The greatest moment in my career (and maybe life) so far, was when we discovered the Higgs particle at the CERN laboratory in Switzerland during the summer of 2012.We had been working day and night and at weekends for a long time to get the analysis ready. A few of my colleagues and I had […]
2016 has been an incredible year for new advances in fertility and pregnancy planning. The rise of technology, new insights and knowledge, together with better regulation, means that women are now in a position to better understand their bodies which means they can more accurately plan, prevent and monitor pregnancies, identify potential fertility problems and, […]
I would never have been able to have my babies without the help of IVF because I had both fallopian tubes removed when I was 30. (The fallopian tubes link the uterus to the ovaries). I am so grateful that IVF technology exists to let me have a family of my own. Elise and Uma […]
Assisted fertility technology is evolving rapidly – the world’s first three-parent baby was born this month and doctors gave the go-ahead for a new genetic screening method in May this year. We look at two advances in fertility which are proving to be game changers for people who need a little extra help to start a family. Mitochondrial transfer […]
In some quarters, fertility continues to be seen as a contentious medical issue, which in turn leads some patients to approach treatment with trepidation. Whilst it remains true that fertility treatment can be a complex process, as a scientist in the field, I feel that as a medical speciality huge strides have been made in […]
Women who give birth to a healthy baby in the UK are routinely offered a routine six-week follow-up appointment. This allows medics to screen for post-natal depression, which can then be treated. It’s a sad fact but your mental health only seems to matter if you have a successful pregnancy. For women who suffer a […]
Scans are used in pregnancy to determine the growth and health of the foetus. Ultrasound measurements have been commonly used to detect fetal macrosomia, when a baby in the womb is significantly larger than average. It can be hard to accurately tell a baby’s weight from the size of a mother’s tummy during pregnancy. Women […]
The menopause, which simply means stopping menstruation, marks the end of a woman’s reproductive life. In fact, it is a universal feature of all mammalian females. Why is there a menopause? Some people believe that the menopause frees older women from hormonal upset and childrearing, so they can pitch in and look after the grandchildren. […]
Snowflakes have been described as ‘tiny miracles of beauty’. Wilson Alwyn “Snowflake” Bentley photographed more than 5000 in his lifetime, showing their intricate, individual form. Inspired by their uniqueness and fragility, “Snowflake Embryo Adoption” was established in America in 1997. To date, 479 babies from frozen embryos have been born to adoptive families through this […]
Women who have had their appendixes removed are actually more likely to conceive a child afterwards, rather than less. This is what our latest large-scale study, published in the journal Fertility and Sterility, has found which flies in the face of the classic view that appendectomies harm a woman’s chance of having a baby because they […]