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Starting a Family

At Spring Fertility, we offer the most patient centric, individualized, flexible and compassionate care, without losing sight of what matters most: helping you achieve your goals. Together, we’ll uncover any obstacles that may be preventing you from becoming pregnant and create a plan that works for you.

We recognize that your history, your situation, and your goals are unique, and we believe your treatment plan should be too.
  

The IVF & ICSI
Process

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Fertility
Assessment
and Plan

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This phase of the IVF process will include about 3-4 weeks for your initial consult and subsequent testing.
We examine your unique case: your medical history, requirements, and results of your testing (antral follicle count, evaluation of your uterus and ovaries, and hormonal evaluation). Then we’ll choose the best protocol for you.

Ovarian Stimulation and Monitoring

This goal of this phase is for us to retrieve as many good quality eggs as possible: our aim is for your follicles to grow synchronously (at similar rates) with hormone stimulation, so we can help you obtain the most good quality eggs possible at retrieval.
This phase lasts about 8–12 days per cycle and is the most time-intensive with 2-3 self administered injections per day and about 4-6 office visits over the course of two weeks.

The Egg Retrieval

Once your eggs have matured, we retrieve your eggs during a 20 minute procedure.
You’ll check in about an hour before the procedure to prep and change into a warm robe before meeting our anesthesiologist and embryologist who will be caring for you and your eggs. You’ll fall asleep under anesthesia, while our specialists aspirate your eggs using a very fine needle.
About 20 minutes later, you’ll awaken in our recovery area where our team will look after you before you are ready to go home (usually about 45 minutes). Most people take the rest of the day off and are ready to go back to work the next day. Dr. Peter Klatsky explains the procedure in more detail here.

Selecting
Your Sperm

Prior to IVF or ICSI, the sperm is carefully processed in our Andrology lab by our expert embryologists. In a process that takes about 1-2 hours, the healthiest and most motile sperm are separated and washed to remove bacteria and other unwanted components. The sperm cells are activated and a particular density – or concentration – of the best sperm is achieved. This way, we find the best swimmers to optimize fertilization.

Fertilization (IVF/ICSI): Achieving
Good Embryos

Once we have eggs and sperm, it’s time for them to meet (insemination). This can be done in one of two ways: conventional insemination (IVF) or through ICSI. Both procedures are performed outside the body by our team of expert embryologists.
IVF (In Vitro Fertilization)

What this is: a single egg is surrounded by around 50,000 motile (swimming) sperm

How it helps: Used when sperm number and function are normal and fertilization is not suspected to be a problem.

ICSI (Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection)

What this is: A single, healthy appearing sperm is injected directly into the cytoplasm of each egg.

How it helps: Used when sperm count or function are abnormal or there are concerns that conventional fertilization may not work.

INTRA CYTOPLASMIC SPERM INJECTION “ICSI”
CONVENTIONAL IVF “INSEMINATION”

Embryo
Development
and Care

The morning after insemination, we check to see if the eggs fertilized. Normally fertilized eggs have two “pronuclei,” DNA from the sperm and from the egg. Your fertilized egg is officially called an embryo.
Today, we increasingly care for embryos in the lab for 5–6 days until they reach the blastocyst stage. This gives us time to determine which are healthiest to be transferred back to the uterus. Patients with fewer good quality embryos may choose to transfer the embryo back into the uterus 2 or 3 days after fertilization since we are not choosing between them.

Pre-implantation Genetic Testing   

IVF patients have the opportunity to test their embryos before transferring them. This process allows us to maximize the likelihood of success by carefully sampling a few cells from each embryo and testing them to see if they are chromosomally normal (PGT-A). We can also test embryos to diagnose a disease that one or both parents are known to carry (PGT-M). This test also tells us the gender of your embryo, but we can keep that a secret if you prefer. While those cells are being analyzed, your embryos are safely cryopreserved with us. Cryopreservation of embryos has been safely performed for over 30 years, and today over 99% of embryos survive with no negative effects on IVF outcomes.

The Transfer Procedure

The big day, timed to your unique case and plan. Dr. Klatksy explains the embryo transfer procedure in more detail here.

The Results

Known as “the two week wait” and often the hardest part of the entire process, ~2 weeks after the transfer, you’ll come back into our clinic to find out if your embryo implanted successfully.

Our IVF success rates

We recognize that our patients are more than a statistic.
We believe that as partners in your fertility journey, one of our key responsibilities is to provide as much transparency as possible around expected outcomes. We want you to have all of the facts so that you can make the decisions that best suit your goals.

 

 

  • San Francisco

*Please note: We encourage more than one retrieval for some patients undergoing preimplantation genetic screening and diagnosis prior
to embryo transfer to increase the likelihood of future additional successful pregnancies. This practice may have impacted our results.

**Please note: We perform a significant number of minimal stimulation cycles, which may impact our results.

Preliminary 20211 SART Success Rates – San Francisco: Live Birth per Intended Egg Retrieval (after all Embryo Transfers)
Patient’s Age <35 35-37 38-40 41-42 >42
Number of Cycle Starts 210 269 295 175 140
% of Retrievals Resulting in Live Birth 56.2% 44.6% 28.5% 18.9% 7.1%
vs ALL SART Member Clinics % of Transfers Resulting in Live Birth** 44.5% 32.4% 20.2% 9.6% 2.8%

 

 

12021 Preliminary data as reported to the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technologies SART and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention CDC.

Please note: A comparison of clinic success rates may not be meaningful because patient medical characteristics, treatment approaches and entry criteria for SART may vary from clinic to clinic. Learn more about Spring’s SART Data 

LIVE BIRTHS PER INTENDED EGG RETRIEVAL (FIRST EMBRYO TRANSFER)
Age of individual < 35 35-37 38-40 41-42 > 42
Number of cycle starts 173 179 138 86 32
Singleton Births 52.6% 41.9% 35.5% 18.6% 9.4%
Live Births 54.9% 41.9% 36.2% 20.9% 9.4%
(Confidence Range) (47.5-62.3) (34.7-49.1) (28.2-44.3) (12.3-29.5) (0 -19.5)
Singleton (percentage of live births) 95.8% 100% 98.0% 16/18 3/3
Twins (percentage of live births) 4.2% 0% 2.0% 2/18 0/3
Triplets or more (percentage of live births) 0% 0% 0% 0/18 0/3

 

  

We optimize for efficiency at every stage of the process

Patient’s
Antral Follicle
Count
Number of
mature
eggs retrieved
Fertilize
Develop into
blastocyst
“Healthy” 46
chromosomes*
Baby

50-100%

EXPECTATION OF MATURE EGGS FROM A PATIENT'S AFC

88%

ICSI FERTILIZATION RATE

54%

Fertilized Egg
to Blastocyst Rate

66%

Live Birth Rate after single euploid embryo transfer (PGS)**

*Probability of a normal embryo is directly dependent on age of individual. Age 28: 3/4 “normal” | Age 38*: 2/4 “normal” | Age 42: 1/4 “normal”
**4% anticipated decline from ongoing pregnancy rate to live birth rate

 

A simple way to look ahead

Our Due Date Calculator can help you estimate when to expect your baby and see roughly how far along you are, based on the first day of your last period or your conception date.

DUE DATE CALCULATOR

 

 

Your Fertility Consult

At your initial consult, you’ll meet with your physician to review your health history and family planning goals. All initial visits include a pelvic ultrasound to understand your AFC and Uterine health. Because most patients want to become pregnant as soon as possible, we can move quickly. Any additional testing can be completed within a month (or one menstrual cycle) of an initial consult. Download or print our “Questions to Ask at Your Initial Consult” resource to help guide your consult conversations.

Questions to Ask at Your Initial Consult

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Our Providers

Our exceptional team of physicians have joined Spring from around the world with the shared commitment to put patients first.

The Spring Difference

We’re proud to do things a little differently: from unique lab technologies to programs that demonstrate confidence in our results, read more about what makes Spring unique.

Upcoming Info Sessions

Knowledge is power and our free information sessions hosted by a Spring physician provide a great first step in the patient journey.

IVF Explained

Interested in learning more about what happens under the microscope in the IVF lab? We’ve developed this unbiased, scientific resource to share a behind-the-scenes view of the work our embryologists do every day.

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