1) 24 y/o came to New Hope Fertility Center with a history of miscarriages. She had a donor frozen embryo transfer through our Donor Program and recently came back with a positive pregnancy test. Congrats!

2) 29 y/o arrived at New Hope after experiencing an ectopic pregnancy.  After 1 Mini-IVF™ cycle and a frozen embryo transfer she recently had a positive pregnancy test. Congratulations!

3) 34 y/o came to New Hope with a history of miscarriages.  She completed a donor IVF cycle and had 2 frozen embryo transfers.  She recently became pregnant with twins. Congrats!

As we’ve reported previously, children born prematurely and with low birth weights have an increased chance of having medical or developmental issues at the time of birth and later on in life. Some studies have even revealed a connection between premature births and premature death in childhood or adulthood. More recently, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing and School of Medicine have linked low birth weights with autism, adding to the list of complications that come hand in hand with premature and multiple births.

Low births weights are most often associated with multiple births in the fertility care field. Take the Octomom, for instance, whose doctor implanted her with 12 embryos which lead to a high risk pregnancy and subsequently 8 newborns who all suffered extremely low birth weights. These types of risks can be significantly decreased with the practice of single embryo transfers, which New Hope Fertility Center encourages with all their patients, unless requested otherwise.

The employment of single embryo transfers for IVF is becoming a more recognized practice in the area of assisted reproduction, and we cannot stress enough the importance of making this practice a standard within the fertility care sector. Not only does it decrease the chance of having high risk multiples, but SET is more physiologically safe for women undergoing IVF treatment and more affordable!

If you’re concerned with success rates, please read more of our IVF success stories about women who have conceived with our unique IVF protocols.

A NY Daily News article this month highlighted the story of Michal Lura Friedman, a mother who passed away just four hours after giving birth to twins.

Friedman, a 44-year-old singer-songwriter, is now survived by her husband, Jay Snyder, and newborn twins, Reverie and Jackson.  Friedman was undergoing a C-Section since one of the twins was a breech baby, and died from complications after her surgery.

This story is an important depiction of the risks associated with multiple births that continue to exist even as medical technology advances.  Indeed, even as clinical improvements are made, the pressure multiple pregnancies put on the mother and children remain intact.  These risks, who can affect anyone, are especially dangerous when the mother is giving birth to high order multiples.  These risks include:

• premature birth and/or low birth weights
• preeclampsia
• gestational diabetes
• twin-twin transfusion syndrome
• long lasting birth defects

Today, the birth of multiples is largely associated with fertility treatments, which, due to hyperstimulation/conventional IVF and multiple embryo transfer protocols, increase the chance of a woman becoming pregnant with more than one baby (see the Octomom story).  At New Hope Fertility Center, we continuously stress the importance of Single Embryo Transfers when we treat patients.  Transferring one embryo instead of multiple embryos during IVF treatment significantly decreases the risk of the patient getting pregnant with multiples, and therefore increases the chance of achieving a healthy pregnancy, with less stress on mother and child.

The trend towards single embryo transfers within the fertility care field continues to be adopted by many other clinics, with leading fertility authorities also calling to make SET an industry standard.  We’re hopeful that SET will soon be the norm among fertility specialists as this field of medicine continues to advance.

At New Hope Fertility Center, we pride ourselves on customized and patient-centered fertility treatment plans.  We take our commitment to patients very seriously, which is why we are open 365 days a year to ensure the highest chance of success in each individual case.  As the holidays approach, we will be open on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Years Day, which means you don’t have to take time off from your fertility treatment plan.

If you’ve kept up with our IVF Success Stories section, women come into our clinic with a variety of issues that cause infertility.  As we analyze each woman and couple on an individual basis to pinpoint the root cause of their infertility issues, which can range from PCOS to azoospermia, we are better able to assess the next steps for treatment and what treatment will best meet the need of each unique patient.  By customizing each case in this way, New Hope is able to provide the most healthy and cost-effective fertility care since we do not assume each patient should head straight for conventional IVF (which is more expensive and requires more medication than Mini-IVF™ and Natural Cycle IVF).

We recently celebrated the 1 year anniversary of the grand opening of New Hope Fertility Center’s West Side location at Columbus Circle. Check out our celebratory recap of the last year: