THE COUPLE – INTRODUCTION
Often a woman has managed to be seen on her own during many visits to her GP and the gynaecology outpatient clinic without the inclusion of her partner. He may well have attended the clinics but somehow, because he was not invited into the consultations, he remained in the waiting room, on the fringe of this ‘women’s world’. How does this happen? Patients’ understanding of infertility problems revolve around the premise that it is almost entirely a female deficiency. Just in the same way that society has equipped itself for the fertile, so all assumptions and efforts at treatment have been tailored to the female side of the problem. Therefore it is so often the woman who appears first in the surgery with the statement, ‘We’ve been trying for a baby for so many months now, and I just don’t seem to be able to get pregnant.’ Because it is the woman who is there in front of the doctor it is usually she who is the focus of all the initial tests, without any discussion between the couple and the doctor. Such discussion with the couple, to exclude any psycho-sexual problems, is as important as the gamut of blood tests that are carried out. It can also act as a baseline for the recognition of developing difficulties during sometimes lengthy treatment.
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