IVF and Pregnancy

About In Vitro Fertilization

Are you trying to get pregnant but, so far, it hasn’t happened and someone (perhaps a friend, or your doctor) has suggested you might want to think about IVF, or in vitro fertilization?

If so, you probably have some questions about IVF and pregnancy, such as:

What Is IVF Treatment?

What will happen to you if you have it?

Is it painful? Expensive? Safe?

Will IVF work for us?

And how much will it cost?

These are some of the most common questions about IVF and pregnancy that we’ve heard from people who are considering fertility treatment to help them get pregnant or people wanting to know more about IVF and pregnancy. While these are questions that don’t have easy answers, and each couple’s situation is unique, this post will give you a starting point for finding what’s right for you.

IVF and Pregnancy – What Is IVF Treatment?

Some people use the term IVF when they mean any kind of assisted conception. This is not accurate. If a woman takes fertility drugs to stimulate ovulation and then conceives during intercourse in the usual way, that is not IVF treatment but another form of assisted conception.

IVF stands for in vitro fertilization. Vitro is glass. So it is fertilization that happens in a glass test tube in a laboratory, rather than in your womb (that would be called intra-uterine insemination or IUI).

Basically, it means you would donate an egg and your man would donate sperm. After successful fertilization in the laboratory, the fertilized egg is implanted into your womb.

Sometimes, IVF and pregnancy is done with an egg, or with sperm, that is not your own.

IVF and Pregnancy – What Happens When You Have an IVF Treatment?

This will be designed specifically for you and your situation, so it might be a different than this, but basically this is what happens:

Initially, the woman is prescribed fertility drugs that will control her monthly cycle. In most cases, she will take drugs to prevent ovulation, and then when the signs are right, she will have an injection that will stimulate the production of several eggs.

A few days later, she will visit the hospital to have the eggs removed from her uterus.

Meanwhile, the man will provide a sperm sample, unless donor sperm is being used. Then medical staff will fertilize the eggs with the sperm in the laboratory.

A couple of days after that, the woman will return to the hospital to have the fertilized eggs inserted into her womb. Usually, more than one egg is inserted. This gives a better chance of success. Sometimes more than one egg will develop, so there could be twins, triplets or even more (this explains the news-making multiple births that have occurred when parents used ivf in the hope of getting pregnant with one child).

Around two weeks later, the woman will take a regular pregnancy test to find out whether one or more of the eggs has successfully embedded in the lining of the uterus and begun to develop.

If the test is positive, there is a good chance of the pregnancy proceeding normally to birth.

If it is negative, then the IVF and pregnancy treatment has not been successful this time. Most people try again a few months later; it is not uncommon for it to take several attempts.

IVF and Pregnancy – IVF Success Rates

When you look at the success rate of IVF treatment, it is important to remember that the success rate is going to depend on the suitability of the patients. Some clinics will not treat prospective parents who haven’t been trying to conceive for more than a year, or who don’t already have a child, or who are over age 40, and there can be other restrictions.

Their goal is not to deny these prospective parents – it is to increase their IVF success rates. When they only give IVF to people who are considered to be the most ideally suited to it, the success rate will be higher than if they give it to everybody who asks, no matter what their age, medical history, etc.

For this reason, the success rate for IVF and pregnancy treatment can vary widely between different medical clinics, states, provinces and countries.

There are couples for whom it works the first time; and others who keep trying every few months (as often as specialists recommend) for a year and more.

While there are statistics (who it is more likely or less likely to be successful for), there are many variables, and no guarantees about how fast (or if) it will work for you.

IVF and Pregnancy – How To Handle IVF Costs

Costs vary depending on where you live, but you can expect to pay several thousand dollars per IVF treatment (one cycle). In the U.S., the current national average is $12,500 per treatment, a staggering amount for many couples on a budget and contemplating the costs of adding a new family member.

You may be able to get some help from your medical or workplace insurance.

A recent study found that only about 1 in 5 American employers help their employees with the cost of in vitro fertilization and fewer than half subsidize the costs of fertility drugs or treatment.

However, that may be changing. Fourteen states have now legislated that insurers must offer coverage for fertility treatments.

Elsewhere, provincial, state or national health care schemes along with private insurance may cover all or part of the costs of ivf and pregnancy-related costs or other types of fertility treatment.

But even when they do, there is an ivf cost to pay that is both financial (in lost work time, more for the woman than the man) and in physical discomfort or pain.

Undergoing IVF may mean forgoing other goals and dreams, such as home ownership, in order to pay for it; or it may mean taking on debt.

It’s a very personal decision – the challenges of fertility treatments including IVF can put such a strain on relationships that some marriages do not survive.

Other couples are more fortunate.

IVF and Pregnancy – Another Option Offering Hope …

There is another option that has worked for any couples, even those turned away by the private clinics offering IVF, or who tried fertility drugs or IVF and disappointingly did not get pregnant.

It could be that what you really need to do is stop, step back, ease up on the ‘baby making’ pressure (especially if it is destroying your intimate life along with your self- esteem) and do something (or many things) differently.

There are many reasons to opt not to use IVF and pregnancy to concieve – the pain, the stress, the financial burden. If you do, you may want to consider taking a holistic approach to your health and inability to conceive. That is what nutritionist and researcher Lisa Olson did, leading her to discover information that helped her get pregnant – twice – after years of disappointment and also after age 40.

In 2010, after teaching many couples her methods and watching them have the same success (resulting in first hundreds, and then thousands of babies), she put what she had learned, now distilled to a simple, 3-step process, into a book, Pregnancy Miracle.

It could offer new hope in your desire to get pregnant and have a healthy baby. If you’ve been told that IVF and pregnancy treatment is your only way to have a baby, you should know that for many couples there are other, possibly better, options.