Does acupuncture help with fertility treatments?

Acupuncture is a Traditional Chinese Medicine technique that uses thin needles to stimulate specific points on the body to release blocked energy and jumpstart a healing process. In the context of fertility, acupuncture may help improve blood flow to the uterus and reduce stress and anxiety. It may also play a role in regulating certain hormones that play a role in fertility, including beta endorphins and insulin. However, data from randomized experiments are very limited, and scientific results on the effectiveness of acupuncture for fertility treatments are inconclusive.

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10 questions to consider before starting IVF

At Ovally, we talk to a lot of women and couples who underwent IVF before coming to us and didn’t have an entirely positive experience. In many cases, they didn’t have enough time with their doctors to comfortably make critical decisions, or had decisions made for them without knowing that they had a choice. Given the complexity of IVF, it’s very hard to know as first-time patients what questions to ask. As part of our IVF series, we’ve put together 10 questions to consider and discuss with your doctor as early as possible in the process:

IVF – how does it work, and what happens when?

Ovally now supports patients undergoing in-vitro fertilization (IVF) in addition to our egg and embryo freezing patients, by matching you with clinics that are up to 70% more affordable than comparable top clinics in the US, supporting you throughout your journey as your personal fertility coach, and serving as your individual travel planner for your IVF trip to Spain. That’s why we’re kicking off a new blog post series on IVF, starting with the basics: How does IVF work, and what happens when?

Putting my fertility on ice allowed me to become a Mom

This week, we have a guest post from an Ovally contributor about her very personal journey from freezing her eggs to becoming a Mom of twins. We’re really grateful for her story and thankful to her for sharing it:

Embryo freezing & IVF: What happens after the retrieval? A personal account (3/3).

This is part 3 of Ovally founder Kathy’s personal daily account of her embryo freezing journey to Spain. Read the previous two posts on the stimulation period and egg retrieval. This set of posts takes you from the egg fertilization through embryo development, genetic testing, and freezing. It doesn’t include the last IVF step of embryo transfer.

Egg/embryo freezing & IVF: What are the trigger shot and retrieval like? A personal account (2/3).

What does the trigger shot feel like, and how is the retrieval under anesthesia? Here’s Ovally founder Kathy’s personal account starting 36 hours before her egg retrieval until a few hours after the procedure. If you’re interested in the hormone stimulation period leading up to the egg retrieval, check out the previous blog post.

Egg/embryo freezing & IVF: What’s the stimulation period like? A personal account (1/3).

It’s one thing to read a summary of what happens during egg freezing or IVF, but we’ve found it’s often more helpful to read an honest, personal account of what every day of a treatment actually feels like. When Ovally founder Kathy froze embryos in Spain, she blogged about it every day – below is an unedited version of what the “stimulation period” was like for her, when she was giving herself daily injections of follicle-stimulating hormones. Even though everyone’s experience is slightly different, we hope that this will make the procedure more tangible:

Which fertility add-on treatments are effective and worth the investment?

The Human Fertilization & Embryology Authority (HFEA) in the UK has released a report testing various popular “add-on” fertility treatments from embryo glue to pre-implantation screening and endometrial scratching. These add-ons are fertility treatments that are typically offered at an additional cost. Six of the techniques the HFEA examined are still relatively new or have conflicting evidence. Another six techniques have been around for a while without evidence of their effectiveness. We’re hoping this evaluation of add-on treatments will be helpful for our Ovally customers, as well as anyone else undergoing fertility treatments.

What happens to surplus embryos from IVF or embryo freezing?

We’ve at times talked about eggs and embryos in a somewhat utilitarian way on this blog. However, thinking about the fate of human embryos and eggs is a complex and deeply personal matter. The complexity of how people feel and think about frozen eggs or embryos is reflected in different countries’ legislations about what you are and aren’t allowed to do with any surplus eggs or embryos. As assisted reproductive technologies that can create this kind of surplus haven’t been around for very long, some laws are still in flux or being updated.

What happens if I use my frozen eggs or embryos?

What happens if you use your eggs or embryos that you’ve frozen through Ovally or elsewhere later on? In the case of frozen eggs, the eggs would be thawed and then fertilized with your partner’s or a donor’s sperm. The resulting embryo(s) would develop in the lab until they’d be ready to be implanted in the uterus (typically on day 5 of development). Then one embryo (in rare cases more than one) would be implanted through a catheter inserted all the way into the uterus, which sounds really uncomfortable, but is usually painless. Ideally the embryo would implant there, and a few days later a blood test would confirm a pregnancy. In the case of frozen embryos, only the embryo implantation or “embryo transfer” would have to take place, as the eggs would already have been fertilized and developed.