[SweetTreat]

Hi Ladies!

My husband and I are considering IVF next year if we don't get pregnant this year. We have not yet had our IVF consultation...
I had a few questions maybe you ladies can answer for me...
My husband and i are 28 years old... IF we turn to IVF next year, we will be 29 years old. Our only fertility issue is my husband's low sperm count & low motility. All my tests, HCG's are normal.

1. Do they retrieve as many eggs as possible?
2. How many do they insert back into the uterus?
3. If it works the first time, and we still have some eggs left, can we save them for later use?
4. And if we have left over eggs that we want to use for later use, do we have to pay for IVF all over again?

I know we will have our IVF consultation later and the Dr. can answer these questions, but just thought i'd ask here too =)

Thank you!

[bbm0128]

Originally Posted by SweetTreat

Hi Ladies!

My husband and I are considering IVF next year if we don't get pregnant this year. We have not yet had our IVF consultation...
I had a few questions maybe you ladies can answer for me...
My husband and i are 28 years old... IF we turn to IVF next year, we will be 29 years old. Our only fertility issue is my husband's low sperm count & low motility. All my tests, HCG's are normal.

1. Do they retrieve as many eggs as possible?
2. How many do they insert back into the uterus?
3. If it works the first time, and we still have some eggs left, can we save them for later use?
4. And if we have left over eggs that we want to use for later use, do we have to pay for IVF all over again?

I know we will have our IVF consultation later and the Dr. can answer these questions, but just thought i'd ask here too =)

Thank you!

Hi SweetTreat!
I'll try to answer your questions - my husband and I are in our first cycle of IVF (retrieval on Tuesday so I've just experienced all of these questions!)
1) Depending on your clinic, you will be put on various forms of stims (like Menopur or Gonal-F) to stimulate your ovaries into producing more eggs. At my clinic, they suppressed my period so to control when I ovulated by using BCP & later, Lupron. In my case, those last for about 2 weeks and then they do the retrieval. They want to retrieve as many eggs as you produce with the stims. In my case, it'll be about 8 eggs (we hope!) but in others it can be as many as in the 20s.
2) That depends on you, your DH, & the doctor. In our case, it depends on my size (no more than 2), and what the quality of the embryo's are.
3) You can save embryos for later use... this is called a Frozen Embryo Transfer or FET.
4) Generally, (at least at my clinic), the price of a FET is considerably cheaper than an IVF cycle... about $4500 vs $12,500 (not including medications). Fortunately most of my medications were covered by insurance. Not a lot of insurances cover infertility treatments or ART's, but some do. You'll want to check with them too - but your clinic will probably check for you. I called anyway.

Keep in mind that my experience is limited (1st cycle) and some of these other ladies can probably answer in more detail, but have you thought about doing an IUI cycle? This is generally cheaper than IVF & less involved. If your tubes aren't blocked, you might want to think about trying that.

Good luck!
Brooke

[SweetTreat]

Originally Posted by bbm0128

Hi SweetTreat!
I'll try to answer your questions - my husband and I are in our first cycle of IVF (retrieval on Tuesday so I've just experienced all of these questions!)
1) Depending on your clinic, you will be put on various forms of stims (like Menopur or Gonal-F) to stimulate your ovaries into producing more eggs. At my clinic, they suppressed my period so to control when I ovulated by using BCP & later, Lupron. In my case, those last for about 2 weeks and then they do the retrieval. They want to retrieve as many eggs as you produce with the stims. In my case, it'll be about 8 eggs (we hope!) but in others it can be as many as in the 20s.
2) That depends on you, your DH, & the doctor. In our case, it depends on my size (no more than 2), and what the quality of the embryo's are.
3) You can save embryos for later use... this is called a Frozen Embryo Transfer or FET.
4) Generally, (at least at my clinic), the price of a FET is considerably cheaper than an IVF cycle... about $4500 vs $12,500 (not including medications). Fortunately most of my medications were covered by insurance. Not a lot of insurances cover infertility treatments or ART's, but some do. You'll want to check with them too - but your clinic will probably check for you. I called anyway.

Keep in mind that my experience is limited (1st cycle) and some of these other ladies can probably answer in more detail, but have you thought about doing an IUI cycle? This is generally cheaper than IVF & less involved. If your tubes aren't blocked, you might want to think about trying that.

Good luck!
Brooke

Thank you so much for the reply!
Our Dr. said our best option is IVF. and the IUI will most likely be useless. My tubes are fine, all my tests are normal. The only issue is my husband's low sperm count & low motility.

[KMH]

Welcome! I'm Melissa, and my DH and I have 3 IVF babies (1 from our fresh cycle, and twins from our FET).

1. Do they retrieve as many eggs as possible? Generally, yes. There are minimal-stimulation IVF protocols where they just try to get one or two eggs, but in a traditional IVF you get as many as you can. Like Brooke said, you'll do injections of medication to stimulate your body to produce as many eggs as possible, and then during the retrieval procedure the doctor will harvest them. You will likely be quite uncomfortable by the time of the retrieval because your ovaries will be full of lots of eggs...and you might look 3 months pregnant from the bloat. Comfy, elastic waist pants are a must Not all of the eggs they get will be "good" or "mature"...those eggs will be discarded (2 of my 15 eggs were not mature).
2. How many do they insert back into the uterus? Generally for healthy couples under 35 with no previous failed IVF attempts, the limit is 2. You and your doctor will go over your options and discuss this before your cycle. It will also depend on the health of your embryos and how many you have. We transferred two each time.
3. If it works the first time, and we still have some eggs left, can we save them for later use? Yes. The freezing of your embryos is included with some IVF packages, and with others it is an extra fee. It is well worth it to freeze any embryos you have...you'll have them available whenever you need them, and they never age! For example I'm closing in on 32 now, but my embryos were made with 28-year old eggs
4. And if we have left over eggs that we want to use for later use, do we have to pay for IVF all over again? At my clinic, the fresh IVF cycle was $15,000. An FET cycle was about $5000 when all was said and done, so much, much cheaper. It is also MUCH less stressful and MUCH easier on your body.

[loveneverfails]

Hi, I just thought I'd chime in and give my experience. I'm Katie, 25 DH is 28 and we did 2 rounds of IVF and I am now pregnant with twins.

1. Do they retrieve as many eggs as possible? In general, yes. Some programs do a mini-IVf if that is something you would be open to. In those they try for only a couple of high quality eggs rather than as many as they can get. It works great for some. For us it wouldn't have worked I didn't try for this but on our first round we only had 5 mature eggs. I only responded to one of the meds and when this mef was taken away my eggs stopped growing. 2nd time I had 14 mature eggs, 3 were high quality on day of transfer.
2. How many do they insert back into the uterus? We did ours through a military hospital (cheaper but restricted) the first time they did a single embryo transfer. 2nd time they put back 2. Generally 2 is the limit for most under a certian age (usually 35-38) unless there are signficant factors such as repeated failed cycles or losses.
3. If it works the first time, and we still have some eggs left, can we save them for later use? Yes, We had 3 good ones from our 2nd cycle. Two were transfered (our twins) and one is frozen.
4. And if we have left over eggs that we want to use for later use, do we have to pay for IVF all over again? A frozen transfer is generally cheaper. We paid about $7000 for our IVF and a frozen is $2500. This was at a military program.

You can often find research programs that will do a discounted rate. This programs are restricted in what they can offer and do. For us it was the types of meds. They offered two differnent protocals you either did Lupron before baseline or you did it after. That was is it. For some people Lupron doesn't work so that would have been an issue. We also were only given two stim meds and no choices for anything else. You were either able to find a way to make it work for your body or that was it. This was hard for us becaues I probably would have done better on a different stim but in the end we did make it work. I was high risk for OHHS though because it pushed my E2 levels so high. There are a lot of options out there. You just have to figure out what will work best for you.

[J and K]

Hi SweetTreat! I just wanted to tell you a little about my experience. I've just finished my first cycle and in the 2WW. I'm 28. My answers are pretty similar to the rest so I'm not going to answer alll of the questions. We collected 27 eggs, between natural fertilization and ICSI (injecting a single sperm in each egg) 18 fertilized. There is generally either a 3 or 5 day transfer, we did 3 day. When we went to do the transfer, only 3 out of the 18 divided properly and quite a few died out (more than the RE expected) so he suggested that transfer the 3 that were really good since fertilization didn't go as planned. We had 4 end up catching up a couple days later so those were frozen. At the clinic I go to IVf is slightly cheaper than a lot of other places. $5,500 for IVF, Medication was a little over $3,000, ICSI $1,200, something like $450 a year to store frozen embryos, FET is like $3,500 if we get to that point.

Good Luck to you!

[J and K]

Hi SweetTreat! I just wanted to tell you a little about my experience. I've just finished my first cycle and in the 2WW. I'm 28. My answers are pretty similar to the rest so I'm not going to answer alll of the questions. We collected 27 eggs, between natural fertilization and ICSI (injecting a single sperm in each egg) 18 fertilized. There is generally either a 3 or 5 day transfer, we did 3 day. When we went to do the transfer, only 3 out of the 18 divided properly and quite a few died out (more than the RE expected) so he suggested that transfer the 3 that were really good since fertilization didn't go as planned. We had 4 end up catching up a couple days later so those were frozen. At the clinic I go to IVf is slightly cheaper than a lot of other places. $5,500 for IVF, Medication was a little over $3,000, ICSI $1,200, something like $450 a year to store frozen embryos, FET is like $3,500 if we get to that point.

Good Luck to you!

[~~MeeMee~~]

The ladies above pretty much answered your questions, just wanted to wish you luck that you get your BFP soon and won’t need to go forward with IVF!

[kayakr]

Good Luck. The other ladies answered your questions but I wanted to tell you good luck. I remember when I heard that IVF was our best chance to expand our family. Hearing that was very hard on me. Now, I am doing my first and hopefully last IVF cycle right now!

We have MFI issues as well and my age. We are actually using an egg donor for IVF because of my age and wanting to have the best odds possible for IVF to work.

[soapyseltzer]

Originally Posted by kayakr

Good Luck. The other ladies answered your questions but I wanted to tell you good luck. I remember when I heard that IVF was our best chance to expand our family. Hearing that was very hard on me. Now, I am doing my first and hopefully last IVF cycle right now!

We have MFI issues as well and my age. We are actually using an egg donor for IVF because of my age and wanting to have the best odds possible for IVF to work.

Hi... I just started lurking around the IVF forum as DH and I are getting ready to start our 1st IVF cycle next month. Just wanted to say good luck with your cycle using a donor. My 45 year old BFF just did her 1st cycle w/ an egg donor (age 28), and after 5 years and 3 failed attempts she is now 10 weeks pregnant. DH and I (both 41) are still waiting on my preliminary test results before we make a decision one way or the other about a donor.


GOOD LUCK to you too SweetTreat! And thanks for asking your questions... I came on here hoping to ask the same but you beat me to it.

[stillwaiting]

Welcome girls! Soapy seltzer, join us on the march/april ivf thread SweetTreat...best of luck to you.....