Dr. Sulbha Arora

In this advanced day and age where we witness miracles daily, IVF treatment has proved its worth by helping people change their lives completely. IVF or In Vitro Fertilization treatment is one of the biggest blessings to humankind. With the help of IVF, numerous couples, who had lost all hopes, have successfully conceived a child. Even though IVF treatment has been a savior in many cases, it is still a complicated procedure and needs to be researched upon thoroughly. You need to be very careful about your health during and after the IVF treatment is done, so that your baby is born in a healthy and safe manner. Given below are certain tips for taking care of oneself after undergoing an IVF procedure -

Risks You Should Be Willing To Take With IVF
There are a number of things which should be considered before going through the procedure of IVF. While considering IVF treatments, patients need to know about the possibility of having multiple pregnancies. This can be problematic to many as multiple pregnancies mean that the pain and weakness which comes with pregnancies will also increase. You have to be very careful in such cases. The  risk of premature deli very and low birth rate are also alarmingly high in the case of IVF treatments. Your child may also have birth defects if he/she is born via this treatment.

To minimise this risk, many doctors prefer to transfer a maximum of two embryos and encourage single embryo transfer wherever possible. This reduces the risk of multiple pregnancy without reducing the chances of pregnancy, because here at Nova we prefer blastocyst stage transfer and we have a high Implantation Rate.

Self-care Tips to Take Care of Yourself after IVF

1. Consuming a good diet: The most important thing which needs to be kept in mind during any kind of pregnancies, especially pregnancies through IVF treatment, is eating the right foods. A good diet is a must to avoid any kind of complications that may arise in the future. Taking care of yourself during this time and eating good food is important for the baby. However, make sure that you don’t eat anything in excess as well. Try to eat a lot of fresh green vegetables, fruits and whole foods.
2. Try to be positive: Although this may not seem as important, but it still needs to be kept in mind that your baby’s health has a lot to do with your physical and mental health. Try to be as positive as possible as the baby gets closely impacted by your state of mind.
3. Sufficient amount of rest and workout is required: During your pregnancy days, you need to make sure to work out and get enough rest. Make sure to get at least 7-8 hours of sleep daily. Go for walks for half an hour on a regular basis and also do some light stretching and warm-up exercises as well.

In case you have a concern or query you can always consult an expert & get answers to your questions!

Hello everyone!

My name is Dr. Sulbha Arora. I am the clinical director of Nova IVI Fertility, Mumbai. I have been practicing as an IVF specialist for the last 14 years. Today I am talking about a topic called egg freezing. What is Egg freezing? Why is it becoming common? and who should consider doing it? Now women are unfortunately born with a fixed number of eggs and throughout our lifetime we never make new eggs. When we are born we have about 1-2 million eggs in ovaries. By the time we hit puberty and get our first period this number is already reduced to 400,000. After that in a woman's life, she only keeps losing eggs month after month. The best eggs quantity wise and quality wise are usually given out in the 20s.

Once women cross 30s and enters the fourth decade of life the quantity and quality of egg start declining. Although we come across sensational celebrity success stories that make women believe it is perfectly alright to postpone childbearing to later in life. This is actually far from the truth. So today because there are so much of focus on education, on career, it is not always possible to keep everything aside, get married and start having babies in the 20s. But by the time the new age, career-oriented, educated urban Indian women have started to get married or settle down and start planning a family, her biological clock has already slowed down. This puts a lot of pressure on her during her younger years whether to focus on career or to get married.

Fortunately now, there is an answer for this and the answer lies in egg freezing. When we do investment for our future, for our retirement to take care of old age then why not do in investment for our future fertility. So egg freezing is an option where a young woman who has not yet found a right partner or does not wish to start having children yet can take some of these eggs, freeze them and then later on when she wants to have children she can take these frozen eggs and use them when her own biological clock has slowed down. It is a very simple process. When a woman gets her period for 10 or 11 days, there is a course of injection set is given to her. These injection help her to produce multiple eggs in both ovaries. Once the eggs are ready which takes about 10 or 11 days, the eggs are then removed by a procedure called ovum pick-up which is done under complete anaesthesia so she is completely comfortable. She does not have any pain and the process takes hardly 15 to 30 minutes. It is not a surgery. There're no cuts and stitches involved. The eggs are removed through the vagina.

The best eggs are then sorted out. The mature ones can be frozen and kept for extended duration of time. Now the duration does not impact the quality of the eggs. So whether she wants to thaw these eggs or use them to 2 years later or 10 years later the duration does not cause any deterioration in their quality and neither does this procedure called cause any harm to her health. Just because she has undergone and egg pick up or frozen some eggs at a young age it does not mean that later on in life she will not be able to conceive naturally. It does not mean that she will have a Menopause earlier but now she has an investment for her future. Her subsequent cycles and periods will continue regularly like earlier always coming. But suppose at the age of 28 of 30 she has frozen her eggs and kept for future then later on supposing at the age of 40 or 42 she is now married and wants to start having children. Her biological clock would have slowed down but she can use these eggs which she had frozen even 10 years back. So at the age of 40 as far as far as her fertility is concerned she is 30 years old.

Egg freezing started initially as an option for women who have been diagnosed with cancer and need to undergo chemotherapy and radiotherapy because these procedures will destroy her egg cells but it has now become a very common procedure for social fertility preservation. That is for women who are not yet planning a family and they want to preserve their fertility for future. So if you are a young woman who has not yet found a right partner or does not want to get married and having babies yet due to other priorities this is a good option for you. If you would like to know more about this option or undergo the process you can get in touch with me through Lybrate.com .