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Home › Articles › Tracking Your Fertility › How to Start a Fertility Journal

How to Start a Fertility Journal

Keeping a Fertility Journal Could Help You Conceive

By Teri Brown

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Keeping a journal, especially in blog format, helped Gurevich feel less alone. Journaling online, in particular, helped her see that there are other women sitting in doctor's offices like she was, thinking and feeling the same way. She also tracked her fertility signs, which gave the doctors clues into what was going on with her body.

"That is how I was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome," Gurevich says. "My doctor was able to look at my charts and see a pattern that helped her pick the right blood tests to run. I'm sure it saved me months of trying to figure out what the problem was, and why I couldn't get and stay pregnant. I also found my doctor took me more seriously when I could say, 'Look, I didn't ovulate for two months in a row,' instead of just, 'I've been trying for two months, and I'm not getting pregnant.' Most doctors won't take you seriously or run tests until you've either had three miscarriages or tried to get pregnant for a year first. I avoided that wait."

Helping Your Doctor
Dr. Marcus Jurema is a reproductive endocrinology and infertility specialist and an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Brown University Women and Infants' Hospital. He believes that keeping a fertility journal can be very helpful for the fertility specialists involved, though not all women need to keep one. "In general, a healthy woman up to her early 30s (less than 35 years old) has a reasonable chance to conceive spontaneously within one year of trying, as long as there is no obvious concerns about her fertility," he says. "Most couples (80 percent) will conceive within six months of trying. For those who do not conceive within six months of trying, keeping a journal may be helpful to time intercourse more precisely and to further investigate any subtle abnormalities that could be present."


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