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We’ve all familiar with infertility. In fact, according to the WHO, close to 48 million couples across the world suffer from infertility (1). Most of us know someone who is struggling with getting pregnant, or maybe, we’re facing this issue ourselves. In the face of all that infertility, there is such a thing as hyperfertility. Essentially, this should be a good thing, right? With all that inability to conceive, an individual who is hyper fertile shouldn’t have to worry about the struggles of infertility. But if that is what you think, you thought wrong.
Hyperfertility doesn’t necessarily mean success in the family way, and too much of a good thing can be bad. Read on to find out what we’re talking about:
What Is Hyperfertility?
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Hyperfertility, also known as super fertility, is a medical condition where a woman’s reproductive system is abnormally over-stimulated. In a hyper fertile woman, there is a tendency to hyper ovulate, where there is a release of more than one egg, more than just once a month. Any combination of sperm plus egg will lead to a positive in the pregnancy test. All that may sound good, but here’s the catch — hyperfertility doesn’t just refer to getting pregnant easily; it also means losing babies easily. Thanks to the overstimulation in the reproductive system, the implantation process takes a hit. The embryo will fail to develop healthily, resulting in an early miscarriage — every time you get pregnant (2).
Hyperfertility And Recurrent Pregnancy Loss
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Recurrent Pregnancy Loss, or RPL for short, is when a woman has had two or more miscarriages or clinical pregnancy losses before reaching the twentieth week of pregnancy. We say clinical-pregnancy loss because this is different from a chemical pregnancy. A chemical pregnancy is an early miscarriage before the fifth week of pregnancy, wherein the pregnancy could have been detected only with a blood or urine test. A clinical pregnancy, on the other hand, can be diagnosed with an ultrasound. It’s important to note that clinical pregnancy losses fall under RPL, while chemical pregnancies do not (3).
There seems to be a connection between hyper fertility and recurrent pregnancy loss. According to a study, there was a clear difference between the endometrial tissues of women who suffered from RPL as opposed to those with normal fertility (4), (5).
The endometrial cells respond to chromosomally normal embryos. In the case of normal fertility, the endometrial cells reach out to embryos that have healthy chromosomes. However, it was observed that in the case of hyper fertile women and those with RPL, the endometrial cells also responded to embryos that had chromosomal abnormalities. Typically, these chromosomally abnormal embryos wouldn’t even stand a chance, so pregnancy would not occur. But because of hyper fertility, the environment is such that any combination of sperm and egg can result in a pregnancy (6), (7).
Can I Still Have A Baby?
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Both infertile and hyper fertile women have this question — “Despite all odds, can I still have a child?”. With the help of Assisted Reproductive Technology, your pregnancy can be a successful one. Additionally, the good news is that sometimes, super fertile women have had a successful pregnancy even without treatment. The lining of the womb may naturally allow implantation to occur and let the embryo develop normally. So the answer is, yes, with the proper medical intervention, and sometimes without it too, you can have a baby (8).
It is a common misconception that hyperfertility is a good thing, and it can be instrumental in having many successful pregnancies. The truth is, it is a medical condition that requires help from medical experts if you are planning to have a baby. Do you think you have hyperfertility? Let us know in the comments below!
