Italian pasta brand Barilla refuses to use gay families in their advertising

Guido Barilla, chairman of the company of the same name, told a radio interviewer the concept of the "classic" family was fundamental. If gay people disliked the concept, he said, they could "eat another brand". His comments were an "offensive provocation", according to the head of gay rights group Equality Italia. If gays like our pasta and our communication, they will eat our pasta. If not, they can avoid it and eat another brand” "We accept the invitation from the Barilla owner to not eat his pasta," Aurelio Mancuso said, urging a boycott of the company's pasta, sauces and snacks. The hash tags Barilla and boicottabarilla (boycott Barilla) became top trending terms among Italians using Twitter. Alessandro Zan, a gay Italian MP, tweeted: "You can't mess around with consumers, including gay ones." 'Slightly different' In the interview given to Radio 24 on Tuesday, Mr Barilla had been asked if adverts for his company would ever feature a gay family. "We have a slightly different culture," he replied. "For us, the concept of sacred family remains one of the fundamental values of the company. Ours is a traditional family. If gays like our pasta and our communication, they will eat our pasta. If not, they can avoid it and eat another brand. You can't please everyone in order to displease no-one. "I wouldn't do an ad with a homosexual family not because I disrespect gays - they have their right to do whatever they want without disturbing others - but because I don't think like them and I think that the family we try to address is anyway a classic family." On Thursday, Mr Barilla issued a statement to apologise, explaining that he was trying to say "simply that the woman plays a central role in a family". "Barilla features families in its commercials because it embraces anyone, and they have always been identified with our brand," he added. Despite a strong gay culture, Italy is one of the few states in Western Europe which does not recognise same-sex unions in law. In its latest annual survey, the gay rights watchdog Ilga-Europe found the country continued to have a "relatively high level of homophobia and transphobia which expresses itself through violence". Article: 29th September 2013 www.bbc.co.uk Read more about gay parenting at www.prideangel.com

Sperm donors needed to help single women and lesbian couples in Canada

TORONTO - 3246 plays the trumpet, enjoys judo and was a nationally rated chess player in university. But perhaps the most important detail on his five-page bio is this: “3246 is a proven fertile donor.” “I donate to share the joy of becoming a parent — a gift from my family to yours! I’m a husband and father of three with two boys and a baby girl,” he writes in an essay obtained by the Herald. 3246 is a Canadian sperm donor, but he’s also an endangered species. Currently, there is only one national sperm bank in Canada. And that bank — nestled within ReproMed: The Toronto Institute for Reproductive Medicine — only had 51 active donors, including donor 3246. Two clinics in Quebec do maintain a handful of donors, bringing the country’s total number of anonymous sperm donors to around 60, but those clinics restrict sales to their own patients while ReproMed sells coast-to-coast. By some estimates, there is a need for donor sperm for more than 5,500 inseminations per year in Canada, and 3,000 of those are for lesbian couples. Read more ... Article: 27th September 2013 www.calgaryherald.com Looking for a sperm donor in Canada? search >130 sperm donors registered at www.prideangel.com Want to help single and lesbian couples by donating sperm? search >400 recipients at www.prideangel.com

China sperm bank boosts donor payments to increase stocks

The Henan Provincial Human Sperm Bank has offered cash payments of up to 5,000 yuan ($817) for donors, according to a notice on its Sina Weibo on Sunday, though the entire process takes around eight months. Demand is high due to an increasing number of people with fertility problems coupled with limited stocks of sperm, the head of the sperm bank told the Global Times on Monday. The 5,000 yuan subsidy pays for things like losing income and appropriate nutrition, according to Li Yushan, the director of the bank. At the very beginning of the donation process, donors are given 50 yuan for each donation. After they donate three or four times, qualified donors are given 200 yuan for each donation. They also need to undergo tests for Hepatitis B and syphilis. A successful volunteer needs to donate sperm 10 or 15 times, Li said. Around six months after the donations, donors need to take an HIV examination and will receive a final payment of 1,500 yuan. The total payments amount to 5,000 yuan, Li said. The candidates should be aged between 22 and 45, be healthy and have no genetic diseases. They should be at least 1.7 meters tall and have a diploma in technical secondary school or above. Li said that while the diplomas do not relate directly to the quality of a donor’s genes, clients insisted upon the requirement. After the notice was issued there were around 50 donations a day, twice the amount during the summer holidays. The total number of donors stood at around 1,200 between January and September, Li said. “About 90 percent of the donors are college students. They are young, energetic and find it easy to accept new things. And most of them have no bad lifestyle habits and no sex lives, and their time is flexible,” Li said. Some donated sperm are provided to reproductive centers to be used in assisted reproductive technology while some are used in medical research and some are frozen for donors for up to 30 years, in case they become infertile. Across the country, many of the 16 banks urgently require donated sperm due to increasing numbers of infertile people. Although medical technology has advanced, the quality of sperm has declined in recent years to some degree, Li said, adding that this is due to a number of factors including pollution, working pressure and unhealthy living habits. Statistics published by Lei Fang, former head of the second affiliated hospital of Zhengzhou University in Henan Province, show that there were about 40 million people with fertility problems in China among those aged between 20 and 40 in the past 20 years, the Dahe Daily reported. Article: 24th September 2013 www.nznews.com

New research suggests embracing emotions during infertility

On September 27, a diverse group—doctors, authors, filmmakers, trauma therapists, and members of the public—will convene in New York City to watch the infertility documentary The Cycle: Living a Taboo. They will also participate in a forum to “challenge conventional wisdom and foster a new, more open dialogue about infertility.” This project is meant to give voice to important but often marginalized perspectives, including patients who are not only unsuccessful but traumatized by the fertility treatment experience. It’s good to redirect our attention from the depression and anxiety that we often associate with those seeking fertility treatments to a more complicated emotional cocktail that includes desperation, anger, and helplessness. But while we collectively share and show compassion for our diverse reproductive experiences, we must clarify exactly what we mean when we discuss these emotions and how they bear upon patients’ competencies. Before we encourage infertility patients to spring out of the stirrups to avoid an emotionally bumpy ride, it's good to question why so many stay on the path to fertility treatments nonetheless. I have spent the past two years researching emotion’s impact on fertility treatment decision-making and informed consent, conducting lengthy interviews and survey research with approximately 400 in-vitro fertilization patients and 90 reproductive medicine professionals. My research has revealed that, by themselves, generalized labels such as “desperate,” “angry,” and “vulnerable” are often misleading; they can actually do a disservice to and disparage the patients. Some infertile women do experience feelings of desperation, but common-sense understandings of what it means to be desperate range from unsophisticated to flagrantly wrong. Yet these labels not only are present in popular stereotypes of infertile women and couples, but for decades they have often been applied (without empirical evidence) by well-intentioned individuals seeking to draw attention to patients’ vulnerabilities—including experts in medicine, law, and business, religious leaders, and former patients. In reality, the lived experience of these emotions is highly complex and nuanced, and many purportedly “toxic” emotions actually play positive roles and are critical to successful coping processes. My research shows that some “negative” emotions, including desperation and anger, often deepen patients’ involvement in decision-making and cause them to deliberate carefully, rather than consigning them to paralyzed indecision or blind commitment to unrealistic goals. Read more ...

Alternative Parenting Show today was another success

Today’s Alternative Parenting show was another resounding success. The show included many leading experts giving advice on how to navigate through the minefield of starting a family, whether in a same-sex relationship, single or needing a donor to conceive. Topics included legal provisions, surrogacy, fertility, co-parenting along with fostering and adoption. The one day event gave people the chance to ask questions about the different options available. Many people spoke to fertility clinics about their treatment options. Other options included finding a donor through a connection websites such as Pride Angel, the leading worldwide connection service for finding a known donor or co-parent. Erika co-founder of Pride Angel said ‘We spoke with many people today at the Alternative Parenting show, who were excited to hear about the possibility of being able to find and meet their own sperm or egg donor. With many people wishing to have the option of staying in touch with the donor and even for the child to have some level of contact, maybe like an ‘uncle type figure in their lives’. To read more about known sperm donation, egg donation or co-parenting visit www.prideangel.com

Seeking out my anonymous sperm donor father

I did once seek out my biological father. A front-page article had hit The New York Times, and I was suddenly spammed by 6,000 well-meaning friends emailing me about DonorSiblingRegistry.com, a website that helps people track down sperm-donor fathers and potential siblings. Back when I was conceived, my moms chose to keep their sperm donor anonymous, in both directions, feeling that doing so best protected the family they were starting, in particular R's position as the non-biological mother. Nowadays there are scores of people reeling in their genetic line on the fishing wire of the Internet, trying to fill in the gaps of parental choices (sound as they may have been). I was intrigued. Suddenly my natural interest in finding my father intersected with the tools to maybe do so. After all, 6,000 friends spamming your inbox about a new website can't be wrong! I knew that my window of opportunity was closing with each year. My sperm-donor father, if he hadn't already been hit by a falling piano or bitten by a venomous snake while hiking, could well be dying of more natural causes. I was also propelled by a haunting scene: an image of my grandchildren, sitting out in front of me on an old person's shaggy carpet, asking, "So, did you, like, make any effort whatsoever to find your dad?" And my disappointing response: "Well, listen, I was busy. Never got around to it. Here, have a cookie and leave me alone." I would imagine the grandkids, all three of them, repulsed by me and my laziness. I had made not one iota of effort not so much to bring them a genetic match of a great-grandfather but at least to make my own life story exciting by way of a Maury-style dad hunt: paternity tests, cussing, muffin tops, everything. I thought maybe I owed them this. I signed up for the website and put in lots of details about myself and the exceedingly minimal info I had on my donor father and the fertility clinic and hospital that my moms had used. I then rather ashamedly told my parents that I was interested in doing this search. This brought up embarrassment for me and initial discomfort for R, who had spent the parenting portion of her life building a parental identity from scratch, not as a biological mother, not as a father, but as a "co-mother," as she was called on my school forms. I would cross out "father" and write "co-mother," and suddenly my emergency contact form would be as political as a burning flag. We talked candidly about how this search should in no way threaten us as a family, and about how my desire to at least casually attempt to find my father was something I needed to do for myself and certainly not as an act of destruction or rebellion. Despite their initial apprehension, my parents soon rallied around this project (as is their custom with projects of mine). It seemed also that my moms had had their own latent curiosity about this mystical sperm donor, and that I was giving them permission to air it. The search quickly yielded a sweet, nerdy man, a member of MENSA, whose donation timeline and basic background (Jew) fit mine. If you can believe this, my family and I actually sat down with him at a brunch place in Greenwich Village called Jane. We liked him. We talked about all sorts of things while silently puzzling over his forehead, his nose, his shoulders, to see if, as a man, I might be him. He was so nebbishy, the sort of guy who practically begs to be shoved into a locker. He kind of seemed like he needed a family. The Maury moment came when he agreed to a paternity test. The days waiting for the results were fraught and exciting. When the results came and he turned out to be just some guy, I realized how deeply entrenched we'd all become in this fantasy. I had let myself believe that this itch could be quickly scratched, failing to see it for what it was: a needle in a haystack and, more specifically, a needle that, very likely, actively didn't want to be found. But on the heels of defeat, I felt peaceful. I had tried. Now my grandkids could shove it. I had made one nominal attempt, and it had been a rather gargantuan expenditure of emotional energy for my moms and me. I had wrestled with the sense that by taking the bait to go on this search, I was delegitimizing my family. Admitting collectively that we were curious, all three of us, was a weight off my shoulders. Article: 19th September 2013 www.huffingtonpost.com

Pride Angel Journey | To sleep train or not to sleep train…

I was thirty weeks pregnant, perfecting my waddle, complaining about aches in muscles I barely knew I had and drinking Gavsicon straight from the bottle, like a drunkard desperate for the next claggy aniseed fix. The spare room was piled high with an impressive stash of baby gear passed on from friends, and a long car journey was an opportunity to discuss the names question again. We were heading up to Northumberland for a final relaxing break together – staying in a ‘Retreat’ which ominously didn’t accept children. We were given a warm welcome by the owner who, like so many people these days, fussed in a friendly way over me and my bump. I remember thinking how babies are so welcome anywhere when they’re still contained, any cries muffled within the uterus. Only too soon we’d be banished to the family friendly chain pubs, where you trip over ice-cream encrusted high chairs on your way in, before ordering from a sticky, laminated menu, exactly the same bland food, “all served with chips”, that you ordered a week ago from an identical pub one hundred miles away, the only difference being the kids in this one are playing hide and seek (or more accurately hide and shout) under your table instead of racing between waiters’ legs like slalom skiers as the ones in the pub last week were doing. We slowly wandered the gardens at Alnwick – especially slowly on uphill stretches where I’d struggle to catch my breath, and I began a sort of on-going game of pram bingo, proud at my ability to identify one brand from another. I photographed snowdrops in the low February sun: the delicate little white heads that had quietly formed during the depths of winter and bravely battled their way out into the world ready for the spring – just like my baby would. Every time we encountered a small child – a tantrum outside the tree-house restaurant; thigh-high hands pushing past us through the shrubbery of the gardens – we’d spend a while pondering smugly on how much better behaved our child would be. We only half joked about my partner Sally having it ‘well-trained’ (Sally’s a vet). We shook our heads gravely at yet another toddler without reigns and up to all sorts of mischief; back at home the playpen was at the ready and the naughty step identified. After all we’d both been well-trained children ourselves – conscientious at school and polite in company. To this day, we still wrote our ‘thank you’ letters promptly. Nevertheless, fully aware that we knew very little about child-rearing (save how everyone else should be doing it), we decided to start on the parenting books. Sally began with ‘Sleep Solutions: Quiet Nights For You And Your Child: From Birth To Five Years’ by Rachel Waddilove while I commenced rather a tricky, sciencey one: ‘Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Baby's Brain’ by Sue Gerhardt. And it was about then we started to realise a few things. Sally, who had had the easier read and was already well on with it, commented that we should be able to get our baby sleeping through the night quite easily with a bit of training. And it sounded ideal: we could have a young baby AND a good night’s sleep. But of course I’d been reading as well, and so it was that I looked at her in horror. Admittedly I’d got a little bogged down with ‘sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems’ and wasn’t fully confident with the idea of ‘fluctuating inhibitory and excitatory activity’, but I was starting to grasp Gerhardt’s argument that babies don’t have much control over their body systems and might need some help ‘regulating’ them. A stressed baby could experience a flood of the stress hormone, cortisol, and without the swift response of a sympathetic parent, lasting damage could be done to the baby’s brain which could predispose it to conditions such as anxiety and depression – the agonies of which I knew only too well through personal experience and the experience of close family members. I had no idea how I might ‘regulate’ a stressed baby, but I was fairly sure that sleep training it didn’t fit in at all. And that it might require some of this ‘regulating’ during the small hours. But the most distressing fact was that these two books were totally contradictory! The thing is, Sally and I were well aware that there was good parenting, bad parenting and a range of mediocre parentings out there – you only need to visit the nearest supermarket to enjoy a live performance of all of the above. However, we’d thought there was just ‘conscientious, trying to do the best for your child parenting’ and ‘plain lazy, can’t give a toss parenting’. What came to us as quite a revelation about this time was that the parents who practise ‘conscientious, trying to do the best for your child parenting’ don’t all agree with each other: in fact they are almost ready to tear each other into small parts and mash the bits up into baby puree over certain issues like, well whether or not to puree the baby’s food. And disconcertingly, we were just starting to see some cracks in our tidy plans for a ‘well-trained’ child, a naughty step a playpen and a good-night’s sleep. I still found it hard to grasp the fact that there was an actual baby inside me (and I’m not sure I even believed there was entirely until it slip-slopped out early one morning – but that story’s for another time). Nevertheless, running my hand affectionately over my tummy, feeling as I did regularly now that subtle, and sometimes not so subtle squirming from deep within, I thought perhaps a few years without much sleep won’t matter much in the scheme of things. Article: 17th September 2013 by Lindsey, West Yorkshire

Survivor star may have fathered over 200 children

No, Richard Hatch is not starring in Delivery Man, the upcoming comedy about a sperm donor who learns he's fathered more than 533 children at a fertility clinic. That would be Vince Vaughn (see the trailer below). However, the guy who won the first-ever edition of CBS' Survivor 13 years ago may have begot as many as 200 children—in his case, by donating sperm week after week to the Cryobank sperm bank in Fairfax, Va., over a two-year period during his college days because he was in need of cash. "I did it for two years, about two or three times a week," Hatch told Inside Edition about his stint at Virginia's George Mason University. It turns out the reality star was as free with his DNA as he was walking the beaches of Borneo in his birthday suit. Hatch acknowledged that he made several hundred deposits at his local sperm bank that netted him $30 a donation, which, if one does the math, could mean he might have fathered dozens, if not, a couple of hundred kids during that span. While there's no telling exactly how many offspring might be running around, word of his paternity got out when the news magazine interviewed him as he met two of the biological children he fathered—Emily Kidd and Devin O'Neill, both 24. Apparently, the two were able to track down the Castaway with the help of information from their mothers and a website called the Donor Sibling Registry, which listed him as a 6'4" educated Swede. At which point, O'Neill said he emailed Hatch inquiring about paternity while Kidd's mom subsequently confirmed that the erstwhile corporate trainer turned convicted tax dodger was indeed her dad. And upon hearing it was Hatch, Emily recalled watching the first season of Survivor so long ago. "I didn't remember much from when I was 11, but I do remember the naked man and the hype of it," she remarked. As for Devin, he had no clue of the Rhode Island native's past life on Survivor or The Apprentice for that matter. Hatch, who's gay, has one son whom he adopted in 1998. The latter currently lives in Newport with his dad and Richard's partner, Emiliano, whom Hatch married in 2005. As far as meeting the children whom he fathered through the sperm bank, the reality star told Inside Edition that he's up for getting to know them better, though he has no intention of taking the place of the fathers who raised them. "It's an exciting time. It's a great time," he said. Article: 15th September 2013 www.uk.eonline.com

http://blogs.prideangel.com/post/2013/09/Delaying-your-first-baby-could-lead-to-age-related-infertility.aspx

Young women who decide to delay their first baby until their late-30s are running the risk of being left childless because of age-related infertility, scientists have warned. A woman’s fertility declines dramatically after the age of 35 and an increasing number of women are finding that they have to turn to IVF treatment to have any hope of becoming pregnant, experts said. “Things are really going downhill between the ages of 30 and 40....the best cure of all is for women to have their babies before this clock strikes twelve,” said Professor Mary Herbert, a reproductive biologist at Newcastle University. “They should think of family planning not just in the context of preventing pregnancy but also think of it in the context of having your babies at a time when you still have your reproductive fitness...I would be worried if my own daughter didn’t have a child at 35,” Professor Herbert said. The number of British women between the ages of 35 and 39 giving birth for the first time has increased from 6.8 per cent in 1986 to 17 per cent in 2008. This has been accompanied by significant increase in the number of women over 40 seeking fertility treatment, many of whom will ultimately fail to become pregnant, the experts said. Fertility specialists are increasingly concerned about the trend towards having children later in life because, although it can work for some women, it causes problems for many more because female fertility declines so rapidly after 35. “Family planning has got to include when you are going to have your children as well and what we are seeing over the years is an increase in the age of women seeking fertility treatment,” said Jane Stewart, a consultant in reproductive medicine at Newcastle University. “We cannot get away from the age-related decline in fertility and I think to put forward the idea of delaying having children is fine for some people but it’s not fine for everybody,” she said. “I don’t think women understand the risks they run when they reach the older ages....It’s better to think about it [in your 20s] and having that thought process inform all possibilities,” she told the British Science Festival in Newcastle. Women are born with a certain number of egg cells in their ovaries and these are gradually lost as they get older, Dr Stewart said. “Women at the age of menopause have effectively run out of eggs. We do run out of time,” she told the meeting. Article: 13th September 2013 www.independent.co.uk

Preston Pride - Saturday 28th September

Members and friends of the LGB&T community will this year return to the flagstones of Market Square, Preston, for the second annual Preston Pride! The celebration of the city’s diverse and unique LGB&T community will take place on Saturday 28 September and is set to be Bigger, Louder and Prouder than 2012’s hugely successful debut. The Flag Market, outside The Harris Museum, will see a variety of live music and entertainment fit for the whole family, with the official after-party being hosted by Hangout Harry at Rumes Bar and Nightclub, Church Street, Preston. Day time events kick off at 12pm and are free of charge, however there will be a small charge for after-party events, with tickets available to buy in advance. To get your tickets contact Andrew on 07751 711335, or via facebook.com/HangoutHarry. For further details and to stay up to date with all the latest news find Preston Pride on Facebook at facebook.com/prestonpride, or on Twitter @PrestonPrideUK Article: 11th September 2013 www.prestonpride.com

Children of gay parents in Russia hide family truths

Working in a St. Petersburg restaurant after high school, Kristina Kochetkova was prepared for long hours and rude customers. She didn’t expect her boss to goad her in front of her co-workers for having two mothers. “It felt incredibly uncomfortable,” Kochetkova said from Russia’s second-largest city, recalling how he interrupted a staff meeting to ask about her parents, staring as she blushed. The incident, which took place after President Vladimir Putin stoked international ire by signing a law banning the spread of so-called gay propaganda, helped her decide she wouldn’t talk about her family as she starts college this week. The 17-year-old grew up knowing her parents were unusual. Now she worries they might be considered criminals. “Technically, my mothers are breaking the law by propagating their relationship to me,” Kochetkova said in a telephone interview. “It’s sad and incredibly unfair.” As the school year starts, same-sex parents are grappling with how honest to be with teachers and classmates. The law Putin signed June 30 puts gays and lesbians with children at particular risk, said human rights activist Lyudmila Alexeyeva, head of the Moscow Helsinki Group. “It’s a cruel measure against those children,” she said. “Their parents are scared and teaching them to hide and lie.” Read more... Article: 3rd September 2013 www.bloomberg.com

Pregnant women in Australia warned against drinking any alcohol

Health Minister Jillian Skinner has instructed pregnant women to have "zero tolerance" or risk the health of their unborn child. Her blunt warning comes as academics continue to investigate the effects of low-range drinking during pregnancy. A recent British study found the children of mothers who drank moderately - between three to seven glasses of alcohol per week - had better balance at the age of 10. Ms Skinner said the mixed messages about drinking had created a dilemma for many pregnant women. "A zero tolerance of alcohol during pregnancy gives your baby the best possible start in life," she said. However, Dr Delyse Hutchinson from the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, said the adverse impacts of low-level drinking was still unclear. Dr Hutchinson is leading the first large-scale Australian study into substance abuse among pregnant women, examining the effects of both alcohol and drugs on 2000 families during the prenatal period on infant development and family functioning. "We know that a fairly large proportion of women do drink during pregnancy - between a third and half do drink during pregnancy but most drink at very low levels," she said. "We know that heavy drinking during pregnancy has significant effects on the broad physical health and development of infants, including lower intellectual functioning. "However, there is not a lot of research on the impact of low levels of drinking and this is one of the aims of our study." NSW Kids and Families, a branch of NSW Health, is leading the push to urge women to abstain from drinking during pregnancy. Its senior clinical adviser for obstetrics, Dr Michael Nicholl, said the latest health data showed 47 per cent of pregnant women consumed alcohol with 20 per cent continuing to drink after learning they were expecting. "Pregnant women should understand that when you drink alcohol, so does your baby," he said. "It's just not worth the risk." The NSW government campaign, which coincides with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Day on Tuesday, is set to reignite the debate over how much is too much among expectant mums. Ms Skinner said: "As Health Minister, I feel sure that if NSW Kids and Families - which harnesses the best data and clinical minds - concludes a zero tolerance approach is best, then it is best." University of Western Sydney Midwifery Professor Hannah Dahlen said there had been an increased incidence in babies being born with Foetal Alcohlol Syndrome, especially among middle-class women. "We've seen some babies born with foetal alcohol syndrome to women who only had one or two drinks in a week," she said. "Babies go through such rapid development the whole way through birth, so it's not about just being careful in the first eight weeks - the brain develops through the whole of the pregnancy. "The message is to not drink at all because we just don't know a safe level of drinking." Article: www.dailytelegraph.com.au

Boost your fertility | Five ways to get pregnant

1. Gluten-Free Diet Cut out the bread! or change to Gluten-free. Many women have sensitivity to gluten, which can lead to infertility in women. Findings published in the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology, found that celiac patients — people who have a digestive disease that damages the small intestine and disrupts the absorption of nutrients from food — who did not adhere to a gluten-free diet showed signs of "delayed menarche, secondary amenorrhea, a higher percentage of spontaneous abortions, anemia and hypoalbuminemia." However, celiac patients who did follow a gluten-free diet had normal pregnancies. Screening for Celiac disease/gluten sensitivity is advisable for infertile couples. 2. Get tested for an STI or infection A sexually transmitted infection (STI) or any other infection that is undiagnosed can affect a woman's ability to conceive. Testing is easy and affordable! 3. Take folic acid Women who have a genetic mutation that does not allow them to convert folic acid into its usable form, 5MTHF, are susceptible to infertility. Not only does this genetic mutation increase women's risk of infertility, but may also lead to miscarriage. For women trying to conceive, taking folic acid in the form of 5MTHF is highly important to increase odds of pregnancy. 4. Exercise One study showed that three days of fitness a week for 30 minutes can increase ovulation more than a low-calorie diet in women with PCOS. The form of exercise does not have to be intense but it must be consistently done in order to be effective. 5. Keep stress levels under control Cortisol, the stress hormone, is one of the biggest factors that contribute to hormonal imbalance. For a woman to conceive, her hormones must be in balance, so when her stress levels are too high, especially chronically, she will have a difficult time getting pregnant . Cortisol throws off all of the hormones because it places the body in a flight or fight state so that the other hormones do not have a chance to do their own jobs. Focus on your body and find a place to sit at peace and take deep breaths to naturally relieve the tension and stress levels in your body. Article: 5th September 2013 www.prideangel.com

http://blogs.prideangel.com/post/2013/09/A-case-for-cautious-commercial-surrogacy-in-Australia.aspx

In the last 30 years, we have seen 26 public inquiries into surrogacy in Australia. In recent years all states and territories have liberalised their laws to allow for unpaid surrogacy to occur with the assistance of licensed fertility providers, and to provide for intended parents to acquire legal status. But our system is still not working. In 2010-11 there were just 16 recorded surrogacy births within Australia, while 394 babies were born in India to Australian citizens – the majority of them almost certainly via commercial surrogacy. We need to make big changes to allow surrogacy to be more accessible at home, rather than exporting our fertility needs to other countries. The fundamental principles of fairness and safety require the informed and continuing consent of all participants in surrogacy, especially of the birth mother. When most surrogacy involving Australians is taking place offshore, it's plainly not accessible and also may not be safe, or not as safe as it would be onshore. Nor, where poorer countries are the providers, is it necessarily fair. Despite remarkably little regulation in the United States, surrogacy agencies and clinics have adopted a fairly common set of practices and standards, including psychological screening, counselling and support services. Research consistently shows that US surrogates are not impoverished or motivated by financial concerns, and are largely satisfied with their experience. In contrast, Australian women are expected to take surrogacy on as altruistic act and can only be paid a very limited amount for documented expenses. This drives people to evade the system, masking unlawful payments onshore, or going offshore to India and Thailand, resulting in reduced or zero access to professional support services and ethical safeguards. The more work I do on assisted reproduction, the more I see that professional support services are an important part of informed consent and the decision-making processes of parents. In the rare instance when things go do go wrong, such as in the Re Evelyn case in 1998, it usually involves informal arrangements in which none of the parties had any screening, counselling, or legal advice before the arrangement, nor any support services during or after it. Ideally, governments should provide screening, matching and counselling services, but if, as is currently the case, they don’t, it may be better to have commercial providers taking on this role rather than no one at all. A major argument against payment to surrogates is that it may act as undue influence that impairs informed consent. This is an important consideration. Surrogacy works when a woman voluntarily undertakes a pregnancy and is happy to relinquish a baby she does not regard as her own. If she has agreed only because of money and not because she regards that baby as someone else’s, everything falls apart. But in addition to guarding against payments that are too high, we should be asking whether surrogates are paid too little. Women who undertake pregnancies for others in surrogacy arrangements are performing labour (in both senses) and they are undertaking risks. Paying nothing does not protect or value this role. In Australia, altruistic surrogacy undertaken through licensed fertility services means that doctors, nurses, social workers, counsellors, scientists, technicians, storage facilities, receptionists, cleaners and delivery people are all paid. So are shareholders. Only the birth mother is not. There are a range of ways that surrogates could be paid within a regime of fair compensation that still guarded against improper inducement. In the UK the fertility regulator recently set a flat compensation payment of £750 ($1,100) per cycle for egg donors in recognition of the pain and risks they undertake. Payments of £15,000 are also regularly accepted by courts in the UK as reasonable compensation for surrogates, although there is no set guideline. Setting a clear minimum (representing a labour based contribution or compensation for risk and burden) would provide certainty if accompanied by proper screening protocols and regulation to guard against unfair inducement. There are important concerns about commercial surrogacy practices that go beyond the question of how much money is paid and go to who is paid for what. Problematic practices in surrogacy common in both developed and developing economies include high multiple birth rates (which are dangerous to babies and surrogate); enforceable contracts (which can prevent surrogates from having control over their pregnancy, and which compel relinquishment after birth), and the widespread use of anonymous egg donors. None of these are mandated by commercial markets, but they are strongly associated with them. An Australian system of compensated surrogacy could avoid such risks. We would continue to centre the informed and continuing consent of the birth mother through important safeguards such as ensuing that she has full control of pregnancy care and decisions, and that consensual relinquishment of the baby and her parental status occurs only after the birth. We already have very high clinical and ethical standards operating in tandem with government regulation to prevent multiple embryo transfer and to record donor identity. Commercial surrogacy could be contained within the existing successful framework of health regulation in Australia rather than distorting clinical and legal practice, as it has arguably done in other countries with far less regulation. This doesn’t mean copying commercial markets – it means learning from them. An Australian system which allowed for advertising, professional intermediaries and payment, if carefully regulated, would be safer and fairer than the now widespread practice of Australians travelling overseas for surrogacy. Article: 3rd September 2013 www.theguardian.com

Eat raspberries to boost male fertility says nutritionist

The news has recently highlighted that Raspberries may improve fertility, because they high levels of Vitamin C, a key nutrient in male fertility, and magnesium, which helps produce testosterone. They are also thought to contain 10 times more antioxidant activity than tomatoes, and are key to protecting sperm. It is also believed that after conception antioxidants continue to protect the embryo and may decrease the risk of miscarriage. Raspberries provide essential nutrients that are known to enhance fertility in men and women Juliet Wilson, a leading fertility nutritionist, said that one portion of raspberries provided the same amount of Vitamin C as eating 173 grapes. She said: “Raspberries provide essential nutrients that are known to enhance fertility in men and women.” It is also important to have a healthy balanced diet containing many different fruits and vegetables, which can help boost fertility, such as mangos, lemons, garlic, nuts and green leafy vegetables. Along with eating meat, fish, potatoes and eggs. Article: 1st September 2013 www.prideangel.com Read more about diet and natural fertility at www.prideangel.com