Since I started learning about my cycles, I’ve often asked myself why I’ve essentially been a massive ignoramus for most of my life when it comes to understanding how my own body works. To be fair, girls and women are kind of let down in that department. If you can believe that Judy Blume’s 1970 book, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, was the first published children’s fiction book to mention getting your period and that the first mention of the word ‘period’ in an advert was in 1985 (WTF!), then the fact that women’s reproductive health is often neglected by all but the specialists in that field is not that surprising – but fucking annoying.
Quick aside – loved Judy Blume and her books should be standard reading for both boys and girls in understanding puberty. Two words – Ralph, Forever…
We spend so long telling young girls and women how not to get pregnant, it seems we don’t actually educate them about what their body can do and how they can understand it better, putting them in charge of how to manage it. Not everyone is going to get knocked up if you mention more than just the basics of putting the ‘P’ in the ‘V’.
At a fundamental level, it comes down to the fact that both girls and boys, men and women should face equally the responsibility of contraception and fertility. Particularly with miscarriage, the man’s role in affecting the outcome is often forgotten, as the immediate response, once you can get someone to bloody well listen, is to investigate the woman and focus on that as the reason for why the little beans just don’t want to stick.
At Care Fertility, they have recently identified the faulty gene known as C4M2. The organisation’s Founder and President, Professor Simon Fishel, said that the gene could be a major cause of recurrent miscarriage. As lead author on the published findings, he said: “A new genetic marker has been found that predisposes couples to the risk of miscarriage, which we call the C4/M2 variant. What I find remarkable is that in the population of patients studied, the man has the same chance as the woman to pass on this variant to the developing embryo and disturb successful implantation.” 

Specific treatment can solve the problem, but as always it’s an uphill struggle to identify what the problem is in the first place, and for this knowledge to filter down. A friend of mine recently went to their GP to get advice on pregnancy and was told to have sex at least 3-4 times a week. Big up to those people at it almost daily once they are in a long term relationship but the fact that a doctor is still advising a woman not about understanding their own cycle and that you are only fertile for about 4 days at most each month, but rather promoting random sex at totally pointless times. Now I’m all up for random, pointless sex (with your current partner obvs) but when you want to make a baby it really isn’t the most efficient way to do it. We’ve got a long way to go…

Image from Pixabay