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Aurora Reproductive Care is proud to announce that they have partnered with EngagedMD to enable them to remotely educate patients throughout the entire fertility journey and digitally and securely manage all patient paperwork and consent forms. This will allow Aurora to operate more efficiently, while simultaneously improving the patient experience in the following ways:

Improved Patient Experience

EngagedMD’s cloud-based platform lets patients access their learning plan and sign consent forms from their laptop, tablet, or smartphone. Patients enjoy the convenience of self-paced learning in the comfort of their own home while still having access to their care team when they need it.

Saves Time

With EngagedMD, patients will arrive for appointments informed and prepared. Which means the time spent between patients and Doctor will be more productive for everyone.

Paperless

Arriving 30 minutes early to “do the paperwork” is no one’s idea of convenience. Neither is rescheduling procedures over missing signatures and lost forms. With EngagedMD, consent forms are digitally delivered and stored, so patients can sign from the convenience of home, and Aurora staff can keep everything conveniently in place and on schedule.

If you ask people struggling with fertility what their real goals are, it’s always a simple answer… To get pregnant and have a baby.

And whatever you do, don’t give me advice or a quick fix solution. We’re good.

More than just an unmet goal, having a family is a dream for those struggling with fertility. As many of us have faced, getting that positive pregnancy test and having a successful healthy pregnancy are goals that often slip through our fingers of control. Yet we strive forward anyhow, attempt after attempt, despite the hardship and pain this journey can bring. And why do we keep going? Because we are strong enough to. Because we believe it’s possible.

More than goals related to increasing your health and fertility, goals can help you transform your life by giving you courage to keep going, bounce back from the pain of a pregnancy failure or loss, and empower you to take this journey another step further. Most importantly goals can help move you forward from a place of feeling stuck, instead tapping into aspects that can bring lightness back into your heart and life, perhaps bring the spark back or restore hope…

Here are 5 guidelines that may help bring transformation into your life and new energy into your fertility journey:

1. Joy - When facing hardship, we can get into a state of depriving ourselves. Strangely enough its often things we need, like joy, adventure and laughter. Ask yourself what would bring more joy into your life? We each have our list, but when’s the last time you remember engaging in joyful activities, conversations, unproductive fun and actually feeling it in the moment? If your pausing here because you’re thinking, that means your due for an infusion.

2. Eliminate what depletes you - Create a goal that eliminates an aspect in your life that depletes your energy, body, or spirit. This often means exploring what’s draining your joy. Perhaps it’s time to look at changing your routines, simplifying your life or taking space from relationships, people or obligations that aren’t serving you. And when ‘taking space’ is not possible? Emotionally take a step back. Invest in you and decide how you want to think and feel, not how that situation, person or aspect makes you feel.

3. Feed your heart - Explore what would bring more love, compassion and affection into your life. Let yourself love those around you and let yourself be cared for, loved, held, appreciated. Depriving oneself of love is like committing to the hardship instead of thriving despite of it.

For many going through fertility struggles, there comes with it a survival mode of ‘just keep going’ and ‘I’m okay’, but over time many lose the spark they had for life. The cure? Nurture yourself. Feed your body, your spirit, your mind. Be honest with yourself and how this journey makes you feel at times. Find ways to be gentle with yourself and those around you. Locate that funny bone or find adventure…

4. Make room for you - On top of continuing your regular life and obligations, you have taken on a second challenging job, making a baby that is struggling to be ‘made’. On top of countless medical appointments, you are also dealing with the fertility struggle that plays out in your mind and heart. So create more space in your life for you, and for those who want to spend time with. You don’t have to give all your time away and you don’t have to hide either.

5. Stop punishing ourselves - I strongly encourage people facing fertility struggles to consider making a goal to stop overdoing it in their life or creating so many commitments that it’s dizzying. Let go of doubting yourself, or turning yourself inside out and overextending trying to make a baby or gain fertility. You are enough and you’re doing the best you can. Maybe take a moment and take in what you have made it through, and what that means you’re capable of. We are the heroes of our own lives.

All my best,

Jessi Nesbitt, Registered Psychologist, M.Ed.

*Originally created for Y.A.N.A. Fertility Support Group in Saskatoon

At Aurora, we are occasionally asked why we don’t post our IVF pregnancy rates on our website. IVF success rates have changed a lot over the past decade. The treatment has improved, because of advances in the science of stimulating egg development and growing the fertilized eggs (embryos) in the laboratory. There is no doubt that the treatment success rates have improved dramatically. But IVF success rates can be tricky to interpret. There are many factors that come into play when interpreting a clinic’s success rate.

Clinics can differ in the patient population they treat – for example some clinics may care for a larger proportion of older women, or couples with previous treatment failures, and this can affect the “success rates.” Some clinics may promote transfer of 1 embryo at a time, to encourage the best possible outcome for the mom and baby while others may liberally transfer multiple embryos during treatment.

There are many other factors that are important when choosing a fertility clinic, beyond success rates. It’s important to find a fertility care team that meets your needs: a place that is comfortable, convenient, has good communication and supports you through the stress of infertility.

If you are planning to do IVF treatment at Aurora, your physician will counsel you about your chance of pregnancy. Rest assured, our pregnancy rates compare favorably to the national average and we will work with you to achieve our common goal – a healthy, happy mom and baby!