When we hear of medical transplants, we often think of a heart or liver, but doctors today are working on another transplant challenge…..the uterus!

The director of gynecologic oncology at the New York downtown Hospital is interested in pursuing a study that transplants healthy wombs into women wanting to become pregnant. He sees many women who either don’t have a uterus or their uterus is compromised in some way. With the hospital’s consent, he has started screening for women willing to take part in his study and the transplant surgery.

A similar study was completed in the year 2000 by doctors in Saudi Arabia. They were able to successfully transplant a human womb that was healthy and functioning for 3 months before failing. Then in 2003 in Sweden, healthy babies were born from mice that had had the womb transfer surgery.

And although Dr. Del Priore knows that he is a long way away from successfully transferring a human womb that would lead to a healthy baby, he is excited about the possibility. Amazing!!!!

When you think about having a baby, you assume that your chances of having either a boy or a girl are about 50% right?

Well, there seems to be one scenario where this mathematical reasoning is not holding true. Researchers at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Reproductive Medicine Associates in New York sat down to really look at their sex ratio results of pregnancies resulting from IVF. What they found was that the timing of when they transferred the embryo had a pretty significant impact on whether or not the mom to be would give birth to a boy or girl.

Here are the specifics from the study:

Embryos transferred on day 3 after being harvested and cultured, mirrored the odds of having a baby naturally; about 51 percent male and 49 percent female. Here is the interesting part though….. When embryos were transferred 5 days after being harvested and cultured, the numbers changed to 58 percent male and 42 percent female. And…when they looked at single babies born from IVF, the number skyrocketed to 64 percent male and 36 percent female.

They don’t know why this happened, but it does make it interesting to think about the sex of your baby being determined by which fertility procedure you have done!

Scientists from Harvard recently published the results to a study that looked at the link between infertility and vitamins.

Using medical information gathered from a group of nurses who were between the ages of 24 and 42, scientists found that women who had regularly taken a multi-vitamin and iron supplement were less likely to suffer from ovulatory infertility.

So…check with your doctor about the vitamin regiment you should be taking if you are trying to become pregnant!

If you are trying to get pregnant, make sure your husband/partner is eating his greens!!!

In a study done by the University of Rochester, scientists found a correlation between male fertility and their consumption of fruits and vegetables. In the study they compared the diets of 48 infertile men, with the diets of 10 recent fathers. What they found was that in the infertile men group, 83% of the men ate little or no fruits and veggies. In the group of recent fathers, only 40% were lacking fruits and veggies from their diets.

Another important finding was that those men who ate the fewest fruits and vegetables, also had the lowest sperm motility.

Scientists believe that it is the antioxidants in these foods that help give healthy sperm a boost and prevent potential sperm damage.

So men, keep snacking on those fruits and veggies!!!!!!

Yet another reason to take care of yourself before becoming pregnant……….

In a recent issue of Diabetes Care , researchers looked at the prevalence of diabetes in women. In their study, they followed over 175 thousand women who had given birth during the years of 1999 and 2005. What they found was that pre-existing diabetes; either type 1 or type 2 had been diagnosed in 1.3 percent of all the women in the focus group. This is twice of what had been in the past. Also, the number of women with pre-existing diabetes actually increased with each consecutive year. For example, in 1999, the rate was .81 per 100 births. However by 2005, it was 1.82 per 100 births.

Interestingly, the rates of gestational diabetes did not follow suit. Of all the women suffering from diabetes during pregnancy, 21 percent were pre-existing and 79 percent were gestational. A few years prior it was 10 percent pre-existing and 90 percent gestational.

Researchers believe that these findings support the theory that there are more overweight women becoming pregnant. If the trend continues, the number of women entering into pregnancy with diabetes would continue to rise as well.

Unfortunately, having diabetes while pregnant increases the risk miscarriage, stillbirth, birth defects, giving birth to bigger babies and having tougher deliveries.

So it once again hits home that we need to be healthy and take care of ourselves, especially if we are planning on becoming pregnant!

I just ran across this article and thought it was interesting….

The article addressed the idea of reproductive outsourcing, specifically to India. It seems to be a practice that is increasing in popularity. What happens is that clinics in India provide surrogate mothers for women who are not able to become pregnant. There is both an egg donor and a surrogate, using the belief that the surrogate mother will not become as attached to the baby since it does not share her biological genes.

This practice is becoming most popular with folks from the United States and Europe because of the quality of medical professionals in India, the relaxed laws and the price. Although each doctor determines their own fees, it is in the range of $25,000-$30,000, which is a lot less than here in the United States. The fees cover medical, payment to the surrogate mother, and 2 trips to India; one to fertilize the egg, and one to bring their baby home.

One doctor reported that although the actual number of surrogate arrangements with foreigners is unknown, in a nearby town there were at least 50. And this doctor himself was expecting to see more than 100 foreign women for surrogacy just this year.

The doctors believe that in addition to the skilled medical professionals, laws and the price, that foreigners are drawn to India for surrogacy because the women tend to not use alcohol, drugs, or smoke.

One current concern though is that as this surrogacy arrangement becomes more popular, so do the opportunities for exploitation and unethical practices.

Would you want to know if menopause is right around the corner, so that you can better plan for motherhood? If you answered yes, then you are in luck thanks to a new study that was just published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.

Since the trend is for women to wait until their 30’s to become pregnant, doctors from the University Medical Center Utrecht felt that if they could help women predict menopause, that they could also help success with fertility as well.

So…what they did was measure the levels of AHM (anti Mullerian hormone) in 144 fertile and healthy women. AHM is the hormone in the blood that allows doctors to assess the number of follicles in a woman’s ovaries. These follicles are essential for ovulation and as the numbers drop, so do the chances of nearing menopause.

From their data, they then put together a model that would predict the timeline for women between the ages of 30-50 in terms of when they would most likely experience menopause. The doctors and researchers believe that this information in conjunction with chronological age is much more telling than age itself.

Just another question to ask your fertility doctor if you are in your 30’s and are hoping to become pregnant sometime in the future!

A group of doctors in South Wales just began a program aimed at helping women who are planning to postpone motherhood into their 30’s.

It is called the “My Body Clock” project, and its goal is to evaluate the quantity and quality of a woman’s eggs throughout her childbearing years. It consists of a blood test and internal scan of the ovaries. If it looks as if the ovaries or eggs are beginning to decline in any way, the doctors will suggest a fertility plan.

Most often they will suggest to women that they should not wait to try and become pregnant. However it is not possible, they will encourage women to either freeze their eggs or take drugs to stimulate the ovaries.

Interestingly, they say that the trend is for healthy, professional women to wait until their 30’s to have a baby. In fact, recent surveys show that 20% of all moms to be, wait until they are over 35 to become pregnant.

More statistics that caught my eye were that a healthy 30 year old has a 20% chance of getting pregnant each month. And……as women reach 40 years old, their chances drop to about 5%.

So…..their final message was to not wait to become pregnant and for women to get their egg supply and ovaries checked regularly!

Have you ever wondered if what you eat before becoming pregnant determines whether you give birth to a boy or a girl?

Well, researchers at the University of Oxford in England wondered about this very question! They just published the results to their study where researchers followed 750 women who were all pregnant for the first time. They asked them about their diet before they became pregnant, and then also during their pregnancy.

The results were interesting:

65% of the women in the group who consumed the most calories and had the most variety in their diet were gave birth to a boy. These women were also most likely to have breakfast as well. On the flip side, 45% of the women in the group who consumed the fewest number of calories gave birth to a boy.

This was the first study of its kind…looking at the diet of humans and the sex of babies. There have been studies in the past however, which concluded that the animals who consume more calories have more male offspring.

Also interesting is that in the US and the UK, there are fewer and fewer boys born each year. The researchers believe that this is because there are so many women on low calorie diets in the west, and it is impacting the number of boys being born….

This week, doctors from the UK spoke about what they believe is the best technique for IVF. It is a procedure that is known as Soft IVF.

Soft IVF is different from traditional IVF when you compare the first step of the procedure. When using conventional IVF, women begin their treatment by taking hormones for about a month. This is to change their cycle and stimulate the ovaries in hopes of them producing healthy eggs. In Soft IVF, the woman takes a very small amount of hormones and only for 7 days or less, just to encourage egg production.

The remainder of the process is the same for both procedures. The eggs are removed, fertilized and transferred. And with good luck, an embryo attaches and develops into a healthy baby!

The benefits to using Soft IVF are many. To begin with, the limited use of drug is healthier for the mother and the baby. It has been found to reduce the chance of miscarriage and the chances of the woman suffering from ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome. Also, there are very few side effects… if any. And finally, it is much, much cheaper than traditional IVF.

Anyone who is a candidate for conventional IVF is also a candidate for Soft IVF. In fact older women are even better candidates because their ovaries do not respond well to high levels of hormones.

The statistics that the doctors used at the conference to support their excitement for this new procedure were:
* In the UK, they had a 27 percent success rate with their IVF procedure. However, in Netherlands, after using Soft IVF…..they experienced a 43 percent success rate!

As a side note………….another option is to use a completely drug free technique as well. Doctors only found it to be about 10 percent effective though.