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When He Won't Change

Your Partner's Health Matters

By Amy Carey

Most couples who are serious about conceiving a child know what it takes to create a healthy environment for the baby-to-be. For example, a woman may stop smoking, increase folic acid intake and try to reduce stress. But how many couples put the same emphasis on the health of the man involved?

While a woman may be stubbing out cigarettes and drinking extra orange juice, her husband or partner might continue to smoke and fail to eliminate stressful factors in his life. How is he affecting their chances of conceiving?

Many doctors and care providers are now advising couples that women aren't the only ones who need to alter their lifestyles to increase their chances of having a healthy baby. For a man, "Substance abuse, environmental toxins [and] poor diet can lead to decreased sperm count and poor general health," says Makeda Kamara, CNM, who practices at the Cambridge Birth Center in Cambridge, Mass.

Studies show that smoking cigarettes and marijuana lowers sperm count, and partners who smoke find that trying to conceive takes much longer for them than for their non-smoking counterparts. In addition, men who smoke not only pollute the air their partners breathe, exposing their wives and potential offspring to the harmful effects of cigarettes, but male smokers may have higher levels of abnormal sperm and damage to their DNA. This means your partner may pass these abnormal chromosomes on to your baby, causing health problems for him or her.

Being careful about what your husband puts in his body isn't limited to illegal drug use and cigarette smoking. "Some medications [also] impair fertility, while others are linked to fetal abnormalities," says Ann Douglas, best-selling author of The Mother of All Pregnancy Books (John Wiley and Sons, 2002) and The Mother of All Baby Books

Want to see more?

• Baby Battles: When He Doesn't Want a Child
• Achieving Pregnancy: 10 Tips for Men
• 8 Ways to Help Improve Male Fertility
• Talk about it!