IVF Pregnancy

Good News But Increased Risk?

By Paul J.O'Brien B.A., N.C.E.H.S., Dip. Acu., Adv. Dip. OBB, Cert Clin. Med, Cert.CHM, Pn1, PN-SSR, PN-NCA, M.AFPA, M.ETCMA, M.C.Th.A.

IVF Pregnancy should always be celebrated. It is often the culmination of years of struggle, pain and the work of great effort, sacrifice and above all...love. This is wonderful news...but one that must be treated with "cautious optimism", as I constantly advise my patients. The sad reality is, for many newly pregnant couples, the risk of miscarriage is great in an IVF pregnancy. In this article, I'm going to tell you how to reduce that risk by over 90%!

IVF Pregnancy and Miscarriage

The reality is, 60% of women will suffer a miscarriage before they realise they were even pregnant. And it gets worse. Of those 40% remaining, who know they are pregnant, 25% will miscarry before week 12. Essentially, about 70% of ALL natural pregnancies will miscarry before week 12. Miscarriage, is sadly, incredibly common (there is good news though - there ARE LOTS of things we can do to reduce the chances of miscarriage which I'll cover below) . 

The figures are worse in IVF Pregnancy (1). 

  • In IVF cycles 49% of embryos fail to implant.
  • Of the remaining 51% that do implant, 34% are lost between implantation and a positive pregnancy test. 
  • 4% are lost shortly after the positive pregnancy 
  • 15% more are lost after that, often before week 12. 

Given these numbers I’m sure you can appreciate why it is important to differentiate between implantation failure and early stage IVF pregnancy loss, as they can have very different underlying causes and thus, different treatment protocols to correct them. 

This is also why I don’t care about IVF clinics touting their pregnancy rates. A pregnancy rate is unimportant when so many end in miscarriage and failure. The only figure that is important is their live birth rate. The worldwide average live birth rate was 20.2% (2). Mine is 82% (3). The reason mine is dramatically different is because I figure out the underlying problem that leads to IVF in the first place, and fix that problem, thereby dramatically reducing the chance of failure. 

How to Keep an IVF Pregnancy

As I am sure you can appreciate this is complicated question to answer. In my clinic and with my online coaching clients I find underlying cause of miscarriage and treat that through special nutritional and exercise considerations to support pregnancy and specific pressure points, and moxibustion techniques used to increase HCG and progesterone levels necessary for holding and gripping onto a pregnancy and prevent miscarriage that are proven to reduce the risk of miscarriage by 91% percent. 

What Does Not Work

A common reason in Western Medicine for miscarriage is low progesterone levels in the second half of their menstrual cycle (luteal phase). If a woman is diagnosed with this they may be prescribed progesterone supplements, to be taken for the first trimester of pregnancy. What they don’t tell you is that no study has shown that general first-trimester progesterone supplements reduce the risk (when a mother might already be losing her baby) (4).

Prevention of miscarriage is mainly based on avoiding or mitigating any risk factors of it. Currently there is no known way to prevent an impending miscarriage according to Western Medicine. Identifying the cause of the miscarriage may help prevent it from happening again in a future pregnancy but that’s about it. . In recurrent miscarriage, various tests are indicated to identify any underlying cause. Vitamin supplementation has not been found to be effective to prevent miscarriage (5). 

What DOES Work

There are few things more important in life than its preservation and safety, and at no time is this more important than during pregnancy. There are few things as upsetting and tragic as losing a baby, and while it’s certainly not something many expectant mothers want to think about, it’s important to know there are many simple steps you can take for increasing the chances of bringing a baby to full term and ensuring excellent health. 

Acupuncture and Acupressure for Miscarriage Prevention is a highly successful form of treatment in which I have been privileged to have had several successes. All supported by a large body of objective medical evidence, including;

University of New Mexico, Albuquerque in 2005 showed that the number of miscarriages in an acupuncture group was half that of the control group. 

Ectopic pregnancies were significantly lower in the acupuncture group - 0 of 24 pregnancies (0%) vs. 2 of 37 pregnancies (9%).

And finally, the live-birth rate per IVF/ICSI cycle was significantly higher in the acupuncture group than in controls (21% vs. 16%). There was a 42% live-birth rate per pregnancy in the acupuncture group, compared to a 35% rate in the non-acupuncture group. 

And this is just one study as published in the June Edition 2005 of The Ob/GYN News. Other studies including those published in Hum. Reprod. 1996;11:1314-7 and Fertil. Steril. 2002;77:721-4, all conclusively show that Acupuncture/Acupressure is a safe and effective treatment to substantially increase a healthy full term pregnancy. 

If you'd like to learn more about what you can do to secure a happy and healthy IVF pregnancy, Contact me and request a consult to discuss your options.

What's Your Next Best Step With IVF?

If you’re trying for a family or planning on going through IVF, ICSI IUI, or have been through failed rounds, from poor egg growth, fertilization failure, sperm quality issues, miscarriage etc, and want to give this round the best possible shot of success and dramatically improve your fertility and reproductive health, to have a happy healthy baby, then …

  1. Download my Free "9 Reasons You Can't Get Pregnant" Guide to learn more about what complications may be present and what you can do to fix them!
  2. Subscribe to my newsletter to keep up to date with the new articles, how to guides, fertility recipes and more.
  3. Get Your Copy of "Before IVF: How it works, why it doesn’t and what you can do to Ensure Your IVF Success!". Over 430 pages, this guide provides answers to every question you could ask about fertility and how to maximise your reproductive health. It will help you beat the numbers in IVF and better still may help you conceive without ever having to go through IVF!
  4. Contact me with your particular questions and concerns and I'll do my best to help. :-)
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Footnotes

(1) Boomsma CM, Kavelaars A, Eijkemans MJ, et al. Endometrial secretion analysis identifies a cytokine profile predictive of pregnancy in IVF. Hum Reprod 2009;24:1427-35.

(2) Sullivan EA, Zegers-Hochschild F, Mansour R, et al. International committee for monitoring assisted reproductive technologies (ICMART) world report: assisted reproductive technology 2004. Hum Reprod 2013;28:1375-90.

(3) O’Brien, P., “The Treatment of Subfertility: A Comprehensive Review of the Primary Western Diagnosis of Subfertility and the 9 Primary Corresponding Patterns in TCM; Treatments & Prescriptions”. Lansdowne College of Medicine, Mar 24th 2018 

(4) Wahabi HA, Fayed AA, Esmaeil SA, Al Zeidan RA (2007). Wahabi, Hayfaa A, ed. "Progestogen for treating threatened miscarriage". Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (12): CD005943.doi:10.1002/14651858.CD005943.pub2.PMID 22161393.

(5) Rumbold A, Middleton P, Pan N, Crowther CA (Jan 19, 2011). "Vitamin supplementation for preventing miscarriage.". Cochrane database of systematic reviews (Online) (1): CD004073. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD004073.pub3. PMID 21249660.

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