How to Get Pregnant with IVF

Taking your medications without having a nervous breakdown

peremuk2 — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 15:04:48 +0000

bright Sunday morning, you’re ready to begin taking your medications. Your partner, with shaking hands, opens the first vial to mix your first injection. “No, no!” you scream, as he proceeds to draw up the liquid. “That’s not how she said to mix it!” He stops, and both of you stare dumbfounded at the boxes, the needles, and each other. In one week you’ve forgotten every word the nurse said. You look at the film you were given on giving injections again, read the colorful pieces of paper that tell you how to mix and inject, and still feel confused, scared, and totally out of control. And it’s a Sunday. What on earth are you going to do?

Being confused: Par for the course First, take a deep breath. Of course, giving yourself injections is hard to do. Do you think doctors and nurses were born knowing how to mix and inject medications? Most people are scared the first time they give a shot or mix a medication. Your reaction is normal. Second, call your center. Some centers do IVF procedures on weekends, and if yours does, you may be able to talk to someone who can talk you through the mixing and injection.
If no one is there, you can call the answering service and ask for the doctor on call, who may be annoyed but can at least give you some guidance. Some centers also have nurses who carry beepers so they can answer questions when the office is closed. If you got your medications from a large mail-order pharmacy, it may have a nurse on call who can also give you instructions.

Dealing with a disappearing doctor

peremuk2 — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 15:02:19 +0000

After your initial consult appointment, you may wonder where your doctor went. In smaller centers, doctors may do callbacks with your blood results; some also do their own ultrasounds. In larger centers, you may feel as though your doctor has vanished from the face of the earth because all your instructions come from the nurses. This system of patient communication can be upsetting if you came to a center specifically to deal with a particular doctor. It feels like quit smoking to increase your fertility

Rest assured that your doctor is reviewing your callbacks and instructing the nurses on what you should do next, but in bigger centers, doctors simply don’t have the time to do more than 50 callbacks a night. Some centers have even gone to a system where you don’t talk to anybody: Your instructions are left on a message tape you can access.

Looking at your protocol

peremuk2 — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 14:59:43 +0000

When you first sit across the desk from an in vitro fertilization specialist, you may come to think of him as Dr. Magic. He’ll probably give you a stack of totally incomprehensible papers that you’ll promptly file in your male infertility causes notebook — you know, the notebook that every patient seems to carry around with her.

One of those undecipherable papers is probably your protocol. A protocol is nothing more than a blueprint or schedule of how your cycle will be done. It includes the medications you’ll be taking, instructions on how to
take them, and the procedures you need to follow throughout the cycle. Dr. Magic may review your protocol with you, or he may mumble something about the IVF nurses going over the protocol with you. If he reviews it that day, you’ll probably be too excited, nervous, or scared to remember exactly what he says. Patients have described to co-author Sharon protocols that they swear the doctor gave them that resembled no IVF rotocol on the face of this earth.

Next about IVF

peremuk2 — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 14:56:07 +0000

In vitro fertilization is a complicated process. It involves injecting potent medications with possibly serious side effects for several weeks, taking time out of your schedule to have blood work and ultrasounds done, and undergoing surgery, albeit minor, to retrieve your eggs. And that’s just the beginning!

Every step of the way through IVF is crucial, and every day brings news that will either thrill you or bring you to your knees in despair. Is it any wonder that you’re feeling scared?

Even though you’re scared to death, you’re also excited. You’ve probably been through a lot to get here, you’ve spent buckets of money, and you have high hopes that high tech will not fail you. Behind the excitement may be depression. This is where you’ve ended up. You’ve tried all the simpler methods of conception, and they failed. This is your last shot, and it may seem that there’s nowhere to go from here. Before you got to IVF, you always knew you had one last thing to try. Now you’re trying IVF, and if it fails, you don’t know what you’ll do next. From the emotional side, rely on that support network that you’ve been
building. Many women on chat room sites, in Resolve meetings, and in mindand body classes find “cycle buddies,” literally other women going through IVF (or any of the lower-tech measures) at the same time.
You may find comfort in sharing your experiences, good and bad, with someone else who is going through the
same thing at the same time. Remember, though, to share and not compare! You’re not in competition with anyone. You’re trying to have your baby.

And try to get your partner to read this chapter, because he’s going to be bewildered by the roller coaster ride. Your partner is experiencing much of the IVF process secondhand (with your “hand” being the first line of defense).
You’re the one dealing directly with the physical discomfort, the scheduling madness, and the emotional ups and downs, so your partner will likely relate to the experience much differently than you do.

What is In Vitro Fertilization

peremuk2 — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 14:53:44 +0000

In vitro fertilization (IVF) is the high-tech method of getting pregnant. During an IVF cycle, you take stimulating hormone medications called gonadotropins so that your ovaries are willing to make more than one or two eggs. Then you go through an egg retrieval, a minor surgery to take the eggs out of the follicles in which they grow. After that, the eggs are fertilized in the lab and then put back into your uterus so they can grow.
The treatment sounds complicated, and it is — but not so complicated that you can’t understand the basic idea and walk into your clinic confident that you know what to expect. So, if you’ve sent in your payment for in vitro after hassling with the billing office a few times, gasped at the hole left in your wallet, spent days on the phone arguing with your insurance company, bought all your medications, and gasped again at the cost, you’re ready to start an IVF cycle.
Lets discuss how to get through an IVF cycle with the least amount of frustration, explore what egg retrieval involves, and explain how your best friend’s cycle may be completely different from yours and why you shouldn’t worry about it.