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I am not sure if he is doing ICSI. He did not mention it at all, so I do not know. That is a question I will ask. Plus I wrote down all the drugs that you took, so I want to ask him about them as well. He seems to think that we will be very successful on the first try. We are both in our 20's and very heatlhy (well except for this), so he is very optimisitc. I am hoping...fingers crossed. Thank you for all of your help!!

Justine-Why does having more follicles make you bled? When I had my ultrasound I believe I had 30+.

As I had lots of follicles they had to cut through my vagina 4 times instead of 2 (this sounds much worse than it is -you feel the cut very little) and also egg collection takes longer the more follicles you have. I had 17 at the start before the drugs and 35 at the end - we got 22 eggs. Some people don't bleed at all and if you do its nothing to worry about (mine was like a light period for a few day) unless its very heavy (like a heavy period) and that's very rare. Also the more follicles/eggs you have the better your chances are as they've got more to choose from.

I live in England so the choice of drugs we had may be different. I could choose my drugs. There are three types of drugs: cycle control, FSH and HcG. For cycle control I could choose between Buserelin, Nafarelin, Cetrorelix or Ganirelix. Cetrorelix or Ganirelix make the IVF cycle a lot faster and have no real side effects but are slightly more expensive than the other two. The other two also have menopause like side effects for some women. For the FSH I had a choice of Menogon, Menopur, Gonal-F or Puregon. Gonal-F or Puregon have a higher success rate (about 3 percentage points more pregnancies per attempt) than the other two but are more expensive. The HcG drugs are all about the same. ICSI (pronounced ick-sea in England) is the same as IVF they just inject the sperm into the egg. Its very good your doctor says it'll work first-time - hope it does.

Hi Justine, I worked on one the earliest research projects on ICSI. In fact it was part of my masters thesis and at that time just a postulation for use in horses. ICSI is the process used to fertilize the egg. With traditional IVF the egg and sperm are placed in a petri dish and the sperm penetrates the egg itself. With ICSI, the sperm is injected directly into the egg. With either, the fertilized eggs are allowed to incubate for approximately 4 days before being reintroduced to the uterus. Pregnancy and live birth rates are therefore simliar.

The success rates for IVF and ICSI were very similar at my clinic (though the two are used for different problems at my clinic - generally normal IVF is used for female only subfertility and ICSI when there's male subfertility with or without female subfertility). The success rate was about 25% pregnancy rate per cycle when the woman is under 38 (20% live birth rate) and about 6% per cycle over 38 for both - slightly above average for England but below many US clinics I think. For us my clinic used ICSI as my husband has low count, low motility and low morphology so they thought in our case no eggs would get fertilitised with normal IVF and it would probably always fail. We never tried normal IVF so I don't know for certain that's true but ICSI worked first-time so I was very happy they did ICSI. At our clinic you could also do half IVF half ICSI if you had more than 10 eggs but we were told by our clinic this would probably just waste half the eggs in our case - I think its used if the male subfertility is borderline. ICSI is normally only used if there's a male problem involved here although occassionally its used for when there is unexplained infertility on both sides. My clinic always uses ICSI if any of the man's results are below normal and the couple have been trying for 2 years or more (unless the male problem can be corrected with surgery which is very rare).

Lena - Your work sounds really interesting. I wish someone would invent a cure with no drugs or at least no injections! I'm thinking of doing donor sperm next time just so I don't have to do those injections and the egg collection again - not sure how people will react though. I'm so glad someone invented ICSI and people like you worked on it though so we can have a child together. Thank you.

Justine, When I first postulated extracting semen from an infertile stallion for direct insemination to an egg, my professor just stared at me for 10 minutes without saying a word. I was only 20 at the time and ready to crawl into a giant hole. He said he would call me in a few days. By the time I got home, there was a message from him that he found simliar research happening in Montana and they would allow me to participate for several terms. We spent months just researching ways to extract semen and had much better sucess with bulls than stallions. It was exasperating work, but very rewarding. That was in the mid 80's and it took 10 years of research to define exact practises. I was just a graduate student amonst doctors and researchers but I still take great pride when anyone tells me they conceived through ICSI.

Lena - You should be proud. I know ICSI for us was probably the only way we could have a child together. My husband is a wonderful man and he desperately wanted a child (more than me infact) and I'm so happy to be able to give him one - he'll be a great dad!

Justine, Best wishes to you. I'm betting that you will both be excellent parents - what a lucky child!

Any thoughts on Lupron

Lisa - Sorry I don't know about Lupron. If you put Lupron into Yahoo or similar it comes up with lots of sites though. Seems to say it can cause menopausal side effects (hot flushes etc). I would guess it maybe similar to the slower drugs that are used in England called Burselin and Nafarelin but I'm not sure. I preferred Cetrorelix as it made the cycle a lot quicker (2 weeks instead of 5) and had no side effects but only some clinics do a faster cycle.

i did ivf due to male fertility factor and they told me that this was the only way we could get pregnant so i was willing to try it was very emotional and painful at times but i am so thankful i did it because i am now 24 weeks pregnant with a baby boy and would never be able to have this experience otherwise, i also did acupuncture which has been proven to increase your chances of success when it is used in conjunction, it helps you relax and increases blood circulation to your uterus. it was the best decision i have made and i only had to try one time

Congatrulations Cheri. We also did IVF with ICSI due to male infertility and it worked first-time. I'm 23 weeks today so just behind you. Don't know if it's a boy or a girl, it was hiding, but would be very happy with either.

I am just getting ready to begin my adventure of IVF. Any suggestions??

LisaD - Hope the IVF treatment goes well and it works first-time.