems around

fertility

are 50 50. so let’s make

the awareness 50 50. let’s make the

conversation 50 50.

and let’s make that support 50 50.

because maybe just maybe by opening up

that

all-important dialogue for everyone

we can find a way to remember

fertility’s

forgotten sex thank you