Dear Mr. Dad: My wife and I are having trouble conceiving. After putting us through months of testing, the fertility doctor we’re seeing says that the problem is on my end. I’m devastated. I just assumed that women were the ones who had fertility problems, and I feel like a complete failure, as if I’m not a man anymore. What can I do? Are there vitamins or supplements I can take or behaviors I can do (or stop doing)?
A: The first thing to do is lighten up on yourself. A lot of people think of fertility issues as affecting only women, but they’re wrong. (That misconception, so to speak, may be aggravated by the fact that most fertility doctors are OB/GYNs). The truth is that about 40% of fertility problems are the woman’s, 40% are the man’s, and the remaining 20% are simply unexplained.
Infertile women are often anxious, stressed, depressed, and feel like failures as women and partners. For men, there’s a lot of macho tied up in being able to get a woman pregnant. Many new dads I’ve interviewed say they experienced a sense of virility and pride when the pregnancy test came back positive. It was like a confirmation that everything was in working order—which comes as quite a relief to some. Men who can’t impregnate their partner have many of the same feelings that women—and you—do.
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