Frustrated with your difficulty conceiving?  Fear no more — Spring has sprung!  As flowers flourish and gardens grow, the arrival of Spring gives us time to reflect on what is going on inside our bodies, shifting focus towards nourishing health, and in some cases, bettering the chance of future pregnancy.

According to traditional Eastern Medicine, the Spring season is a time of detoxification and renewal.  Just as fresh buds appear and leafy greens fill up farmer’s market stands, so do our liver and gallbladder spring forward in an effort to remove toxins and aid digestion.

Considering Spring’s role in revealing nature’s fertility, it only makes sense that if we commit to the health of our own “gardens,” good health and renewed energy will follow.

Here are some helpful Spring tips to follow as you work towards maintaining a healthy uterine environment!

Spring Cleaning Your Body

1. Eat green.  You’ll see an increase in leafy greens at your local farmer’s market as the season starts.  Dandelion greens, spinach, mustard greens, and arugula all help the liver move bile through and out the body, ridding of metals and toxins.
   
2. Have (healthy) taco night with extra Guacamole! Hass Avocados, available year-round, also help the liver cleanse toxins.  As an added bonus, the avocado visually mimics the uterus, so add slices to your salad for extra reproductive support.
3. Add garlic.  Having pizza or pasta night?  Along with healthy pasta alternatives like brown rice or Quinoa noodles (gluten has been associated with fertility issues in some), add extra garlic to your dish.  A natural antibacterial, garlic has compounds that specifically help the liver cleanse itself.
4. Try Yin Yoga.  Yin Yoga focuses on Qi. In Chinese medicine, Qi is the energy that flows through certain paths in the body, lending clues as to which poses to do for each organ.  Poses for the liver and gallbladder include Child’s Pose, Shoelace Pose, and Corpse Pose.
5. Stop and smell the roses. We need rest and relaxation so the liver and gallbladder can focus on doing their jobs. Along with growth, Spring asks us to enjoy to scenery by offering up natural eye candy that can help us lay back as we take in our surroundings.

For more tips on eating and working out for the seasons, feel free to reach out to our social media team.

We hope these tips give new meaning to the term “Spring forward!”

Whether you’re just embarking on your journey with assisted reproduction or have experienced IVF in the past, failed cycles are a reality every woman must face when seeking treatment.

Although rare when treated at a high quality fertility center many women experience failed cycles, and they happen due to a number of reasons. Some women are of advanced maternal age, which reduces the quality of the eggs used for fertilization during the IVF process.  Other women have complications related to a prior history of miscarriage and/or reproductive disorders.

Despite the frustration and heartbreak that occurs after a failed treatment, there is still hope when it comes to getting pregnant with IVF.  In fact, we have two recent success stories involving women who went through failed cycles and continued on their journey — getting pregnant after trying again or exploring other avenues post-failure.

Our fist success story introduced us to a 35-year-old struggling with primary infertility. After one failed Mini-IVF™ cycle with no embryos frozen, Ms. 35 chose to try one more time and successfully froze embryos. After a short break in order to strengthen her uterine environment for her implantation, she got pregnant after a single embryo transfer.

Our second success story involves Ms. 44 — who had a history of failed IVF at other clinics.  Considering her encounters with failed treatment in the past, our fertility specialists recommended she move to our donor program, which eventually led to a successful pregnancy.

Congratulations to our recent pregnancies — your stories help other women dealing with the loss of a failed cycle realize their dreams of motherhood can still come true!

Choosing a birth control method in a world full of advancing science and new options can be overwhelming. However, learning the side effects of popular methods may assist you in your choice, allowing you to avoid wasting time considering methods that may put your health at risk.

One popular type of birth control is Mirena, a hormonal intrauterine device (IUD) that was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2000 and is manufactured by Bayer. Bayer also makes other contraceptives, like the birth control pills Yaz and Yasmin.

Many women seeking an alternative to the daily regimen of taking pills have turned to IUDs as a more convenient way to prevent pregnancy. It is estimated that 150 million women worldwide use Mirena or another IUD. IUDs are inserted into the uterus by a doctor and prevent pregnancy for several years.

Since Mirena’s approval, however, the FDA has received more than 45,000 reports of adverse events related to its use. These reports include device expulsion, device migration, pelvic inflammatory disease and ectopic pregnancy – all of which can result in pain, bleeding, organ damage and infertility.

Device Expulsion

The most common side effect associated with Mirena is device expulsion, which occurs when the device exits the body through the vagina spontaneously. This can cause cramping, bleeding and discomfort during sex. Expulsion requires women to use other forms of birth control until a new IUD can be implanted.

Device Migration

Some women report instances of device migration, in which Mirena moves from the uterus to other places in the body. It can puncture the wall of the uterus and affect nearby organs. The bladder, pelvis, fallopian tubes, blood vessels and abdominal cavity are all vulnerable to damage once Mirena migrates out of the uterus. In such instances, a physician must locate and surgically remove the device to prevent further injuries, pain and infection. Using Mirena after childbirth increases the risk of puncturing the uterus, so it is recommended that mothers wait to use it until at least six months after giving birth.

Pelvic Inflammatory Disease and Ectopic Pregnancy

Within just a few weeks of implantation of Mirena, users can develop pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), which endangers the ovaries, uterus and fallopian tubes. PID can also be extremely painful and cause infertility. The FDA has stated that women with a history of PID should not use Mirena. Users of Mirena have also experienced ectopic pregnancy, which occurs when an egg is fertilized somewhere outside of the uterus. This complication will terminate the pregnancy, puts the woman’s health at risk and can leave the woman infertile.

Alanna Ritchie is a content writer for Drugwatch.com, specializing in news about prescription drugs, medical devices and consumer safety.

Like most events in our lives, the process of in vitro fertilization is emotionally charged. Not only are you embarking on a life-changing journey, but choosing a path unfamiliar and different than those taken by your female counterparts. Tack on the financial burden of treatment and IVF is considerably more mentally challenging than you thought before.

That’s where New Hope Fertility comes in. Understanding the internal struggles presented during someone’s first, second, or third cycle, we’ve developed customizable IVF treatments that not only reduce the cost of treatment, but significantly reduce the mental and physical stress involved in the process.

Mini-IVF™ and frozen embryo transfers are just a couple examples of how New Hope helps our patients get pregnant through minimal stimulation (less medication) at a lower cost. Recent research suggests that frozen embryo transfers — freezing embryos from one cycle and transferring them in a subsequent cycle — decrease the chance of failed transfer or miscarriage since the embryo is being transferred into a less-stimulated uterine environment.  Less medication and taking less risks during an initial cycle (when an egg is retrieved and transferred in the same rotation) increase the health of a woman’s uterine environment and therefore increases the chance of success with her first batch of embryos (rather than placing fresh embryos into an overstimulated environment).

We recently had a couple women have success with Mini-IVF™ and frozen embryo transfers. Both 36-years-old, these two patients arrived at our center suffering from primary infertility. Each woman completed 2 Mini-IVF™ cycles in order to freeze embryos and after their (single) frozen embryo transfers, got pregnant. Congratulations to both Ms. 36s!

For more information our treatments, that can reduce the stress and cost of IVF treatment, please schedule a consultation.

photo credit: iStock.com

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!