So What IS IVF?

Well, by no means am I an expert, I'm just going to summarize what Dr. Val told us and how it will work for US. First off, I would get an MRI to check out my prolactin gland to see if there is a lesion or a giant tumor in my brain, Dr. Val said probably no giant tumor but we won't know unless we look. Then she'd put me on some medicine (I think lupron) to get that into a good range. After all, if we're going to go for it, we want to make sure we've got it right in Dr. Val's words.

So after that then I would have to give myself shots, like little bee stings, right in the derriere and I would have to go to her office (which is about 45 minutes away from my house) 4-6 times over the course of two weeks to get blood work and check that things are going good. During this time, she would "practice" where to place the egg/sperm combination (embryo) in my uterus. Then once everything looked good, I'd take a little nap while she collected my eggs. OH! The bee stings would help me to produce more eggs. So then they would take the eggs and the sperm and make sure they meet up, wait 2-3 days then insert 2 into my uterus (risk for twins). We would have to pay extra to freeze any others that were successful.

Then we wait to see if that bitch Flo shows up or if we're prego. She feels that with our age and medical conditions that it would work, but I'm assuming legally, she says the chances are 50/50.

Okay, so most of you probably already know what IVF is, you want to know the cost, right? DH and I were thinking anywhere from $20,000-$25,000, we were wrong.

Here's the breakdown:

Professional Fees (office visits, consultations, cycle monitoring, follicle ultrasound studies, oocyte retrieval and embryro transfer, post procedure follow-up and consultations) $5,108

Technical Fees (Anesthesia, procedure and recovery room support, laboratory services (including sperm prep and embryo culture) $4,232

ICSI (intra cytoplasmic sperm injection) $1,251

Medications approximately $3,000

Embryo Cryopreservation $613 per year

TOTAL: $12,000-$15,000

Any questions? Ask Google! Just kidding, I can "try" to answer if you have any. As stated above, I'm just summarizing what Dr. Val told us during our meeting and by no means am I an expert.