So what is In Vitro Fertilization?

After talking with the doctor and learning about all of my issues, we decided to proceed with IVF once we got the funds together.  Our post-op appointment was a lot of paperwork signing and questions answering.  Doctor said we have about 46% chance of success with a single embryo transfer and 57% with two (however, this also comes with almost 40% chance of twins compared to about 2% with one embryo).  So we are electing to go with just one for now.  I guess if the embryos don’t look as perfect as we want, we can always bump it up to two at once.  IVF uses medications to stimulate the egg follicles in the ovaries and encourage them to grow.  Some women with PCOS already have lots of follicles, so there is a chance that they will become over-stimulated and develop OHSS (Ovarian Hyper Stimulation Syndrome).  The doctor said that I would have a low chance of hyperstimulation because of the protocol they are going to put me on, but this is something that worries me a bit.  If I were to get OHSS, then we would most likely have to freeze all of the embryos and do a frozen transfer later.  

Basically, they will take me off birth control pills, and four days later start injections.  After 10-12 days of hormone injections and lots of scans and blood work to monitor the growth of my follicles, I will trigger the eggs to release. Before my body actually releases the eggs, they will do the retrieval and fertilize the eggs.  About 5 days later, they transfer the embryo into me.  After that, I have to wait almost two weeks to find out if the embryo implanted or if it was a failed cycle.  Hopefully we get a quite a few eggs.  The odds are that you lose about half of the eggs retrieved between retrieval and transfer/freezing.  Our hope is to get several embryos, transfer one and freeze the rest for future frozen rounds.  The frozen round costs quite a bit less money, so hopefully that’s how we can get baby 2 and 3 if it’s in the cards.