Hi Ladies:
Just to put my two cents and I hope it helps you both as I have had the same predicament. Even if one has a lot of money to spend IVF is not cheap. Here in CA, we paid $11,500.00 (all out of pocket) for two tries and it does not include the medication and other additional services such as ICSI, Assisted Hatching or PGD. I have kids from prior relationship and my clinic told me about this compassionate program and I ended up paying zero for my first try. However my first try was not successful.
In my first attempt, I had 11 eggs retrieved, 4 fertilized and two matured. we transferred 2 grade AA embryos to me both 5day blast, the embryologist even bet on me that she will be surprised if I don't get pregnant. She said that my embryos were so beautiful that she didn't even do assisted hatching. I don't have any problems, in this attempt to conceive, my hubby has low count and motility..so ICSI should have taken care of that right? wrong...
After my failed attempt that's when I became vigilant and read more about IVF as well as implantation success of reproductive clinics. What I did different on my second attempt was - I slowed down on my workouts (I do crossfit, bootcamp and marathon) and rest more. Heck I even took a three week vacation in Europe to bring down my stress level. days before the retrieval and transfer, I had body massages and even had a two hour massage the night before the day of my transfer. Also, an hour before the transfer I took valium to calm my nerves and made my body more receptive ( btw the valium was prescribed by my RE, I didn't took it in my first IVF attempt).
On this IVF#2, they harvest 11 eggs, 10 fertilized and three(3) matured, 1AA, 1A, 1B. I was devastated because again, I have no blast to freeze which means I should better get pregnant or this is it. This time, the embryologist did assisted hatching, ICSI and I demanded that they transfer all three to me. I was going to ask for four (4) actually but I only have three. They agreed because of the fact that I have a failed attempt.
I wasn't truly expecting that I will get pregnant let alone with twins because 5days after my transfer (they are 5days blast anyway), not counting the day of my transfer, I POAS and it was negative (I even bought the most expensive clearblue) - I was so upset and took solace to the fact that I already have two daughters anyway. I didn't even want to go to my beta anymore but my husband insisted. In these days when I was advised not to lift more than 10lbs or do any high impact activities, because I thought that I was not pregnant..I was back to running, doing 4-6 miles and wrestling and jumping with my dogs.
I was shocked to learn that I was pregnant after two betas, the first beta was 35 and then two days after it was 104..it's not a great number but it doubled. Then after three weeks, I got another surprise that it was twins. The doctor saw two sacs and was initially thinking that the other one was probably empty but after measuring Baby A at 140 HR, he was surprised that Baby B also has a strong HR 126 at 7 weeks. So this my story.
If you want to up the chances I would strongly recommend to having rest your body and your mind; some couple would even do acupuncture. Also, look into Assisted Hatching. I didn't do PGD because you will pay for this prior to transfer but there's no guarantee that the transferred egg will implant. There are so many factors.