So can you tell us a wee bit about that?

Yeah.

I mean, uh, this is, this is one of the fascinating things, um, about reproduction and fertility is that we all think of, of, uh, it's only when you become an adult that this all becomes important and this all matters.

But actually, everything that's gonna happen to you as an adult from your fertility point of view is all programmed before you're even born.

So when you're a baby in, in your mother's womb, your gonads, so your ovaries or your testes, are developing, and they're doing things that, um, are setting its- themselves up for the future.

And I, I focus much more on the boys than the girls.

So for a, a male fetus, the testicle develops in a very set special way, and you have to have all of that happening during that fetal period in order for you to achieve your potential from the point of view of reproduction or fertility.

It's, we know that things like chemotherapy can have these negative effects, but how does it actually happen?

And is there maybe a danger of women just saying, oh, you know, to hell with it, I can't do everything right, so I'm just going to, go along and ignore all this information and what would you say to women in that situation where it just does feel a wee bit overwhelming?

Yeah no I think that's something that quite often you hear this sort of overwhelming feeling of I don't know what to do, I don't know what I can do, what I can't do, what I should do, what I shouldn't do and people worrying about it and actually it causing stress and worry and concern that is also not good.

I think Probably the best way to think about it really is to think about it in perhaps a slightly more pragmatic way.

And that is there are things that we know are not good for you and they absolutely should be avoided.

And not just necessarily in pregnancy, but also in other situations.

Smoking is a classic example, really.

We know that smoking is bad for you in many, many ways.

So how true is that? Or is there a decline in fertility rate that we have to be worried about?