Researchers at University of Michigan (where I did my infertility training) have shown that gently rocking embryos while they grow before an embryo transfer could possibly improve pregnancy rates. They used a device that mimics the motion that embryos experience naturally as they travel down the fallopian tube into the uterus.

Click here to watch the video: http://www.ns.umich.edu/podcast/video2.php?id=1184

After egg retrieval, the sperm and egg come together and an embryo is formed. Currently, the embryo sits in a culture dish in an incubator. The incubator doesn’t move. Researchers found that when using this device with mouse embryos,  pregnancy ratet went up by 22%. Read the rest of this entry »

I wrote this article as a sort of “IVF for beginners.” Even if you’ve been through IVF before, reading this may help you understand why we do what we do.

What is IVF? IVF is a type of treatment that involves taking eggs from a woman’s body, creating embryos with sperm and putting embryos into a woman’s uterus. That sounds kind of complicated, I know. I’m going to break it down in the simplest terms possible.

IVF stands for in vitro fertilization. It means fertilization outside of the body or in a controlled environment. In vitro = within the glass (in Latin).

Every woman has a set number of eggs that she can potentially ovulate every month. We ovulate 1 and the rest die. You can never use them again. Every woman’s “potential” number of eggs that she can ovulate declines as she ages. This number Read the rest of this entry »