How does infertility and its treatment affect your sexual desire? What are the impacts of infertility and fertility treatment on sexual intimacy? Host Dawn Davenport, Executive Director of Creating a Family, the national infertility education and support nonprofit, interviews Dr. Jody Madeira, a professor at Indiana University-Bloomington, an expert on law and medicine and bioethics, a researcher on the impact of fertility treatment on sexual health, and the author of Taking Baby Steps: How Patients and Fertility Clinics Collaborate in Conception as well as Dr. Beth McAvey, a Board Certified Reproductive Endocrinologist at RMA of NY, and Debra Unger, a therapist for over 20 years that specializes in the treatment of couples with infertility.
[sws_blue_box box_size=”530″]- Many of the woman saw a change in their sexual health as a result of an infertility diagnosis or fertility treatment, but are people with infertility are more prone to have less sexual desire or poorer sexual health?
- How do infertility medications affect your sexual health? Female? Male?
- How is low testosterone in men treated?
- Emotional Impact of Infertility and how that affects libido, sexual health and enjoyment?
- Impact of timed intercourse on sexual health and intimacy?
- How does feeling like a failure at conception affect sex?
- Male sexual performance failure. How common in couples going through infertility treatment? Can anxiety and stress over infertility contribute to erectile dysfunction?
- Impact on how we feel as women or man?
- Effects on the concept of womanhood and sex drive.
- Impact on the concept of manhood and sex drive.
- How common is erectile dysfunction with the pressure of having to perform?
- Impact on body image
- Some women describe feeling guilty, and the guilt killed their sexual desire.
- For some, the impact is not negative: it may bring the couple closer emotionally.
- Impact of infertility and fertility treatment on the LGBTQ community.
- How long does it take to get back to normal once treatment is finished?
- Who “owns” the infertility in a relationship, and how does that impact sexual and marital health?
- How can you ever get off the monthly emotional roller coaster, because you can’t really turn off the awareness of when you are fertile or the hope that you will get pregnant?

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Image credit: Free-Photos
Music credit: Michael Ashworth
Originally aired in 2018