I get a recurring question from my readers, sometimes posed in the comments section and sometimes via email. Understandably, patients want a checklist of points to review for good clinics and a checklist of points or warning signs for the bad clinics. Coming up with a “naughty and nice” list is not so simple because [...]

Recently one of my readers had a question that I think many patients who go through IVF may have. She wanted to understand what blastocyst grading means in terms of embryo quality and then, obviously the implications for her  chances of pregnancy. Her question was: ” I just had two expanded blastocysts transferred on day [...]

Every week, we field questions about using sperm donors from patients who can’t have a child unless they can use donor sperm and most buy sperm from a commercial sperm bank. They may be a married couple in which the man does not produce sperm or had a vasectomy that he doesn’t want to reverse [...]

Most people can imagine that the autumn and winter family-centric holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hannukkah, and Diwali, just to mention a few, might be hard to endure if you are struggling with infertility, but Halloween, with literally hundreds of (some adorable, some not) children pounding on your door may be as bad or worse. There [...]

One of my readers asked me my opinion of the sperm DNA fragmentation index or DFI. The value of any clinical test depends on a number of factors. Is the test relatively easy to perform or is it subject to exceptional end user skill and ideal test conditions? Some research lab tests don’t translate well [...]

One of the routine questions that patients get asked when they submit a semen sample for analysis is “Have you taken any medications in the last 60 days?” The 60 days is relevant because it takes around 60-70 days for a sperm cell to be produced and so exposures that occurred two months earlier may [...]

Newsweek’s cover this week had an adorable baby with the headline, “You got your sperm where? How to get pregnant, fast, cheap -and in public“. Wow, talk about an eye grabber. In this article you meet a 40 year old virgin who calls himself a “donorsexual” and gives his sperm away (in a cup) to [...]

On July 14, 2010, I posted about ways to stretch your infertility dollar. In that post, I mentioned a handful of organizations around the US that were offering infertility grants, including the Pay it Forward Fertility foundation. What makes the Pay it Forward Fertility Foundation unusual is that competing fertility programs in the Research Triangle area [...]

Most couples struggling with infertility are presented with the results of a semen analysis report at some point in their journey. The male partner produces a sample, usually by masturbation, either at home or at the clinic and the semen sample is analyzed under the microscope. Most people are familiar with sperm count, semen volume [...]

My posts have been fewer lately but but this morning I found a patient comment that tugged me back to the blog. On an old post, Wishing for a Happy Father’s Day, Elizabeth left me this comment and question: “I miss your insightful posts. Here’s a post idea: IVF after pregnancy. Need to wait awhile [...]