If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to expand your family, you might want to spend more time on your phone. Yes, really.
A leading fertility expert has said that apps will feature heavily in family planning in the future, and will be used for everything from tracking your periods to helping with IVF.
Dr Elina Berglund, co-founder of the fertility tracking app Natural Cycles, revealed that advances in technology, coupled with increased awareness about the side effects of hormonal contraception, could lead women to turn to apps instead of hormones to control their fertility.
“Women are now in a position to better understand their bodies which means they can more accurately plan, prevent and monitor pregnancies, identify potential fertility problems and ultimately, make decisions that are right for them,” said Dr Berglund.
These are the key trends she thinks will revolutionise fertility in 2017.
Sexy tech
As well as apps that track your most fertile periods (excuse the pun), Dr Berglund thinks we’ll also see more wearable trackers and hardware to help us build an accurate picture of our bodies. As well as being useful for those who want a little bundle of joy in 2017, this kind of technology can also be used to help prevent pregnancy as you can avoid having sex at your most fertile time.
No more pills
Dr Berglund thinks the number of women on the Pill will decrease. Currently, it’s used by 3.5 million women in the UK, but a big study by the University of Copenhagen this year found a link between hormonal contraception and depression. Natural ways of managing your fertility – like apps – will definitely come in handy if you decide to drop the hormones.
Egg-freezing for everyone
At present, accessing IVF can be costly, and it varies how much treatment is available on the NHS. Dr Berglund thinks that next year, egg-freezing could be more widely offered to healthy women who want to expand their options when it comes to having kids.
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