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As an infertility specialist, the first, and sometimes hardest, thing Dr. Joshua Klein, of the Columbia University Medical Center in New York City, has to accomplish is to assess a couple's understanding of how the whole getting pregnant thing - naturally or otherwise - works. Despite widespread sex education and increased public awareness of the issue of infertility, many people still don't really get it. A study from New Zealand, for instance, showed that 74 percent of women presenting to a fertility clinic had inadequate fertility awareness.
An extreme example: Dr. Klein said he once had a couple come in for an infertility consultation, and only after probing some of the most esoteric - and as it turns out, irrelevant - minutiae of the biology of reproduction did he find out that the husband wasn't able to ejaculate during vaginal intercourse. (Yes, this is generally considered a prerequisite to conception.)
So if you're in the baby-making market, here are some of the more common mistakes, according to Dr. Klein...
