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At the end of the year, everyone’s thoughts turn to the future. Hopes come into high definition, and daydreams begin to transform into concrete plans.

What do you want to achieve?
How do you want the next twelve months of your life to look?

For thousands of people across the country, their vision of 2017 includes pregnancy and bringing a baby home, but for those who are struggling to conceive, planning the future doesn’t seem so simple. If something is wrong, consulting with a fertility doctor and getting an accurate diagnosis is a profound way to begin your new year.

For any IVF patient, the embryo transfer procedure is an exciting and stressful milestone in their fertility treatment. After the weeks of medications and monitoring, the egg retrieval procedure and the anxious wait to see how the embryos develop, this final step of the IVF process is full of potential. Once the embryos has been placed in the uterus, one last thing must happen before a patient is officially pregnant: implantation.

After a successful round of IVF, patients might wonder what they can expect from an IVF pregnancy. The process of achieving pregnancy with the help of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) can seem far removed from “natural” conception, and some women worry that this difference will continue into the pregnancy.

Egg freezing, or “oocyte cryopreservation,” is a technology that can help to slow down the clock for women who know that they want to get pregnant someday, but also want more time. Age-related fertility problems are one of the most common issues that fertility clinics see, and most of these are related to the decrease in egg quality and quantity.

When you have been through the heartbreak and stress of infertility, sometimes for years, discovering that you are pregnant after IVF can bring mixed emotions. You may expect the joy, relief, and excitement, but for some women, the undercurrent of anxiety can be overwhelming. The most common fear is pregnancy loss, especially if you have suffered one or more miscarriages in the past.

Surrogacy has been around since the 1980s, but in the early years it was often shrouded in secrecy and legal red tape. These days, advances in medicine, law, and public awareness have allowed IVF surrogacy to become a routine option for many people who might otherwise never have the chance to have a baby who shares their genetic heritage.

The development of in vitro fertilization (IVF) can be traced back to the moment when doctors first began thinking scientifically about the causes of what was then referred to as “sterility.” Previously infertility was considered a divine rather than a medical matter, and the inability to have children was considered either a judgement or a trial from God. At the turn of the 19th century, as science began gain ground in modern thought, doctors began to reconsider whether they could intervene in matters of infertility.

The embryo transfer procedure is the final step of the IVF process. You have been through the weeks of medications, the monitoring, and the egg retrieval, and the resulting embryos have been cultured in the lab for three to six days until they are ready to be transferred to your uterus. If your embryos were frozen, either to give your body a rest before transfer or because they were left over from an earlier cycle, they will be carefully thawed before the procedure.

The struggle with infertility can be a crushing emotional experience for many people. Feelings of shame, fear, anger, and depression are common. Although you may know intellectually that infertility is nobody’s fault, the sense of failure at something that is “supposed to be” so basic and natural can be overwhelming.