After months of trying to get pregnant and not having success, you begin to look for answers as to why nothing is happening.  One of the first steps to take before even consulting with a Doctor is to start charting your Ovulation Cycle by taking your Basal Body Temperature every morning.  Once you do that, you may begin to notice that you don’t ovulate on a regular basis.  It might also appear that you are ovulating, but your Doctor can actually do a test to see if you are and what your monthly cycle is like.

If you aren’t ovulating at all or at least not on a predictable basis, your Doctor might recommend that you take a drug, such as Clomid to help stimulate your ovulation or help regulate your ovulation.  Clomid is generally initially used by itself, without any other procedure or drugs involved.  Most Doctors recommend trying this for about six months before trying any other procedures or diagnostic testing.  So, if your first diagnosis is an ovulation problem, then Clomid is a logical first step for you during your Fertility process.

If, however, Clomid doesn’t work within six months, then they will begin diagnostic testing to see what else might be causing fertility problems.  They will look at such things as sperm quality, mobility and motility and they will most likely perform a test called a hysterosalpinogram in which they check to see if a woman’s fallopian tubes are blocked.

If both of these tests show no problems, then the next likely procedure that the Doctor will recommend is Intrauterine Insemination (IUI).  You will take Clomid once again to help with ovulation, possibly a higher dose to produce more eggs.  The Clinic will give you an injection of Human Chorionic Gonadotropin Hormone (HCG) to induce ovulation and then they will do the IUI.

Clomid is also used for IVF cycles as well.  Many clinics will perform what is called a Clomid Challenge Test before doing IVF to test your ovarian reserve.  They do this before doing IVF to help ensure that you have the best possibility for a successful treatment.

So, as you can see, as you are beginning your fertility journey, Clomid is a drug that you might come to know as you do different procedures.  If you don’t have any known fertility issues other than ovulation, it is probably the first step, and the right step, for you to take to help achieve pregnancy.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 9th, 2006 at 5:01 am and is filed under Fertility. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.