Do IVF babies arrive early?

The majority of the patients are concerned about the outcomes of their pregnancy following an IVF conception and natural they are very anxious all the way through the pregnancy. Prematurity of preterm birth has been associated with the IVF treatment. A Large proportion of the preterm births following fertility treatment is related to the transfer of more than one embryo. Transfer of more than one embryo leads to a higher incidence of multiple births. The rate of multiple births following a natural conception is probably around three to four percent. However, the incidence of multiple births following a fertility treatment is almost ten to twenty percent. This is what contributes to the prematurity associated with the IVF treatments.

Prematurity of preterm birth has been associated with the IVF treatment. A Large proportion of the preterm births following fertility treatment is related to the transfer of more than one embryo. Transfer of more than one embryo leads to a higher incidence of multiple births. The rate of multiple births following a natural conception is probably around three to four percent. However, the incidence of multiple births following a fertility treatment is almost ten to twenty percent. This is what contributes to the prematurity associated with the IVF treatments.

Single Embryo Transfer

Nowadays there is a lot of shift in the fertility clinics moving towards a single embryo transfer (SET). Due to improvements in the IVF technologies, we are now able to acculturate the embryos for an extra two days and then aim for a blastocyst or a day five transfer. If you have your first treatment, and you have a good quality blastocyst then most fertility specialists would advise putting one blastocyst back in. Because by putting two blastocyst back in we might increase the chance of a multiple pregnancies even higher – it can go up to forty to fifty percent.

EmbryoScope

On the other hand, there are other technologies that have become common recently such as the use of Time-Lapse Imaging of the embryo, what is called an EmbryoScope. The EmbryoScope does a real-time monitoring of the development of the embryo, herby it generates a lot of information and data. The data is then fed into an algorithm which ranks the embryos based on their quality. This supports the embryologist to select the best-ranked embryo and perform the single embryo transfer with more confidence of success.

Babies following an IVF treatment might arrive early, a large proportion of the early or premature births is related to the transfer of more than one embryo. Therefore most fertility clinics will discuss with you the pros and cons of having a single embryo or maybe more than one embryo.