IVF Talk

Today’s appointment was called “The IVF Talk.” Before going, I read the 30 page booklet on the Shady Grove website all about IVF and everything that happens so that we could ask questions and it wouldn’t be the first time we’d be hearing certain things. I honestly hadn’t done a lot of research about the actual steps because I was hoping to never have to know. Oh boy do we know things now! There are different versions of cycling, but here’s the basic rundown that we’re following.

-Approximately 1 month of birth control pills (I know what you are thinking. I have that birth control thing down PAT. However, while they will act as birth control the real purpose here is to get all the hormones under control so they’re starting with a blank slate.

-Approximately 7-12 days of “stims” – lots of lots of shots. I sure am glad I got to practice on myself a couple weeks ago. Sounds like we will be REALLY good at it by the time we’re done here. The first meds make lots of follicles (hopefully holding good eggs) rather than the 1 that your body normally produces in a month. Then they add meds that keep your body from releasing the eggs (anti-ovulation meds.)

-Daily bloodwork and ultrasound to keep track of what is going on

-Trigger shot – instead of the tiny belly shot we did during the IUI, it’s a intramuscular shot in the butt. I’ve heard it sucks. Unlike IUI which is just sort of timed to the procedure, this one is timed to the minute. (No chance to wimp out!)

-Egg retrieval – This is the big one, the actual operation in a hospital. They knock you out (yuck, IV!) and then use a needle to go pop all the follicles and retrieve the eggs.

-Petri Dish – They put the eggs and sperm into dishes and let them do their thing

-Day 3 or 5 after that – They put the embryo back in. Until semi-recently (they’ve been doing IVF since 1978, or longer than my life!) they could only keep embryos alive for 3 days outside the body and then they had to put them back in. Unfortunately, at 3 days, it’s hard to tell which ones are going to be viable. That’s why they would put a bunch in and IVF got the stigma of being an irresponsible way to get pregnant and lots of people had multiples. The reason they did that is that the chances of pregnancy went up with each embryo they put back in. Now, they have the technology to keep them alive for 5 days. Only the strong ones survive to 5 days. If you do a day 5 transfer, the chances of getting pregnant are only 1% different if you put back 1 or 2. That’s pretty fascinating, and comforting to know because even twin pregnancies are pretty risky for the babies and the mom.

-Post Transfer Medicines – No shots! Whew. There are other protocols that use injectables for this time frame too, but our office said that patient compliance is higher with non-injectible medicine and that research has shown no difference in results. Fine by me.

-Blood test – a couple weeks later

So today we got a calendar and they called our meds into a specialty fertility pharmacy. It was really hard for us to get to the mental place where we were ok with these extreme measures, but now that we are left with no choice, we are ready to get the show on the road.