An interview with one of our users

Marie, aged 28, got pregnant naturally after using DuoFertility for 4 months, after being told that she should consider going through IVF.

Marie and her husband, Mirko, are one of the couples who took part in the first DuoFertility user trial and soon became pregnant. Prior to using DuoFertility, she had tried for four years to become pregnant but had had complications. DuoFertility provided her with an easy, stress free way to achieve pregnancy and, at the end of August 2009, she is now into her 10th week.

Like many young women, Marie had been using the Pill for contraception but when she came off the Pill and started to try to become pregnant she found she had very irregular cycles that could vary from fifteen to as much as sixty days. This was caused by her having high prolactine levels which can affect 1 in 10 women in the general population giving them difficulties conceiving

Fortunately ovulation provided Marie with a clear change of body temperature so that she knew when to try and get pregnant by measuring her temperature first thing in the morning with a thermometer. This method can be quite successful but only gives a clear indication towards the end of the window of opportunity for achieving pregnancy. For women with a regular cycle, it can even enable them to predict ovulation.

In spring 2005, Marie became pregnant for the first time but after a couple of months there was no heartbeat and no growth so the foetus was removed. This was followed by two more similar miscarriages. In 2009, Marie decided to try again and volunteered for Cambridge Temperature Concept’s user trial of its new fertility monitor called DuoFertility.

“I had used the temperature method successfully so I knew it worked for me but it was really stressful to do using a thermometer,” explained Marie. “Every night when you are trying to go to sleep all you can think about is remembering to take your temperature first thing just as you have woken up. And you have to set the alarm to wake you up early in the morning too so you lose sleep because of the alarm plus the worry about missing a temperature reading. Because my cycles are so unpredictable, ovulation could be any day and you don’t want to miss the day that the temperature changes otherwise you’ve missed another cycle and might have to wait a couple of months or more before the next chance.”

DuoFertility fully automates the whole process of measuring body temperature and analysing the results. A small sensor about the size of two stacked £1 coins is stuck under the arm using an adhesive pad. This automatically measures and records the body temperature 20,000 times in every 24 hour period. This data is wirelessly transmitted to a small handheld unit that processes the information and provides a prediction of the optimal time to try for a pregnancy.

“At first I was very aware of the sensor,” said Marie, “but I soon forgot I had it on. I even used to feel for it every now and then to check that it was still in place. The sensor comes with several different adhesives so you can find out which one works best with your skin type and you can easily take it off for swimming, etc and then replace it. The sensor knows that it has been removed so the readings when it is off are ignored.”

The handheld unit is about the size of a computer mouse and houses the sophisticated computer software that analyses the temperature measurement to determine when ovulation will occur. Several other indicators can be manually input such as the results from home hormone test kits although Marie did not use these as the highly variable cycles would have meant that she would have had to buy a huge number of kits. The device can be linked to a PC to provide graphs and other information. “The gadget aspect drew Mirko into the whole monitoring process,” added Marie. “A pencil, a thermometer and a sheet of graph paper are not very interesting but put the whole thing onto a computer and suddenly it awakened the geek in him and he became really involved and interested bringing us together into the monitoring process.”

After 4 and a half months of using DuoFertility and 3 cycles, Marie became pregnant. “The support from CTC was tremendous,” explained Marie. “From before I even had the unit, their fertility experts had studied our records to see if they could help us conceive and then supported us every step of the way. It’s like having your own personal fertility expert at the end of a phone or an email away – they were always very quick in coming back with answers. It is a very stressful time trying to conceive if you know that you have problems and they helped take all that stress and worry away as did the automatic way that the sensor works – fit and forget! DuoFertility made everything stress-free, easy and relaxed – and no more early morning alarms to take my temperature! It is a great product – any woman who is having difficulties conceiving should consider it.”

Although Marie had been trying to get pregnant for several years and would have been eligible for IVF, her and Mirko did not want to go through the traumatic experience of the hormonal stimulation and egg retrieval. In the event that they didn’t manage to get pregnant using DuoFertility, they would have started investigating routes for adoption.

At 10 weeks pregnant, Marie is enjoying her pregnancy. “The only drawback is that my hormones are now all over the place,” she laughed. “My husband has lost his placid, easy going wife! But he thinks it is a small price for me being pregnant and very, very happy.” As to how many children they would like, the answer is two or three. “What comes, comes,” she said, “and we will be using DuoFertility every time!”