By Laura Banks
Bella Templeman and her husband Matt welcomed their miracle first child, Cooper, five months ago. The addition to the Sydney family, much longed and hoped for, was the result of a successful first-go IVF cycle.
Cooper is one of a growing number of successful first-cycle IVF babies across Australia and New Zealand, with new research revealing that one in three mothers are now giving birth following their initial IVF cycle.
“It is life-changing,” Bella Templeman, 31, said. “Cooper is everything that I’ve always wanted. And I’m so grateful to the IVF process because I just don’t think it would have happened any other way.
Bella Templeman with Cooper, five months, who was conceived through IVF.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos
“I would do IVF 1000 times over if it meant having Cooper. I look at him and think, if we didn’t have IVF and the access and the quality of IVF in Australia, then my only dream of being a mother might not have been a reality.”
Templeman was diagnosed with endometriosis after a year of unsuccessfully trying to conceive. Surgery and IVF helped her overcome her infertility challenges, but the report, compiled by researchers at the University of NSW’s National Perinatal Epidemiology and Statistics Unit, shows that a growing number of men are experiencing infertility, too; one in three IVF cycles were attributed to male infertility, with 74 per cent of that male infertility unexplained in these cycles.
The Australian and New Zealand Assisted Reproductive Database, from which the data that was used for the research came, is the only IVF registry in the world that collects male infertility data, and has only been doing so since 2020.
Lead author of the report, Assisted Reproductive Technology in Australia and New Zealand 2021, and director of the unit, Medicine and Health Professor Georgina Chambers said that with more data would come solid answers as to why men were experiencing the levels of infertility shown in the research.
“[Male infertility research] is about 20 years behind female infertility. We can’t research what we don’t have data on, but that is why we are collecting the data now,” she said.
“Sperm counts seem to be decreasing worldwide, and we hypothesise that it has to do with endocrine disruptors, which are often found in plastics and in our environments, but lifestyle changes are a factor too.”
Professor Luk Rombauts, who heads the peak body, the Fertility Society of Australia and New Zealand that funded the research, said an increased use of frozen embryos had resulted in more successful IVF outcomes as all frozen embryos were genetically tested.
“You can’t do genetic testing and put them back in fresh. You have to freeze them to wait for the results, so that’s an enormously strong bias towards better outcomes. You have a 50 per cent success rate regardless of age,” he said.
“And there certainly have been suggestions that if you put a number of [thawed embryos] back in, especially into a natural cycle where we don’t use any stimulation at all, the idea is that, because it’s natural, that lining is more natural, and therefore, that’s going to lead to better pregnancy rates.”
A record number of babies were born via IVF in 2021, analysis of the data reveals; 20,690 across both countries, a boost of 12 per cent to the 2020 figures of 18,462. That means that one in 18 children born in Australia, and one in 27 born in New Zealand, were conceived through assisted reproductive treatment (ART).
After three complete assisted reproductive cycles, women were found to have between 53.6 and 63 per cent chance of achieving a live birth, the report found, while success rates decreased with age; women aged between 30 and 34 had at least a 67.8 per cent chance of achieving a live birth after three complete ART cycles, while women aged 40 and 44 had at least a 20.3 per cent chance.
A record number of IVF cycles were undertaken in 2021, too, the research found, with 111,253 ART treatment cycles performed in Australia and New Zealand in 2021, an increase of 16.3 per cent on 2020. A third of recipient cycles were in single females or female-female couples and the average age of women undertaking IVF was 36.
The report found multiple births – that is twins or triplets – occurred in just 3 per cent of cycles. Women used their own eggs or embryos in almost 95 per cent of cycles.
There was also a sharp increase in the number of women choosing to preserve their eggs; a jump of 61.5 per cent from 2020 to 2021.
The data revealed that one in three women did not continue treatment after a failed cycle. Rombauts said a failed IVF cycle could impact deeply on the woman undergoing treatment.
“There are many reasons why women elect not to continue treatment, including the psychological, physiological and financial stress that can be associated with infertility and its treatment,” Rombauts said.
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