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For those of you who have experienced the pain of loss in the form of miscarriage or failed IVF cycles, the idea of trying again or moving on to another cycle can be a grueling.

As if infertility itself were not enough to deal with, the build up of hope and subsequent loss of your IVF cycle is devastating. For many women, trying again is simply not an option — financially or emotionally. But for some, like Celine Dion, not trying again is unimaginable. When it comes to a dream like motherhood, it’s understandable that many women and couples just don’t give up.

Below, you’ll read our recent IVF success stories from women who failed multiple IVF cycles and finally succeeded. As we welcome 2013, we also welcome the inspiration stories like these bring to those of you struggling with the decision of whether to try again or not. At the end of the day, it is your world and entirely up to you!

Our first success story comes from Ms. 30, who arrived at New Hope dealing with infertility related to her endometriosis. Completing a few Mini-IVF™ cycles to freeze several embryos, she subsequently underwent a cystectomy to remove unwanted endometrial cyst from her right ovary. Ms. 30 had not 1 but 2 unsuccessful cycles before finally getting pregnant on her third — and it was a single embryo transfer!

Our second success story is from Ms. 35. Ms. 35 came to New Hope struggling with secondary infertility — problems conceiving with a second child — and completed several cycles to freeze multiple embryos. After her first frozen embryo transfer she got pregnant, but miscarried after 12 weeks. Choosing to press ahead, she returned to complete another Mini–IVF™ cycle and transfer and got pregnant. She also had four fertilized eggs to freeze until a later date.

Congrats to our two recent graduates!

It’s been a big week for those of us in the fertility community — the American Society for Reproductive Medicine kicked off its 68th annual meeting in San Diego this year, with some big announcements coming our way. On Monday, the ASRM’s Practice Committee released a report on the viability of egg freezing for young women, moving the practice out of experimental status and further into the mainstream of fertility preservation practices.

In their study “Mature Oocyte Cryopreservation,” the ASRM revealed egg freezing technology as having “pregnancy rates and health outcomes comparable to those of IVF with fresh eggs” and that the practice should no longer be marketed as experimental.

Egg freezing, frozen embryo transfers, and vitrification are among the fertility preservation and treatment options we offer here at New Hope, and we’re happy to have the backing of the ASRM. At one time, egg freezing was only offered to cancer patients wishing to preserve their fertility pre-chemotherapy treatments, which often compromise fertility.  At New Hope, we’ve safely and effectively practiced egg freezing with vitrification for any patient wanting to wait for the right time or save embryos from their first cycle for several years now. Through the use of our flash-freezing method, vitrification, our team has welcomed high success rates, exemplifying their position as leaders in fertility preservation through the use of only the best and latest egg freezing techniques.

Want more? Check out ASRM online. For a closer look into our success with egg freezing, vitrification, and frozen embryo transfers, check out our past IVF success stories.

As seen in this morning’s Wall Street Journal article titled “New Strategy May Help Success of In Vitro Fertilization,” recent studies within the fertility care field are linking frozen embryo transfers with an increase in healthy pregnancies following IVF treatment.

The “3 separate randomized and controlled studies involving 633 women with an average age of 35″ fairly represent the group of couples we’ve helped get pregnant with frozen embryo transfers: New Hope’s latest SART statistics show 44% of our patients age 35 and under achieved a healthy pregnancy following frozen embryo transfers, and 64% of our patients got pregnant using frozen donor embryos.

Frozen embryo transfers (FET) have indeed produced high rates of success at our clinic, and we continue to encourage the practice when counseling our patients.  Not only do FETs increase chances of healthy pregnancy and live births, but the process with which we freeze them also contributes to the health of embryos.  Vitrification, a flash-freezing method we’ve utilized since our center opened in 2004, has a 98% thaw survival rate here at New Hope, giving our patients peace of mind with every frozen embryo transferred.

The practice of frozen embryo transfers also encourages the practice of single embryo transfers. Because frozen embryos increase the chance of pregnancy, FETs subsequently decrease the need to transfer more than 1 embryo at a time.  Single embryo transfers, along with our minimal stimulation protocols like Mini-IVF™ and Natural Cycle IVF, significantly decrease risks associated with multiple births.  At the hands of our experienced team of fertility specialists, we’ve been able to prove time and again that with these methods combined, IVF can be safe and more cost-effective for patients wishing to get pregnant without overstimulation.

Read more of our success stories involving frozen embryo transfers here.

The beauty of customizing our IVF protocols is that we’ve been able to create innovative techniques to help women with complicated health histories get pregnant.  One such method, developed by our Senior Medical Associate Dr. Lyndon Chang, is our Luteal Phase Stimulation protocol. Because of his experience with women with previous IVF failures, Dr. Chang has been able to develop the LPS protocol to help women with complex health histories, reporting a recent pregnancy using this method just last week.

As we’ve explained in previous posts,  the Luteal Phase is Day 14 through 28 of the woman’s cycle and occurs directly after ovulation (when the egg is released and the body is ready for pregnancy or implantation). While typical IVF egg retrievals occur directly before ovulation, in some instances other eggs that began to develop can be retrieved during the luteal phase in order to increase a woman’s chances of having more than one viable egg during her IVF cycle.

Our recent IVF success story using the LPS protocol helped a 42-year-old get pregnant with Natural Cycle IVF.  Because of a complicated health history (the patient had a prior kidney transplant and was deemed an IVF non-responder after failing three cycles elsewhere), we opted for this less invasive treatment, which relies on close monitoring and no fertility medications.

Since the initial retrieval did not produce a good quality egg, Dr. Chang and Ms. 42 decided to try to retrieve an egg during her Luteal Phase, two weeks after her first retrieval.   After cryopreserving the Luteal Phase embryo using our vitrification technique and performing a frozen embryo transfer in her next cycle, she got pregnant — despite never being able to get pregnant before with conventional IVF care.

Congratulations to Dr. Chang and the New Hope team on the successful application of this unique IVF protocol!  We look forward to reporting more successes using the Luteal Phase Stimulation technique.

At New Hope Fertility Center, we have many women and couples who seek our help after they have experienced a miscarriage.  In some of our more emotionally trying cases, these women have not just had one, but two or even three miscarriages.

The instance of miscarriage is truly devastating for all those involved, which is why our fertility specialists treat these cases with the extra care and attention to individual detail that they deserve.

Under to guidance of New Hope’s experienced team of fertility experts, New Hope has developed protocols specific to each miscarriage patient in order to ease stress and help these individuals with the right combination of hope and expertise.  We have three recent IVF stories to report — that all involve women who experienced miscarriage before coming to our center and were able to get pregnant with our help.

Our first IVF success story comes from Ms. 46, who had a history of one miscarriage when she came to New Hope. After consulting with our doctors, she elected to try our Donor IVF program, and got pregnant immediately following her first donor frozen embryo transfer!

Our second story involves Ms. 33, who came to New Hope after two miscarriages. After completing one Mini-IVF™ cycle she chose to freeze her embryos, since our frozen embryo protocols have high rates of success after transfer. While her first frozen embryo transfer didn’t achieve pregnancy, she got pregnant with her second try!

Our final story of the week is from Ms. 36, also with a history of one miscarriage like Ms. 46.  Upon careful consideration of her personal health history, our fertility specialists, along Ms. 36, elected to try a few timed intercourse cycles that were unfortunately unsuccessful. The next step we decided to take was have Ms. 36 complete a few Mini-IVF™ cycles in order to produce and preserve her fertility until she was ready to try again.  She was ready to try again at age 40, and after her first frozen embryo transfer she got pregnant with an embryo she froze in 2007.  Clearly an emotionally challenging story, we’re so happy to report on this woman’s particular case, which is as real as it gets when it comes to struggling with infertility and miscarriage.

Congrats to all three of our recent IVF success stories!!!

At New Hope Fertility Center, our success rates with frozen embryo transfers are high compared with competing centers thanks to our individualized frozen embryo transfer protocols and the use of vitrification for freezing embryos — which yields a 98% survival rate, compared to a 60% embryo survival rate under traditional freezing methods.

We are happy to announce 3 recent IVF success stories that all involved women conceiving after frozen embryo transfers.  Ms. 31 arrived at our doors struggling with a history of primary infertility, and while she unfortunately did not get pregnant after her first transfer, she recently announced she returned a positive pregnancy test following her Ultra Mini-IVF™ treatment (no injections) and frozen embryo transfer.

Ms. 32, who was dealing with issues trying to have her second child (secondary infertility), also had an unsuccessful first try with a fresh embryo transfer created from a Mini-IVF™ cycle.  After waiting one month, however, our fertility doctors transferred 2 frozen embryos into Ms. 32 and she got pregnant…with triplets!

Our final IVF success story for today comes from Ms. 28.  Suffering from primary infertility, she elected our Mini-IVF™ treatment and after her frozen embryo transfer, she got pregnant.

Once again, congratulations to these 3 women, who all got pregnant through minimal stimulation IVF and frozen embryo transfers.  Your persistence is a great example for women who are dreaming to build their family just like you!