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