Three quick ones:

1) AH came to NHFC at the age 42 with secondary infertility and a
history of two miscarriages. Knowing that at her age, the chances of getting pregnant are low, she kept trying Mini and Natural IVF cycles, and now, at the age of 45 she has just been graduated with a positive pregnancy test from a Frozen Embryo Transfer. Congrats!

2) LC, 39, had a history of 1 miscarriage. She completed one successful
IUI cycle at New Hope and had her first positive pregnancy test about a month ago and has been graduated to her OB/GYN! Congrats!

3) AC, 36, just had her second New Hope pregnancy from Mini-IVF blastocyst FET! Congrats again, AC!

Last night the New York Metropolitan Embryologist Society held their first meeting of the year, hosting a talk by Reproductive Lawyer Melissa B. Brisman, Esq. of Reproductive Possibilities. Brisman spoke on Current Legal Issues with Third Party and Posthumous Reproduction and cited a variety of cases – cases that are becoming more and more common – where children are being born to parents who are no longer alive, and who, in fact, were not even alive during the time of conception. The talk was both fascinating and illuminating, and spoke to the need for more legislation regarding third party reproduction in light of the possibilities that modern technology has made attainable.

In the most simple example, having a child with a surrogate as opposed to adopting, is legally much easier. While adoption has been around for long enough for it to be highly regulated, seemingly anyone from a 90 year old single woman, to someone suffering from stage-4 cancer could, as long as they find a center willing to take their money, have a child through a surrogate without nearly the same scrutiny that they may have had to deal with going through an adoption process. Though the cases are rare, they still have sometimes resulted in children being born through surrogacy without the biological parents who wanted them.

And while technology is making it a reality for people for whom it would be improbable to have children to have their own babies, it is also making it a reality for people for whom it would have been impossible. A recent article in the Guardian, for example, talks about two Israeli parents who want to use their dead son’s sperm to have a grandchild, arguing that, even though he was not in a relationship, they know that he would have wanted a baby — so it can be seen as his last wish.

In another case from nj.com, a widow of a Newark police captain seeks pension benefits for a son conceived from sperm taken from her late husband after he had passed away. Although the child is genetically and legally the captain’s son, lawmakers are debating what benefits he is eligible for. In this case the son had been born within a year of the captain’s death, but what if it had been 20 years down the road? Where do we draw the line?

Indeed, this is a great time to be in surrogacy law since many of the current cases are going to pave the way for legislation and regulations to come.

The Current State of Surrogacy?
We were recently looking up some statistics about surrogacy and came across these two documents about surrogacy trends around the world and surrogacy statistics for the US, specifically.

While these numbers and reports are interesting, nobody is very surprised to see that surrogacy rates are one the rise. One has to look no further than their local news stand to see that the number of stories about celebrities having children with surrogates are numerous.

At New Hope Fertility Center, the number of third party reproduction cases involving a gestational carrier (surrogate) has increased by 30% over the past 3 years. We believe that this is an accurate reflection of the rest of the US. Not only is surrogacy becoming more accepted as a way to have children, but it is becoming more necessary as the numbers of single men and same-sex couples rise. 

While there are many countries where people can turn for surrogacy, like India, Thailand, Ukraine, and China, to name a few — many of those countries have poor or no legal protection for the surrogates or the children born out of surrogacy — in fact, surrogacy is completely underground in some of them, making it very unregulated.

Even in countries where it was legal, international law disputes can make things very complicated. A recent case like this involved a German couple who turned to international surrogacy because it was strictly outlawed in Germany. The couple went to India for their child, the surrogate delivered a baby created from the sperm and egg from the German couple, but because of the laws in Germany, the child was not allowed back into the country and the parents were told that their baby would not be recognized as a German citizen. Conversely, although surrogacy is a legal practice in India, under Indian law, the baby also was not recognized as an Indian citizen, so the child is essentially nation-less. Indeed, more laws and legislation are needed in order to make these cases less of a concern. This is one of many reasons why many couples look to the United States for surrogacy if they can manage it.

What makes New Hope unique with regard to surrogacy?
1) Superior Technology: New Hope is a world leader in advanced technology for fertility and reproductive care. In particular, we have the most state-of-the-art process for cytopreservation (freezing eggs and embryos): vitrification. Vitrification freezing technology means that you no longer run risks when freezing eggs/embryos. Because of this technology we are able to easily match up a high quality embryo with an optimally healthy womb and combine them without the traditional need for synchronization.

* What’s Synchronization?
In 99% of IVF clinics, the intended parent or IP (woman who wants to use her egg to make a baby but for whatever reason cannot use her womb) goes to an IVF clinic to have them watch her cycle, predict when her body will produce a mature egg (one that is ready to be fertilized and implant in the uterus to make a baby), retrieve it, fertilize it, and transfer it, fresh, into the surrogate. Because there are only are certain times when you can retrieve a mature egg, and only certain times when the uterus is able to take the egg and nurture it into a healthy baby, this synchronization is very difficult. Often times parties find themselves traveling a lot or using high doses of medications in order to make sure that the IP and the Surrogate have synchronized cycles. At New Hope, because of our freezing technology, we don’t need to synchronize the IP and the Surrogate…

2) Enlightened Protocols: At New Hope, we use Natural and Minimal Stimulation IVF (Mini-IVF^TM) protocols, which are much easier on the body than traditional IVF. In particular, for older women (40-44 years old, who are the primary demographic for surrogacy) because they may be running out of eggs in their ovarian reserve, medications and drugs intended to stimulate ovulation are less effective. In contrast, Natural and Mini-IVF^TM are effective methods for getting eggs since they allow us to focus on retrieving the one good egg that the body naturally produces. 

3) New Hope Maximizes Effectiveness with Efficiency. With our vitrification technology and surrogacy protocol which does not require synchronization, egg production can be done much like an assembly line. One could think of it as a form of “organic egg farming.” Unlike normal IVF, where one would produce eggs, and then try to get it to implant in their own uterus (meaning that they can only do one or the other with the same body), surrogacy allows you to use two bodies, so that the IP can produce eggs and freeze them and wait until she has enough good embryos, and then the surrogate can try to get pregnant at the same time (and, while the surrogate is pregnant, the IP can even keep producing eggs for future pregnancies).

A new app, FertilityMe, is out on the market that was designed to be an complete, all-encompassing tool for women who want to keep track of and monitor their reproductive and fertility health.

FertilityMe includes a monthly cycle tracker, an Ultrasound Appointment Diary, a baby development calendar (if you’re pregnant), a database of baby-names, enabled for social sharing, and, notably a Fertility Treatment management tool that they advertise makes it the world’s first App to dedicate an entire people who are seeking out Fertility Treatment options (Cycle Tracking, OI, IUI, AIH, FET, IVF/ICSI).

We are happy to mention 4 recent patient successes:

1) JW, a 38-year-old patient, conceived from fresh d2 embryo developed from Natural IVF cycle that took 7 months of monitoring. The patient came to us in June 2009 and had a baseline FSH of 24. During the course of monitoring her baseline FSH reached as high as 166 which is the highest FSH to that has been documented leading to a pregnancy.

2) ZS, 40-years-old, is pregnant with her first baby, conceived from a frozen blastocyst transfer. Before coming to New Hope in 2008, she was a patient at RMA for embryo/egg preservation but her IVF cycle was canceled 3 times because of inadequate follicle production. She had two transfers at New Hope, and this was her second. Because her baseline FSH was as high as 63, a combination of Natural IVF and clomid-only Mini-IVF^TM was used to collect 1 egg/cycle. ZS began transferring last year, during which time her baseline FSH increased to 87.

3) KJ, 40-years-old, conceived her first baby from d2 fresh transfer using a customized Mini-IVF^TM protocol.

4) DM is a 35-year-old patient who is having her second New Hope baby. She conceived from a natural cycle frozen blastocyst transfer. The embryo used was developed from a Mini-IVF^TM retrieval back in April of 2009.