Reported June 05, 2008

Maria Cardoso, 32, and her husband, Flavio, spent the first years of their marriage pursuing their master's degrees in business administration, enjoying their dual incomes and traveling the world together.

Five years later, when the Palatine couple decided to have a baby, the path was far less smooth. Maria, an interactive marketing manager at Motorola, was 29. For the next three years, the Cardosos tried different assisted reproductive technologies, including in vitro fertilization (IVF). They saw two different fertility specialists, and Maria even received an experimental treatment in her native Brazil. Nothing worked.

She suffered through two miscarriages, an early pregnancy loss and an ectopic pregnancy, where the fertilized egg implants itself in a fallopian tube rather than in the uterus.

"Every month goes by and you're expecting to see some kind of result, and you don't see it and you get all depressed," Cardoso said. "I mean it's horrible. Horrible."

Cardoso recently found out that she is pregnant with twins which she conceived through IVF or vitro fertilization -- where an egg and sperm are united in a laboratory dish with the embryo then transferred into the woman's uterus.
 

Yet, she still remembers her sadness and suffering beforehand, though.

About 7.3 million women and their partners in the U.S. -- or 12 percent of the reproductive-age population -- are affected by infertility, according to the American Society of Reproductive Medicine.

Research by Alice Domar, the executive director of the Domar Center for Mind/Body Health in Waltham, Mass., has shown that the levels of depression and anxiety that infertility patients experience are similar to those of women with cancer or who are HIV-positive.

Stress can also affect fertility outcomes. Physical or emotional stress can affect a woman's ovulatory pattern or a man's sperm count, said Dr. Edward Marut, the medical director of Fertility Centers of Illinois IVF Center in Highland Park.

Additionally, stress may prevent couples using IVF from completing the treatment they need to conceive. A Swedish study published in 2004 in "Fertility and Sterility" found that 54 percent of couples who started IVF -- most of whom were offered three free cycles -- dropped out before the completion of the cycles. A majority of the drop-outs were due to psychological stress.

Marie Davidson, a psychologist with Fertility Centers of Illinois, thinks the relationship between stress and fertility is not easily defined. "I'm not saying that stress doesn't play a role. I'm just saying it can be blown out of proportion so they (infertility patients) become so focused on it that it becomes another problem for them," she said.