What's next?

[Holly ttc]

Hi everyone!

I just finished my sixth round of femara and took my trigger shot today. My fertility doctor won't do more than six rounds of it so right now I'm kind of in the dark on what will happen next. At our first appointment he said that he doesn't think doing an iui would give us any more of a chance than just femara, a trigger, and timed intercourse so I'm going on the assumption that that's out of the question. I do have an appointment set with him for the 25th to find out the plan but until that point does anyone have any possible ideas on what the next step could be? The nurses said they have more aggressive firms of trying before going to ivf too, they just didn't mention what those were.

 

[lisap2008]

More aggressive before moving to IVF would be IUI with injectable stims and HCG trigger. IUI does give you a higher chance then BDing because it puts the sperm in the uterus where they can have easy access to the tubes to find the egg , with regular intercourse alot of the sperm dye off in the acidic environment having to swim through CM which can sometimes be hostel and its a much longer journey for them verses IUI. and injectable's raise conception chance because more eggs= more targets for the sperm. Best of luck.

 

[Holly ttc]

Thanks. That's the only thing I could think of too but based on that first conversation with him I was confused. Hopefully I don't have to go to that next process but I guess I'll find out in two weeks.

 

[lisap2008]

I hope you get a BFP very soon!.

 

[Holly ttc]

Thanks. Best of luck to you too.

 

[bunyhuny]

Femara generally only give you one, mayyyybe two follicles, so there aren't as many targets for the sperm. That's why some docs do Clomid, but Clomid can thin out your lining and make implantation way less likely.

The next step is generally injectable meds to make you produce more eggs at once. Usually, you combine it with IUI, but not all doctors do if they don't think it's needed. I think it's the better choice to do IUI vs timed intercourse after so many cycles, simply because you don't know if you have some issue with sperm getting into the cervix/through the cervical mucus/into the uterus/etc.

I don't know what the prices are like at your clinic, but I know here an IUI is $4000 and injectables are $2000. That's on top of some of the other monitoring costs. When we got to the point of having to do IUI, we did one that didn't work, and then ditched the whole IUI idea and went to Prague for IVF instead. A basic IVF cycle at our clinic costs about $4000-$5000, meds included, so it didn't make sense to waste money on a low success rate IUI when we could get a high success rate IVF for the same price (plus plane tickets).

Anyway, if you're to the point of talking injectables anyway, I'd seriously consider going abroad for IVF. The clinic we go to in Prague has been regularly doing advanced procedures for years, whereas clinics in the US are just starting to do PICSI, video monitoring of embryos, etc.

 

[lisap2008]

Wow where I live a IUI unmonitored cycle ( timing based on OPK) run $300.00 ,monitored with meds is approx $1000.00 , IVF here though runs $10,000-$20,000 depending on the clinic.

 

[bunyhuny]

lisap- crazy cost difference between IUIs!! IVF here runs about $15k-$30k. They don't do unmonitored IUIs. We only have a few fertility doctors in the state, though one of them is over if the best in the country, so I guess they really mark up those IUI costs. We couldn't have afforded IVF, at least not as many rounds as we needed, had we not gone overseas.