Summer may be the best season for IVF
A successful IVF cycle relies on many things: ages of the couple, luck, lifestyle. Could it also depend, though, on the season in which the eggs are harvested?
Surrogacy and donor babies grow up as happy as other children
Families who have children via egg or sperm donors are just as happy as those who conceive naturally, a landmark study has shown. Researchers at the University of Cambridge followed 65 children born by assisted reproduction – surrogacy or egg or sperm donation – from birth until the age of 20.
My fertility sadness – and what not to say to a childless woman
When the writer Elizabeth Day started to talk about her failed IVF and repeated miscarriages, what shocked her most was the reaction from other women
‘I’m pregnant again after four miscarriages. I fear the worst’
I am sitting in my bathroom, knickers around my ankles, squinting hard at a pregnancy-test strip long after I should have accepted the result and got on with my day. A shadow of a positive pregnancy result like this has its own nickname in online chatrooms: a “squinter”.
Twice as many 40-plus women as teenagers are having babies
There are now twice as many women giving birth over the age of 40 as there are having children as teenagers in England and Wales. Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed 28,478 births to mothers aged 40 to 44 in 2021, and 2,064 to mothers aged 45 and over.
Women seeking IVF treatment ‘should have legal right to time off’
Women seeking or undergoing fertility treatment must be given legal protections including time off to attend appointments, the MSP behind Scotland’s free period products law has urged. Ministers are being pressed to make it illegal for companies to dismiss, demote or punish female staff who are trying to get pregnant via IVF.
‘Free IVF’ as China tries to reverse declining birthrate
Beijing has become the first Chinese city to offer to pay towards fertility treatments in an attempt to boost falling birthrates. The government will contribute more than £3,000 towards procedures from next month, including many needed for in-vitro fertilisation such as egg extraction and embryo tr
Four miscarriages: I was told I was just unlucky
You never think it will happen to you. But then you’re sitting in scan room 9, you’re staring at your bright blue socks as you wriggle your toes against the white hospital sheets, waiting for the sonographer to say something. But they don’t. Instead they call someone else in.
How can we support our daughter after her miscarriages?
Q She has had an online session with a counsellor from the IVF clinic, and she and her husband had an online session with an obstetrician from the clinic, who (to our surprise) advised them to forget IVF and keep on trying to conceive naturally.
The World Health Organisation have been accused of “scaremongering” after suggesting that women of childbearing age should avoid drinking alcohol