News & Blog
Driving into work and negotiating the Bristol traffic is normally when I start mentally running through my day, I am hoping that eggs have fertilised or that embryos have made it to the blastocyst stage and I worry about what I might say to the patients if it hasn’t gone well.
For most people, Christmas is a lovely time of celebration and family get-togethers and is especially focussed on children and the excitement and pleasure that parents and grandparents associate with it. But if you’ve been trying unsuccessfully for a long time and are not yet lucky enough to have the baby you long for, then this time of year can trigger a range of painful feelings. It can be a heart breaking reminder of your lack of a baby, or a second child that you’ve always wanted.
BCRM Medical Director and lead Consultant , Mr Valentine Akande, has welcomed the news that fertility treatment 'add-ons' are to be colour-coded by the official watchdog, the Human Fertility and Embryology Authority (HFEA), to highlight any that are unproven or unsafe.
An unusual appeal is being launched in the West Country: to find the first people conceived and born in Bristol as the result of IVF so they can be included in celebrations to mark 40 years since the first IVF baby was born in the city back in 1984.
With around 15% of women experiencing miscarriage at least once in their lives and one in a hundred suffering recurrent miscarriage, the opening of a pioneering clinic at BCRM in Bristol offering a unique combination of treatments not previously available in the region will give new hope to those affected.
Diego, a researcher from Spain, said: “It was a long wait, and we learned many life lessons in the meantime, including this memorable advice from another trying-to-conceive dad, which was: Always have a Plan B.” Mareike said: “It’s a hard journey, but we learned the most important thing is to go your own path and find what makes you happy. Live your life your way.
A senior embryologist from Bristol Centre for Reproductive Medicine (BCRM) is back in the UK after a visit to Canada funded by prize money she was awarded for an outstanding conference presentation delivered before Covid. Jen Nisbett, whose award-winning paper focused on how implanting frozen embryos in patients is more likely to result in a viable pregnancy than using fresh embryos in certain circumstances, used the award money to enable her to visit Mount Sinai Fertility Clinic in Toronto.
After the birth of Carly and Steve Gibbens’ second IVF baby, they had the chance to introduce their first IVF baby – by then two years old – to the BCRM consultant responsible for his creation, and they told him her name was “Dr Magic.” Carly said: “Amanda Jefferys gave us two babies when we weren’t sure we’d ever have any, and she supported us through a really challenging time in our lives. For us she’ll always be Dr Magic.”
New evidence has come to light indicating that treatment using PICSI (Physiological Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection) may reduce the chance of miscarriage for a select group of patients, namely those with a history of miscarriage or advanced maternal age. PICSI is a relatively new technique for selecting sperm, designed to improve sperm selection for conventional ICSI (performed as part of IVF when a single sperm is injected directly into an egg).