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What Do Family Planning Services Cover?

When you're dreaming about your future family, it's important to know that you have many resources to help you better understand your options.

There's no "right" way to start a family. Whether you're hoping to conceive soon or you'd like to wait until a different season of life, you have the power to grow your family when you're ready. 

These meaningful thoughts and conversations are the essence of family planning. And when you enroll the help of a fertility group, you unlock a world of family planning services and experts who are here to help you on your journey! 

Let's start by defining "family planning" in a more concrete way to help you understand the types of services your fertility partner could help you with:

Family planning is the process of preparing yourself for getting pregnant in the short and the long-term. It depends on a few things:

  1. Where you are in your reproductive timeline
  2. If you have children already or not
  3. If you're not sure if you want children, but you might want the option in the future

Creating Your Unique Timeline

Each of our patients has a unique fertility story. The family planning services you might need will depend on the timeline you'd like to follow to start your family. 

To begin your process, you'll start with a consultation with your fertility specialist and an extensive work-up to identify any roadblocks or fertility conditions that might prevent pregnancy.

If you're not yet ready to have a child, your family planning process might include examining your options for freezing your eggs or embryos--essentially freezing your fertility in time so that age may not prevent you from having biological children later on. 

Debunking Common Misconceptions

Another important aspect of family planning services is that your doctors will be there to help you dismiss any previous misconceptions you have about conception.

A common misunderstanding too many people have about family planning is that it's only necessary to think through this phase of your life when you're actually ready to start having a family. Too often, we see patients in their 40's, and no one ever told them that not getting pregnant in their 30's might have been detrimental to their family plans.

Your doctor can also help you understand the other options you'll have if you choose to pursue a fertility service like egg freezing. Just because you freeze embryos does not mean you have to go through implantation in the future. This may not be the way you grow your family in the future, and your doctor can help you better understand all of your options when it comes to any treatment or procedures you choose.

Potential Surgery Or Fertility Treatments

Lastly, your family planning experience might include surgical or outpatient procedures to help you conceive.

There are certain conditions that we believe are essential to catch early (sometimes even before you'd like to get pregnant) and correct with surgery in order to decrease their impact later on.

We identify issues like fibroids and intervene early, where minimally invasive, same-day surgery is possible and allows us to avoid a major open surgery.

In other instances, your family planning might need to address more serious fertility treatments: congenital defects of the uterus that can cause infertility or miscarriage, uterine septum, endometriosis (stage 1-4), or other surgical corrections of anatomical issues that can restore your natural fertility or can assist medicated treatment cycles.

Find Your Family Planning Team

If the above plans seem like something you might be interested in now, in the future, or if you're curious about your own reproductive health, make an appointment to talk with our team. With the passage of FAFTA legislation in New York, the opportunity to start fertility services has never been better. We'd love to help you begin a family when the time is right.

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