Infertility

Amy Stevens: "You'll do anything you think will help you, but I'd have months where nothing would show." Then she decided to try the OV watch.

It's an FDA approved device that works by measuring changes in sweat ions.

It can predict ovulation five days in advance, allowing couples to maximize their fertile window and giving them more chances to conceive.

Urine sticks predict only your two most fertile days.

Eldon Schriock, M.D., Pacific Fertility Center: "One of the most common mistakes this may prevent is people tend to try to hit the day of ovulation and they end up having sex too late." Dr.

Eldon Schriock is a reproductive endocrinologist with Pacific Fertility Center in San Francisco.

Dr.

Schriock: "I think the disadvantages are just the same as the LH kits.

It does create anxiety among patients, sort of tonight's the night.

Husband's in L.A., you got to fly home now." The price tag of nearly $200 for the watch and a three months supply of sensors may seem steep, but not to Amy Stevens.

After four months of wearing the watch, she's now pregnant.

Amy Stevens: "The best investment I ever made." With the ultimate pay-off due July 3rd.

Another clinical trial is underway right now comparing the watch to the urine sticks.

That research is expected to be completed this fall.

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Melissa Gilbert, of Scotia, N.Y., was told two years ago she had early-stage cervical cancer, and that her treatment would prevent her from having another child.

"It was devastating," Gilbert recalled, "… and to then find out that the treatment for it is going to cost me my fertility and will prevent me from having any more children was just as devastating for me." But Gilbert and her husband searched for an alternative and found Dr.

Nadeem Abu-Rustum at in New York, one of a handful of doctors performing a new surgery for cervical cancer called a trachelectomy.

The approach leaves most of the womb intact, preserving a woman's ability to become pregnant and bear a child.

Abu-Rustum showed Senay a depiction of a cervical cancer tumor.

"Instead of removing the cervix and uterus completely with the upper part of the womb," he said, "we only remove … the cervix, surrounding tissue, and the top part of the womb.

… We can reconnect the lower part of the uterus to the top part of the womb." He says women who have the surgery have a "very realistic, actually a very good chance" of future pregnancy and delivery.

Abu-Rustum cautions that the operation is "done for a very select group of patients who have early-stage cervical cancer (that hasn't spread), usually stage-one patients, so the cure rate appears to be very similar, almost identical to a radical hysterectomy, and approximately 90 percent of patients are cured with this...

A recent independent review of the research by Lamaze International found that cesarean surgery, including elective surgery, also is associated with a higher risk of hysterectomy, cesarean-scar ectopic pregnancy (pregnancies that develop outside the uterus or within the scar), surgical adhesions that may contribute to serious future surgical injuries or cause bowel obstruction and chronic pain, wound pain beyond six months, and birth of a preterm or "small for gestational age" baby in a future pregnancy.

Furthermore, conventional obstetric management may contribute to poor outcomes of vaginal birth including hemorrhage, pelvic floor disorders, sexual dysfunction and unplanned cesarean surgery in labor.

For instance, continuous electronic fetal monitoring (EFM) has not been found to improve outcomes for low-risk mothers or babies, but routine use is associated with a higher rate of cesarean surgery in labor.

Despite this body of research, continuous EFM is used in 89 percent of labors in the United States.

Pelvic floor disorders, such as incontinence and sexual dysfunction, are most often attributable to obstetric interventions during vaginal birth, rather than vaginal birth itself.

In fact, routine episiotomy has not been found to improve ...