The New RE

The appointment got switched from Tuesday to Wednesday, and J was able to come after all (yay!). We spent about an hour talking with Dr. S. These are the stats he gave us:

Approximate chances of conceiving in a given cycle:

Normal healthy couple - 20%
Clomid/IUI – 10%
Injectables/IUI – 15%
IVF (2 embryos transferred) – 40-50%
IVF (1 embryo transferred) - 35%
FET – 40%
Us, naturally – 2-5%

It’s not hard to see why one would choose IVF, all else being equal. But, you have to consider the cost and the medications and invasiveness of that procedure as well. We are extremely lucky in having significant insurance coverage for infertility. Which means it’s a lot easier to think about going straight to IVF.

It might seem like I’ve jumped from considering trying naturally to IUI to IVF very quickly. But I’ve known that IVF might be in my future since my first laparoscopy in 2007. And since there is a medical motivation to get pregnant as quickly as possible (to minimize the recurrence of my endometriosis), IVF is becoming more and more appealing.

We haven’t made a final decision. J is having one more SA done, this time with testing of motility and survival after 24hr incubation. Dr. S says this will tell us if IUI is even worth considering. In the meantime, I’m staying on BCP. He also gave us some literature about the risks of multiples. I was happy about that, because I haven’t been able to convince J on my own that twins really aren’t the goal. Given my age (relatively young, for IVF), we may decide to transfer just 1 instead of 2 embryos. But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

The second part of the appointment was an internal ultrasound. Dr. S said things looked pretty quiet around my ovaries, which is good, and not unexpected because of the BCP.

So now, I go on my work trip, and a few days after that I fly to the east coast and meet up with J. We’ll visit his family and then spend a few days of R&R in NYC.