This article was sponsored by Fairhaven Health.  I was speaking with my new therapist recently, and in recounting the last several years of my fertility journey, she responded with, “Wow, you’ve experienced a lot of loss.” I’ll be honest: I hadn’t really thought of it that way until that very moment. But when I count the 7 embryos we’ve lost, compounded on top of the loss of my best friend to breast cancer at the age of 31, I would have to agree with her assessment.  Now, if you haven’t dealt with fertility challenges, you may...

Non-traditional paths to parenthood are frequently misunderstood, and surrogacy is arguably the path that is most in need of cultural demystification. Surrogacy involves so many moving pieces, and both the medical and legal processes are complicated. On top of that, there’s this persistent misconception that surrogacy is just for the uber-privileged when in reality, people turn to surrogacy for a range of reasons.  In order to help others better understand what surrogacy really entails, we spoke with Dean Hutchison, Vice President of Legal Services at Circle Surrogacy, who broke down some of the important facts about...

If you’re trying to start a family and find out you’ve been diagnosed with Diminished Ovarian Reserve (DOR), it’s completely understandable to feel anxious and stressed. After all, the very definition of DOR can make you feel that your chances of getting pregnant have been significantly slashed: “Women are born with a finite number of eggs,” explains Edward Nejat, MD, MBA, FACOG, reproductive endocrinologist and practice director at Generation Next Fertility. “That number declines throughout the reproductive lifespan. At the time of menopause, the average age of which is 51, all of the eggs have been...

When it comes to assisted reproductive treatments like IUI and IVF, costs can vary based on the state, health insurance, fertility diagnosis, and so much more. Finding the right treatment or family planning path for you and your family is also complicated.   The medical system and health insurance system don’t make it any easier.  According to the CDC, 1 in 5 women struggle with getting pregnant after one year of trying. A new study published by Maven Clinic, a virtual clinic specifically for women and family’s health, also found that nearly 97% of all women surveyed...

As more and more couples turn to in-vitro fertilization (IVF) to start or expand their families, concerns have been raised about a possible link between IVF and autism spectrum disorder. If you Google ‘Autism and IVF’, you’ll receive approximately 6,860,000 results, all with conflicting outcomes. It can be very overwhelming to get a definitive answer. While we share just a fraction of those studies below, you’ll see that the cause of autism is still very much in debate. What is autism? Autism spectrum disorder, or autism, is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects how a person behaves,...

The dreaded two-week wait. You know the drill: you've timed everything just right, you've done all of the necessary preparations, and now it's a waiting game before you can take a pregnancy test.  The two-week wait, which occurs in the luteal phase of your menstrual cycle, is the time between ovulation (when the egg is released from the ovary) and either the start of your period or the time when you can take a pregnancy test.  During this time, your body is going through some pretty major changes. If you've successfully conceived, an egg will have...

Using a donor gamete (egg, sperm, or embryo) can be overwhelming. Four years after my husband and I decided to adopt two embryos, one of which is now our three-year-old son, I still have questions. Maybe some would have been answerable. Perhaps they were, and still are, unknown to the genetic donors. I don’t know. The path to parenthood has many possible roads, and, for many of us, a lot of them are not clearly marked. We often go into this process confused, scared, uneducated, and with far more questions than answers. For me, the biggest...

If you’re on TikTok a lot (and aren’t we all?), there’s a good chance you’ve stumbled on a video with the hashtag #MucinexDPregnancy. Essentially, these videos claim that taking the medication, which is commonly used for cold, flu, and sinus symptoms, can help boost a person’s odds of getting pregnant. But before you try this hack at home, let’s fact-check this one. Because in case you haven’t heard, not every piece of health-related information on the internet is grounded in truth. So, does Mucinex help you get pregnant?  In one viral video, a creator begins by...

All couples navigate their family planning journey differently. But, no matter where your journey takes you, you may start by exploring which fertility option is the best and most viable for you and your family.  Along the way, you may also find that hearing others’ stories of how they navigated family-building proves to be helpful and eases any feelings of isolation. This is especially true for LGBTQIA+ couples who have the added task of researching everything from legal questions to finding LGBTQIA-affirming medical providers.  Mafê Villas Boas shared some insight into how they/she and their/her partner,...

So you’ve decided to do pre-implantation genetic testing for aneuploidy (PGT-A) on your embryos, and now that you’ve gotten the results back you find out some of your embryos are mosaics. You’ve heard of aneuploid and euploid embryos before, but what is a mosaic embryo? Can mosaics be transferred?  Let’s take a step back for a second.  What is a mosaic embryo? A euploid embryo is normal, and all of the cells in the embryo have the right number of chromosomes (46). An aneuploid embryo is abnormal, and all of its cells have a different number...