The commonest IVF patients ask their doctor is – What are my chances of getting pregnant with IVF? What is my success rate likely to be? This is a poor-quality question, which is why the answer is also likely to be of poor quality. For one thing, you need to unders...

When an IVF cycle fails, doctors start ordering lots of additional tests, in a futile search for answers as to why the IVF cycle failed. Part of the problem is that patients have very unrealistic expectations of IVF success rates because doctors inflate these. They ov...

There used to be a time when we would transfer only fresh embryos routinely in all IVF cycles. After egg collection, the fresh embryos would be transferred back into the uterus in that cycle itself – either on Day 3 or Day 5. Today, however, the standard practice is t...

There are many self-insemination kits now available on the market, and this is great because couples who have a problem conceiving now have an effective treatment option that they can utilize in the privacy of their bedroom, without having to go to a doctor, which mak...

Many patients find it very hard to do IVF because they simply aren't able to take the 15 days off they have been told they need for doing an IVF treatment. This is because many IVF clinics make very unreasonable demands on the patient’s time. They expect the patient...

Many IVF clinics take a lot of shortcuts when treating their patients. One of the commonest is transferring Day 3 embryos instead of Day 5 embryos. The logic they use is completely flawed. They claim that if an embryo is going to become a baby, it will become a baby w...

All IVF patients want to get pregnant as quickly as possible, and they know that if they transfer more embryos at one time, the chances of one of that implanting are obviously increased, as compared to just transferring a single embryo. In fact, this is why many docto...

It's important to differentiate between process and outcome in an IVF cycle. While it's true that IVF patients only care about an outcome – a healthy baby, part of the problem is that we can't control the outcome. All we can control is the process, and the good news...

Carrier testing for genetic disorders is being sold as part of the IVF package in many clinics. This preconception genetic screening refers to the process of testing couples doing IVF for genetic mutations or disorders that could be passed on to their children. Many I...

One of the commonest problems that couples who live in large cities face is their inability to have sex frequently enough to make a baby. This means that the reason for the " infertility " for many of these couples is not a medical problem but social infertility. This...