This is your opportunity to ask our fertility experts any questions you have and learn the ins and outs of IVF, including:
Things to consider when looking to start a family
Lifestyle/Health recommendations
How to get started, including Diagnosis and Consultation
An example IVF journey and other treatment options
Personalising your treatment
Support at Care Fertility
Costs and funding options
Insightful patient stories
With 26 clinics across the UK, clinics in Spain & the USA, and appointments available every day, fertility treatment has never been more accessible with Care Fertility.
If you’d to learn more about Care Fertility in the meantime, use our easy contact form: www.carefertility.com/contact-us or reach out to our new patient enquiry team on 0800 564 2270. We are always happy to answer your questions.
With love from Care Fertility 💜
Hello everybody um my name is Charles Kingsland I’m the chief medical officer here at care fertility and we’re going to be talking tonight about preparing for fertility treatments so I’m going to spend the next um well I don’t know half an hour 40 minutes going through all the
Important rudiments that you need to have or to know about if you’re about to embark on a fertility Journey now um in the background I’ve got uh two of my close colleagues Lauren and Khloe who are willing to are um on hand to take your questions and I will hopefully have
Some time at the end to answer as many questions as I can um about um you know certain aspects of fertility treatment that you might be uh particularly interested in so um I’ll go through my presentation at the end if we’ve got time we can we can um talk about one or
Two um one or two individual um issues so I’m going to start by playing um an introductory video and then we’ll crack on with the with the with the presentation okay Chloe so if you can just play the video family it’s who we are and who we’re always going to
Be it’s the important little moments the big emotions the Beating Heart at the center of our world it’s the journey that we take there together one step at a time family is the one thing we’ll always care about the most because we believe that family is for
Everyone and through our care we’ll do everything we can to make your dream real we don’t just care we are care uh my name is professor Charles Kingsland and I’m the group Clinical Director for care fertility at care our number one belief is family for everyone and this means we do everything possible
To help everyone start or grow their family we know that nothing is as important as family and that’s why we care so much about wanting to give every patient that comes to us their best chance of having a baby of course families come in all shapes and sizes we
Get heterosexual couples couples of the same sex we get uh single patients wanting to uh to start a family we get NHS patients when you have a fertility problem there should be facilities available for you to get the best advice and the best treatment readily available
To give you the best chance of having a baby at a time in your life that is best for you we will use all our knowledge and experience combined with highly individualized treatment personal treatment to help you have the family you are longing for unbeknown to J and I
U we both carry a um a death ma Gene we actually have a daughter um who who was three but who was born prematurely death and we were given the option and chose to go down a fertility treatment to kind of avoid our second child having that same gene we
Were very lucky in the fact that um the clinic was only down the road from us so we felt there was one around the corner it was had good reviews we just felt it was good for us didn’t we the whole package made us just feel really comfortable that actually going with
Care was the right decision so the team the team that we worked with at care were unbelievable they were caring they were sensitive they were compassionate empathetic um and even when I was ringing out with um I was feeling pains down one side that the reassurance that they gave me
Uh they honestly do Hold Your Hand every single step of the way and I feel like they lived the journey with us so I’ve had several treatments with hair um I now have a baby and that’s taken um a number of treatments fertility treatments different Alternatives
Different medicines to try and get it to work for me I have always said I would recommend care fertility I would recommend them for the the comfort factor that I received the friendliness and just my I think the word is my faith in cility okay so when you’re ready to start a family
Um where you where do you begin well the thing is if you do plan a family about 70% of couples if you’re in a um a um a two partner relationship um about 70% of couples will have achieved a pregnancy within the first year if you’re trying
For two years that number goes up to about 72 73 and if it’s three years it’ll only go by to about 74 75 so there’s a sort of a tailing off most people get pregnant in the first year in fact most people get pregnant fairly
Quickly and then it tails off and so we normally um say that the there’s a possible potential problem if you’ve been trying for a baby for at least one year with unprotected sexual intercourse regularly if you’re under the age of 35 if you’re over the age of 35 then we
Normally say if you’ve been trying for six months it’s a good idea to think about getting some advice if uh you haven’t conceived after 6 months over the age of 35 obviously if you’re in a same-sex couple um or a samesex relationship or a single uh potential mother then obviously your circumstances are
Different but in the heterosexual um couples it’s one year of trying under the age of 35 6 months over the age of 35 okay next slide please so there are certain things that you can do to help with regard to your fertility first of all and these are
Important it’s you know when you when you come after Christmas you know you you always get these sort of uh I don’t know about you but I get these Facebook messages how to be ripped in one easy lesson or how to lose weight without having to exercise
I’ll let you into a secret there’s no easy there’s no shortcuts to to you know becoming fit and healthy or losing weight you have to diet um the or or you have to exercise to become fitter so lifestyle very important if you are planning a family you need
To um eat healthily and that means a good balanced diet with with protein with fats and carbohydrates you um need to get plenty of fresh air you need to get plenty of sleep and increasingly we’re now reverting back to Old you know old ideas that getting enough sleep and resetting
Your body is so important for your natural um well-being your emotional and physical health supplements if you’ve got a balanced diet I’ll let you into a little secret you don’t need loads of expensive supplements I often you know when you’re driving home at night and you and you um
You’re behind a bus and there’ll be a sign there’ll be this this um you know healthy looking male with clean white teeth and it’ll say are you listless are you tired then you need this you know to help you feel better I think yeah I’m
Listless I’m tired um I need that and in the small lesson it says may help to promote a healthy lifestyle may help well in fact it probably doesn’t help it won’t do you any harm um unless you it costs a lot of money then it cost you a
Lot of financial but it won’t necessarily do you any good so a good healthy balanced out with lots of fresh air um plenty of exercise not plenty of exercise a good amount of exercise you know walks if you don’t if you’re not a gym bunny then do you know lots of um
Nice um healthy walks get out into the fresh air um don’t OV exercise that’s a myth do not do too much exercise that could be detrimental to your health um body mass index now body mass index is really important there is a strong correlation with your weight and your
Fertility and we all know people who are you know well overweight with five or six kids but they may have had a higher fertility to start off with or they may not have been overweight when they started um having children but there is no doubt that if your body mass is
Between 20 and 25 your fertility is higher than if it’s over 30 or under 20 and your body mass index is your weight in kilograms divided by your height in meters squared so and it should be between 20 and 25 um now I know it’s easy for me to say
Just diet or lose weight some people find it very very difficult but there are no easy um shortcuts you know just reduce your calories and increase your calorie output exercise more and stop eating uh don’t eat after six o’clock at night and have 12 hours of fasting um
And that will help um tremendously with your um um with your weight maintenance um any current contraception what you have to bear in mind that if if you have are contracepting at the time when you think you might want to start a family come off the contraception and give
Yourself a bit of time for your body to reig particularly when you’re um taking the or conceptive because the or conceptive works by fooling your body into thinking that you’re pregnant when you swallow the oral conceptive pill which many women will take your body goes oh hang
On a minute I’m taking Easter and progesterone in these particular doses what What’s Happening Here gosh I must be pregnant and that’s how it works and it stops you ovulating so that’s how the pill work so if you if you’re deciding you want to start a family give yourself
Stop the pill and then give yourself a few months to as you would do after a pregnancy just to reset your body because it might take a bit of time for your fertility mechanisms to reboot after you’ve been on contraception one of the things that I always say to patients about um
Um trying for babies or having babies or having a family it’s expensive business having children is expensive for those of you who already have children you’ll know what I mean one of the frustrations though is that when you can’t have babies that you might if you don’t qualify for NHS treatment have to
Finance the treatment to get a family first and that can be tremendously frustrating but if I were you when you go into the your fertility Journey just put some money aside just in case you need it so that you’re always in control um and give yourself time having babies is a stressful
Business trying for a baby when you can’t have a baby is very stressful so don’t you know plan house moves and highly stressed activities if you’re going to Channel all your all your um all your energy into having a having a child that’s what you need to do so just
Make that um a priority and a lot of people sort of take it for granted but all too often it’s not a take it for granted thing and if I could give you one piece of advice to take with you tonight is try and be in control try and
Maintain your control so if you’re GNA try for a baby say how long am I going to spend devoting my my time to try for for a family you decide whether it’s one year two years five years 10 years give yourself that time I wouldn’t say 10
Years though but also have an idea in your mind how much you’re going to spend and it might be 5,000 it might be 10,000 it might be 20,000 it’s up to you however if you spend more than 20,000 25,000 really you’ve got to be you’ve
Got to be thinking is this right for me I would say nowadays the average cost should be if you don’t qualify for NHS treatment between 10 and 15 grand two years 10 and 15 grand um and then you’ve got control you’re in control um because you’ve set yourself a budget and you’ve
Set yourself a Time budget so there are some bits that you won’t be able to control but the bits that you can just you know nail them down next slide please so I’m just GNA very quickly talk a bit about fertility and this is um a
An overview of a female pelvis so the two hearts are the ovaries the little stringy tablets are the Fallopian tubes and then the bit in the middle is the womb or the uterus and at the bottom of the uterus there’s that little poking out bit which is the cervix the neck of
The womb and that goes into the vagina okay so the normal size uterus is about the size of a baby’s clenched fist um and all the eggs that you will ever have are in your ovaries on the day you’re born women do not have the ability to
Make eggs you can’t make them better you can’t suddenly magic them into into better eggs they can only deteriorate and they usually you start losing them around about the age of of um 13 14 one you know one a month and then they get older with you so if I see
A 35y old couple coming in to see me in the clinic the male sperm may be 2 weeks old but I know for a fact that the women’s eggs are 35 years old and that is why women’s fertility deteriorates quite rapidly when we get older so each month
What happens is one egg will grow and pop out go down the floian tube and into the uterus and it gets wafted by little tiny hairs in the fallopian tube um as uh as it goes down so it enables the the egg to waft down the little hairs beat
Synchronously and push the egg down next slide please next slide um so women are egg warehouses they have all the eggs in their ovaries on the day before and don’t be fooled by thinking there are pills and potions that make your eggs better qu quality there aren’t what you
Have to do is to make sure that your eggs are you you preserve your eggs by keeping uh by by m staying healthy don’t smoke try to reduce your alcohol intake because all these things have a negative effect on your eggs but by far in away the commonest negative effect is age now
With men we are sperm factories we have all the ingredients in our bodies to make sperm every day of the week some days we’re good at it some days we’re bad at it as we get older we’re increasingly um less good at making spur but it normally takes about six weeks to
Make a sperm we then store them and then ejaculate them out and make some more now the the strange thing about male infertility is that for a sperm to swim after intercourse from the vagina to the egg is the equivalent of a m swiming from Liverpool where I live to New York
They have to swim a long way and they swim at 600 miles an hour and they swim because they’ve got these very long tails which waft really quickly now they’ve got a long way to swim so we produce in an ejaculate a lot of sperm normally we would like to see 20 M
Around 20 million sperm in ajaculate and we want to see them doing front crawl we don’t want to see them doing backstroke or doggy paddle we like to see as many sperm as possible doing front crawl and we like to see as many sperm as possible looking normal now if
You look at all those these these this diagram shows you all the different types of sperm that you can have you can have sperm with round heads you can have sperm with bent heads you can have sperm with two heads you can have sperm with three Tails one in the bottom right Anor
Looks like an octopus you can have the the one that I’d want to have is the one that’s um on the top road which is just lagging behind sitting next to is mate with the two heads that’s the that’s the normal sperm but believe it or
Not 40% we want about 40% of the sperm to be doing front crawl and only 4% of sperm is normal 96% of the sperm that we make is actually abnormal and that’s okay because we need 4% normal sperm so 20 million per Mill 40% doing front crawl and 4% normal and
That is the basis of a sperm test um a SE analysis we want to see how many sperm are in the ejaculate how many sperm are doing front crawl and how many sperm are normal and that gives us an idea we want 20 million per Mill 40% swimming front crawl 4%
Normal next slide please so can fertility be improved well yeah the best thing to do though is to preserve your fertility to make sure that your sper that your sperm and eggs are kept well like you know like a car um if if you if you don’t look after your car it’ll age
A lot quicker than if you make sure it’s service regularly gets uh you know getss plenty of oil in the engine gets looked after gets polished once every so often and it’s the same with with with eggs keep your eggs um nice and healthy by not smoking not drinking too much
Alcohol um having a good diet try not try to be your your the best weight you can get lots of exercise get lots of um um rest and take folic acid if you’re going to take a supplement and then folic acid is the one to take because it’s been proven scientifically that if
You take um folic acid you’ve got a better chance of having a healthy baby than if you don’t take it another supplement that I would Advocate which is being really increasingly demonstrated scientifically to be of great value not only as a vitamin but as a hormone that improve well-being and fertility vitamin
D now for men we’ve got um our testicles are outside the body um because sperm like being made in the cool they like they’re they’re best being produced at about 35 degrees so in in cooler temperatures than your core body temperature which is 37 so keep your
Testicles cool keep them healthy have a balanced diet um uh take um don’t necessarily take supplements definitely don’t take um steroids they’re really bad for your for your sperm great for your body and your muscle and your and your He-Man looks in the gym but rubbish for sperm um keep your testicles nice
And cool um and don’t smoke and if you smoke stop today if you want to have a baby and um cut down your alcohol and when I say cut down I can’t be a hypocrite because alcohol is good in small doses but you know um in moderation eight 10 units
A week I’m going to be lambasted for that because see people say oh you should not drink but like life without alcohol I just can’t imagine but life without too much alcohol absolutely fine next slide please so if you think you might have a fertility problem and as I’ve said one
Year over the age of 30 under the age of 35 six months over the age of 35 but the myth is if you’re concerned about your fertility you don’t have toit wait go and get tested like anything you have a you have a um uh a right to be tested
And if you can’t get it from your your GP because you’re concerned um go to your local fertility clinic and Care fertility you know we’ve got clinics all over the shop 25 just just phone them up and say look I’m not planning a family or I am planning a
Family and I’m I’m really anxious about I just like some you know just some reassuring tests can you do it for me course we can no we’re not going to say oh have you been trying you’ve got to wait for a year or six months no get it
Done um and there are three there are three evidence-based tests that you need to to do when I say evidence-based they are scientifically proven to to tell you a lot about your fertility there’s a lot of tests you can have you know you’ll see them on the Internet oh get your
Alpha Beta gamma glut perc transfer checks and it’ll do this do that and the break through generally speaking waste of time might be interesting but they don’t tell you anything and if you if you you know if you read everything or if you believed everything you read you
You’d go bananas so there are three tests that I would do number one have I got eggs in my ovaries number two are all my bits in the right place have I got two of everything down the sides and one of everything up the middle and number three are the sperm that are
Deposited my vagina do they have the ability to swim up to my egg okay they’re the three tests have I got eggs in my ovaries well you can do that one simple blood test it’s called amh amh stands for anti-an hormone it’s the hormone that’s produced by your eggs why is it called
Antim malarian hormone well first of all um it’s been named by a doctor we like long words that are confusing but actually antim malarian hormone is a hormone that stops the growth of malarian ducks in a baby in a developing embryo and it turns little little um girl babies into boys
So it’s the it’s the sex determinant hormone but coincidentally it’s also a hormone that’s produced by your eggs and the more eggs you’ve got the more amh you’ve got it doesn’t tell you about the quality of your eggs your age will tell you about the quality of your eggs
Whether your smoke will tell you a lot it’ll tell you about the quality of your eggs but it’ll tell you about the quantity so you can’t just say oh I’ve got a high amh and I’m therefore I’m fertile because it’s better to have a lower amh and be 20 than a higher amh
And be 45 if you see what I mean so it’s a combination but generally speaking an amh test will give you a good idea whether you’ve got um whether you’ve got a good number of eggs um a pelvic ultrasound an ultrasound scan will tell you whether
All your bits are are in the right place um and your history um your past medical history will tell you if there’s a a chance that there might be an abnormality it’s un very unusual if there’s an abnormality that you don’t know about so for example if you’ve had
Chlamidia chlamidia is a a bug that climbs up into your uterus swims up to your fallopian tubes and eats the little cyia that I was telling you about that waft the egg down so they can block the cyia from working and and chew them all
Up so they don’t beat and so the egg so the egg can’t get down and the sperm can’t get up and that might be a cause of fertility so if you’ve had um a cidial infection or a sexually transmitted disease then it might be worthwhile bearing that in mind that it
Might have affected your fertility so amh test ultrasound scan and for the for the boys a SE analysis five days of abstention and then produce a sample and um we will analyze it for you and tell you the number the number that look normal and the number that are swimming
Towards the new bright and Lighthouse as opposed to doing backstroke towards run Corbridge next slide so if you do have a PO a um an issue you’ve been trying for six months over the age of 35 or or um for one year under the age of 35 and you or you just
Might think well I’d like just to chat um then you can always book um an appointment um um with one of our care doctors uh as I said we’ve got 25 clinics this U all over the country so there must be one near you so you don’t
Have to travel very far because that can be a a real um impediment or a stressful situation you know when you’ve got to travel 30 40 miles or you’ve got to wait two years for an appointment or you go to a clinic and you can’t park or it
Costs a tenant to park for five minutes you know all these things can add to the stress of fertility so just check out where’s your local Clinic how long’s the wait do I have to pay do I not have to pay here’s George George is one of our
Uh consultant um uh gynecologists at the Sheffield clinic so they will um George or whether it’s Andrew riddley in woking or Tony Rutherford in in or Adam Balin in Leeds or David Walker in bath or chil P Pandy in Nottingham or Lucy coin in Chester all we’ve got Consultants all over the place
They will take a history point to any factors that might be predictable whether you might have difficulty conceiving and um chat through um um the likely scenarios next slide please um we’ll do the tests and based on the tests we can we can make a diagnose it
Might be that um you have a tubal problem it might be the sperm count is low it might be that um that um there’s nothing because a lot of us who were having difficulty J the pregnancy we might not find anything wrong um and the
Other thing is you know a lot of people want to know about um sexual intercourse how often when best time to have sex intercourse to M optimize your fertility for is in the middle of your cycle women who have regular Cycles normally ovulate 14 days before the start of the next
Cycle 14 days um if you’ve got irated to the Cycles it might mean that you’re not release an egg every month and some simple fertility tablet will get you to release an egg but at the end of the consultation you should have a clear idea of what’s wrong with you and what
You’re going to do now most people go to a doctor and and are given options but at the end of the day if you’re like me I want to know what you know doctor what do you think what’s your opinion what should I do what do you think I should
Do what’s going to give me the best chance of having a baby ask don’t allow the doctor to say oh you could do this you could do that you could do that you could stand on your head you could go to Morocco you could do there just get safe
Right what are you going to do bear in mind that the clock’s tick in what would you do if you were me is it available on the National Health Service and how if it’s not how much is it going to cost me so maintain the control so after the
Consultation you have got a clear idea of what you are going to do and what the next step is next slide so there’s loads of fertility treatments it might be that you just happy and you say right fine I’m safe in the knowledge that there’s nothing apparently wrong I’ll car on trying for
A little bit longer which is fine but there are some most most people are getting a bit anxious they want some treatments they want something to to Aid their fertility next slide so there are some common simple ones um it might be you just need um help
With releasing an egg in which case that’s just tablets inut insemination is a popular op option considered by many patients and it’s exactly what you say intrauterine insemination we check your fertility um for the female we look at the we monitor your the growth and development of one
Egg by scanning you when that egg is optimal and is about to be released then we take a a sample of your partner’s sperm or donor sperm if that’s if you’re in a same-sex couple or you’re in a um a single you’re you want to be a single
Parent we concentrate the sperm and with a very fine catheter inject the sperm right up into into your uterus and time it exactly so the uterus is um with the concentrated sperm is injected at time when you’re releasing the egg and it just gives the sperm instead of having
To swim all the way across the Atlantic Ocean we drop them off at the azors halfway through and then they only have to swim halfway across the Atlantic Ocean but they know that um when they get there there should be an egg ready to meet them okay um so the next that
Might not be for everybody so I’ll just quickly go through IVF and 40% of couples who have a f problem um with um with fertility will probably end up with IVF now IVF it’s it’s it’s gives the impression that it’s very clever very sophisticated very involved um but it’s not it’s
Formulate for the vast majority of people it’s formula8 there’s nothing special about it it’s a standard fertility treatment however what you’ve got to remember is that you’ve got the overlay of the stress of fertility so not only have you got the stress of treatment you’ve got the stress of the
Process of being unable to have a baby which can be very very stressful so what we want to try and do is minimize the IVF process so but the standard is this we stimulate your ovaries we don’t want to just get one egg we want to get half
A dozen eight nine 10 maybe even more eggs so we look at your age we look at your um hormonal profile we look at your size and we’ll we’ll predict which dose of hormones we need to give you we give you a daily injection of a hormone which
Stimulates your ovaries to produce lots of eggs next slide please when those eggs are ready usually after about nine or 10 days we monitor the growth of the eggs by an ultr sound scan like the Baseline scan you had to look to make sure that all your anatom was in the
Right place and when those eggs they growing little follicles fluid fill sacks that we call follicles when those eggs are mature normally after nine or 10 days of injections we collect the eggs and the egg collection is very straight forward we bring you in we sedate you and then we put a little
Needle through the top of the vagina into your ovary and flush out the fluid which hopefully contains the egg okay we then take next slide please we then take the egg and we fertilize it with the sperm and all these are pictures of sperm I don’t know whether they that
That we can actually play those as a video but probably not um and you can see you know on the left there’s a good sperm count the middle one there’s not so good and then on the right hand side there’s a relatively low sperm C so what
We do depending on the SP oh here they go look at that we’re sing at 600 miles an hour all over the place look um so what we do we can track the sperms see how they’re swimming and if you’ve got a good sperm count then we’ll incubate
100,000 sperm with each egg that we find sometimes the sperm count is very low and we haven’t got 100,000 sperm and if you’ve got a 100 sperm might only have five sperm in which case we take those sperm if they’re not normal and next slide please and micro inject a single
Sperm into an egg and this is a this is what you have to remember now this is an egg and there’s a a a a needle which is the size of a hair and in there can you just see a sperm going up and the sperm
Should come back down now as we inject the sperm there it goes here comes the sperm and we inject it right into the egg and that’s called ixie intral cyto plasmic insemination or injection iie where we get one sperm and I’ve seen a um one of my patients had a twin
Pregnancy from her male partner and he had five sperm not 20 million not 20,000 but five sperm and those those babies now that came seem just recently they’re 15 years old beautiful girls next slide please um and then we fertilize the eggs and we
Grow them if if if you go to a care fertility clinic we have something very clever called care Maps where we grow and look we video the growth and development of the embryos every 10 minutes we take photographs every 10 minutes we measure the growth and development how quickly the the dividing
And we put all the information into an art artificial intelligence machine that predicts which embryos are going to um turn into babies and um our chief scientific officer who’s been the U Professor Alison Campbell and her team of embryologists have now won multiple awards for this technology which enables
Us to predict which which embryos are going to turn into babies it won’t make the embryos better it just gives us a better chance of choosing the embryo which is likely to turn into a baby and normally we grow the embryos for five days and we got all this data on the
Embryos and then we either put back one single embryon and freeze the rest or freeze all the embryos okay and this is or it might be that we want to biopsy an embryo so we can take a five cells out of the embryo and look for the genes to see which
Whether they are genetically normal or not and that’s called P pre-implantation genetic um transfer o you know I look at these embryo look at these videos and I still I’m fascinated that’s you’re taking a group of cells from that embryo and you don’t have to worry because you only
Take five cells and then there’s about a 100 cells there it won’t cause any abnormalities the embryo is totey potential at that moment in time and it will grow back those embryos will grow back we take those five cells and we look at the genetic constitution of those cells and it will
Tell us whether that embryo is genetically normal or not pgta and of course if you’re genetically normal your chance of having a baby with that embryo is hugely increased what we have to remember is that a lot of human embryos are genetically abnormal that’s why we don’t get pregnant naturally
Every time IVF doesn’t create abnormal increased numbers of abnormal embryos it but it we can predict which embryo and if you’ve got a genetic abnormality we can actually predict that as well with um biopsy the embryos so then we freeze the embryos very safely very carefully and those
Embryos we can save for you for up to 55 years not that you want to save an embryo for 55 years but if you if you want to take time out after the IVF process and go away and have a holiday or chill out and then you come back and
We can Tha one embryo out and then put it back into your uterus at the appropriate time and your chance of getting pregnant is every bit the same as if it’s a fresh or a frozen embryo um because because the embryo freezing process now is so good we we
Don’t have to worry about um the freezing anymore and a lot of patients now prefer to have their embryos Frozen and then we just freeze your little um family in the um freezer and it might be you have two or three or four embryos Frozen or even more um we’ve had one
Patient in Liverpool just recently he got 16 embryos go to be there’s probably a football team in in um in in the freezer now for for her but um anyway we’ll um that’s for that’s for another day so we’ve got your embryos then you can go home chill out recover from your
Egg collection recover from the ordeal and then just wait and have your um embryos put back to time that’s that’s good for you next slide please um we put the embryo back that’s technically very straightforward it’s just like having a spear we just uh we just examine you put a speculum into the
Vagina and then thread the um embryo in a a catheter up into your uterus using pelv pelvic ultrasound to guide us and we just pop the embryo back into the uterus and then we sit and wait for a fortnite you don’t have to sit and wait
In the clinic you can go home and do normal things um just be normal um don’t go mad but simly you don’t need to stop everything and lie in bed for two weeks what will be will we be and really at that particular point we say goodbye to
Science and hello to Magic because we don’t really know the true causes of how an embryo turns into a baby from then on but we do know that we’ve helped it as far as we possibly can and then your chances um we just wait for two weeks
Which is agony um for those who have been through it and then we do the pregnancy test and hopefully about half of you will have achieved a pregnancy with every single embryo of course half won’t um which is which is very sad but it but what you mustn’t do is consider
IVF to be just a one-off treatment it’s it’s it’s not a Sprint it’s a it’s a marathon for a lot of people so we just put the next embryo back if you’re lucky enough to have two EMB you know more than one embryo Frozen next slide there
Are lots of combinations that we don’t really have time to to talk about there’s um shared motherhood for samex couples where we can um we can take an egg out of um one partner fertilize it with donor sperm and put the resulting embryo into the other partner so um the
Other partner has the bab grows the baby has the baby delivers the baby but it contains the genetic information of the other partner and I think that’s really quite a neat way um to do things but of course everybody has their own opinion about about infertility their all own biases and and
Um uh personally I think it’s great that we can we can offer um fertility treatment for samees seex couples and I actually think that shared motherhood would be something that I would want to consider but that’s just my opinion and it’s not NE the opinion of lots of other
People um or it might not be the the opinion of the same-sex couple but um it’s it’s um it’s an option next slide please um of course some of us will be in relationships where either we don’t have sperm particularly in the same seex couples or a single a woman wanted to be
Um um a single mother or it might be medical reason why the heterosexual uh uh couple with the male partner doesn’t have sperm in which case we will use um sperm um donation we have um because of the size of of care fertility being the
Biggest clinic in um in the UK and now one of the bigger clinics in Europe because we’ve got CL we’ve got um clinics in Spain and the USA um we can get sperm from our own bank we’ve got an egg bank and a sperm bank or it might be
That you’d like to get sperm um from one of our partners California cry Bank cryos European sperm bank Fairfax uh Bourn donor Bank London sperm bank all the Brighton fertilities Associates to name but a few we can we can um use sperm from our partners and if you are
In a position where you need um sperm donation just phone us up we can we can do it similarly with egg donation we’ve got great um success rates we’ve got our own egg Bank uh we’re um we’ve got one access to a you know we
Are one of the leading egg banks in in Europe so we can provide um egg donation um eggs for you and if you’re interested in that just give us a ring or give your local Clinic ring and we can talk you through egg donation next slide
Please have we got any more slides oh no that’s it oh yes we have um oh and of course there are um surrogacy is if in the in the couple may be um in a heterosexual couple a woman has lost her uterus through cancer or she may have
Been born without one and so she’s got eggs but she hasn’t got a uterus or in a same seex male couple it might be they need um to find what we call a surut and that is a a um a woman who is prepared to have a child on behalf of what we
Call the commissioning couple in the absence of the commissioning couple having a womb to grow a baby in themselves and we have obviously um we have a a large surrogacy dedicated surrogacy um program which if um um you you want to find out more about it either through gestational s
Surrogacy or traditional surrogacy then we can um again our surgy team will be only more more than happy to to talk you through that because it can be quite a complex business so we want to be able to guide you through um surrogacy every step of the way next slide
Please of course as I’ve mentioned on more than one occasion one of the important things that we have to do is to guide you and support you through um um every step of the way and it’s really really um vital that you get the necessary support because as I said you
Can only control a few things but there are some things where you have to let the control go to somebody else and it’s nice to know that if you’ve got somebody a named person who is with you every step of the way we have dedicated counselors that you can speak to at any
Point in your treatment or our brilliant um nurses and um doctors can support um you we also have um Sport Network of of uh patients who are there support and of course you’ll be you all some of you who go through the triam will be aware of
The um social media that you can you can also um click into but if you do if you if you feel as though the support is lacking ask questions ask the questions and I will guarantee you even if you think they are Daft they will not be in
The top thousand daftest questions I’ve heard and when you re when you’ve been asked questions about your fertility for 40 years believe you me there is nothing nothing that would um surprise me and there little it’s just the little things that can nag away at you
So just ask and we’re here for you next slide we also have a patient portal that you that everything’s in in one place so that if you need any uh support via if um via the portal just um you can ask questions through that um um and you can
Access it through your desktop laptop mobiles every step of the way we’re here for you next slide and also um after making some consultations three or four years ago we decided to offer our own inhouse payment process so that we what we’re trying to
Do is to get get the as much stress out of of of the treatment as possible so that um what we now do is to offer um inhouse pay packages um payment plans which we call care pay and we’ve got IVF multicycle program prrams we’ve got IVF donor program refund programs and donor
Egg IVF refund programs we have a dedicated care pay team um who can guide you through what might be suitable for you but it’s also that control how much is all this going to cost keep your budget tight keep your timings tight don’t let things drift and then if we
Know how long you going to try for a baby how much money you’re going to spend we can tell you at the outset what are your chances what statistical chances given those two parameters that you will that you will get a baby at the
End of it so care pay is proving to be extremely um popular with patients who don’t qualify for NHS treatment next slide please and as I said we’re the largest group of IVF clinics in the country we’ve got um um IVF clinics all over now that’s even an old slide now because we
Also now have clinics in in Cardiff exetor and Plymouth so we’ve now managed to um extend our reach right into the southwest of England but as you can see we’ve got clinics that are hopefully local to you um we’ve also now got four clinics in Spain Madrid San Sebastian
Alicant and another one that I can’t remember um and one of the most recent things we’ve now done is we’ve branched out into the United States we have a clinic in Charlotte and there are two other clinics in the pipeline in the southeast of the USA where we’re about
To um start working and we’re very excited about that because the bigger we get the more expertise we get we now have over 60 dedicated Consultants we have a 100 nurses and we so there is and all we do all day long we are dedicated to fertility treatment to give you the
Best chance of having that family so if we if you’re in Clinic a and there’s a particular you have a particular difficult issue it might be that in clinic C we have a consultant who specialized in that and because of our size we can then cross link talk about
You as a as an individual case and get the best advice and the expert um knowledge upto-date knowledge that we can then take to your particular case wherever you might be in the in the UT or in the USA or Spain and um what we’re
Trying to do is every week offer you um some upcoming up some latest information and as I say we’ve got some really top top quality consultant um gynecologist working in care um Tony Rutherford who’s a an old mate of mine he’s um he’s the lead clinician in leads which is
Britain’s largest IVF Clinic he has 40 years of experience you wouldn’t believe it looking at his young face there but he he does um and uh uh he will be talking on the 5th of February on hints tips and tricks for fertility and then Mariano one of his Junior colleagues who
We managed to to pinch from another uh clinque um and we’re delighted to have him he’s going to talk about empowering your fertility choices in the 12th on the 12th of February he too is working in leads now so I think in the last five minutes I shall go through a few questions
Um right Google says start improving your health 100 days before egg collection considering my age 34 is it better to collect ASAP or to get healthier first right if if if you’ve been trying for a baby at the age of 34 I would get advice first okay 34 might
Seem no a to us nowadays and it isn’t but you know you’re kicking on a bit so fertility wise so I would seek treatment sooner or not treatment but seek advice sooner rather than later um so um start getting healthier but get um get your get get the advice
First my partner is 43 I understand there are illnesses such as Autism linked to old fathers what other illnesses are linked to older patients what illnesses are linked to I IVF babies right there are no um known issues with IVF ixie babies over and above the background population but as
You get older there are there are um increased risks of you know um genetic not necessarily genetic diseases but acquired um diseases there is um that there is supposed to be um a link between Autism and the older father um there’s a link with Down Syndrome but 43
Goodness me that’s not old um we’re talking um um yeah I I certainly wouldn’t consider 43 to be that old to to to Father the children um if if and you know it’s a risk benefit analysis isn’t it um if you if you Charlie Chaplain was 86 when he
Fathered his first with his last child 86 God do they have television or laptops or something else to do in those days or card games or anyway you father these children at 80 last child at 86 and that child was down was born with Down syndrome and as you get older there
Is an increased risk of down syndrome but um as again if you are older and you’re concerned seek advice re exercise if you’re already exercise times a week swimming exercise class is this class just too much exercise no not not necessarily um I would as a as a yard
Stick I would say if you run more than the equivalent of 15 miles a week that’s too much exercise too much exercise for anybody um but um don’t necessarily cut down your exercise although I’ve looked after Olympic Tre athletes who have I’ve advised them to cut down their exercise
Because some of those They Run 100 miles a week swim 50 25 miles got no time for intercourse never mind mind um s for a baby goodness me so um everything moderation but I wouldn’t necessarily cut down um your exercise from what you were doing now is
There anything we can do um to improve sperm quality with crypto zo spermia um test keep them testicles cool um but um good healthy diet uh what I would do though is I would um if you have crypto sper Zoo spermia the chances are you’ve been diagnosed by a doctor and i’ crack
On with treatment I don’t think if the sperm count is very low I don’t think it’s worthwhile waiting as the female gets older and her chances go down I would crack on with treatment sooner rather than later final question today I’m just being told to to wind up now
Cuz we have been going on yeah 3 minutes left and I’ve been on an hour Goodness Me hi I am 32 with an AMX level of 11 I have tubal infertility previous topic pregnany one floian floian tube removed and the one damaged would you recommend standard IVF or natural gentle IVF and
In your opinion is it best to start ASAP standard IVF you know if you had a burst appendix would you want a natural gentle um appendicectomy I don’t understand what that actually means standard you need standard IVF you were designed IVF was designed for you years ago when
I started IVF we only used to do treatment on people with with damaged tubes your amh of 11 is good your I um you’ve got damaged tubes in my opinion you need to start IVF treatment if you want a baby as soon as possible because
Your amh level is not going to go up if you’ve decided You’ found the man of your dreams or the woman of your dreams and you want a baby crack on now you’ve already had them at ectopic pregnancy which is really nasty um and you don’t want to
You don’t want to have um spend more time being control get your I get IVF um now well not now wait till tomorrow or the day after but um but um um seriously just be in control don’t just wait and drift so um there are loads of more
Questions I’ll try and answer the qu any more questions um a bit later on as I said Lauren and Khloe are in the background there beavering away I’d like to thank them as ever for all their their hard work and if you know Khloe she’s leaving she’s got promoted I’m gut
I’m devastated as we would say in Liverpool but can I just say for the record um if this is the last time we worked together Chloe you’ve been fantastic you’ve been um um a a model professional for care fertility and we’re very proud proud to have had you
Working with us and I’m sure you’ll go on from strength to strength and I’m no doubt there’ll be many patients um that have been through care who who have valued your your smiling face and your your constant positivity so good luck in the future and you’re the same Lauren we all
Love you as well but you’re not going anywhere so you’re staying um and um if you’re starting on your n on your IVF Journey good luck be control never ever worry about about asking questions always ask um and you never know just that little bit of look and you’ll get
The family that you crave for and hopefully it’ll be part of the Care family so I’ll say night night everybody and hopefully I’ll see you again soon bye-bye I’m sha and I manag Care’s new patient inquiry team we’re here to make it easy for you to take your very first step in
Your fertility Journey we completely understand how nervous and excited you might be when you contact us this is the start of a life-changing process and hopefully the beginning of an amazing future as a family so it’s really important that we give you all the information you need that way we can
Help you to feel much more comfortable and confident with your treatment whatever you need to talk about I want to reassure you that no question is silly or trivial we appreciate that there might be a lot to taken at first but don’t worry we’ll send you a clear information
Pack about the treatments you’re interested in and we’re always here for any follow-up queries my team also manage inquiries about care pay our range of funding packages which are exclusive to care fertility patients when you’re ready we can book you a virtual consultation with a specialist fertility doctor from your local care
Clinic so if you want more information have a question or wish to book an appointment call my team we want you to know that we are here for you at every stage of your fertility Journey we say that our patients become part of our care family and it’s true we care deeply
About you and your future and our teams are here to make sure you have all the support you need reason why we we chose care was just one the care that they give you um the after care that they have available to you and the fact that
They um offer different forms of um treatment um and they listen to you one thing that I’ve identified and what I’ve noticed when speaking to other um people that I’ve met within the infertility Community is there’s a lot of clinics out there that don’t necessarily listen
To you as the patient it was kind of a one-sized fits all but with care that didn’t seem to be the case at all they took everything into consideration and they listened um to your concerns they listened to you as a person and they put a a package and and a process
In place that will help you and you know fingers crossed will give you that positive result from the end at the end of it without shadow of a doubt if I had to go through it again I would definitely go back to care oh the support at care was brilliant was
Brilliant yeah I mean the nurses were brilliant for us you feel so looked after and cared by by the whole team we felt that they did care and it wasn’t just for them getting something out of it it was actually that ongoing support yeah and they wanted it to work for
Us care fertility started over 20 years ago with one clinic and the goal of helping patients achieve their dream of family through truly personal care and the most scientifically Advanced fertility treatments we’ve grown from that one Clinic we now have clinics across the UK and many people have
Become part of our care family with over 50,000 care babies in the world but one thing has and always will remain the same we care for each and every patient we care about your dreams of having a baby and we put our heart and soul into
Every aspect of what care can offer you to provide you with the best care possible and to give you your best chance of success in treatment we look to our own own care family from our consultants embryologists and nurses to our admin teams and specialist fertility counselors we’ve also put a lot of
Thought into how we improve each and every step of your journey which will no doubt begin with lots of questions we know that thinking about starting IVF can be daunting for some and that’s why our care patient services and support teams will always be there for you whenever you have a question
Need advice or simply want someone to talk to so that you feel completely confident and in control of your fertility options so yes we have grown and developed over the years but care and empathy are always at the heart of who we are we are passionate about changing lives and creating Futures and
I hope that this shines through in everything we do and everyone you meet at all of our clinics we don’t just care we are Care one in six people need help to grow their family you’re not alone and our care family will do everything we can to help your dream of family come true there are over 50,000 care babies in the world today and behind this success is our promise to make more heartfelt dreams of family
Become reality by ensuring our care goes into everything we do for all our patients every single day you will receive truly individualized treatment a patient Centric approach with empathy at its heart we understand how nervous and excited you might be about getting started but you can be assured of
Kindness empathy and all the information you need from our new patient inquiry team we are all here to make it easy for you to take your very first step in your fertility Journey call our team on 0800 564 2270 to learn more and book an appointment we don’t just care we are care