What is the IVF Process for Same Sex Female Couples? Dr. Katrina Rowan

by | Babies and Pregnancy, Hormone Health, MonashIVFKR, Sexual Health, Women's Health

So first, a same-sex female couple wants to conceive a family, there are a few options available to them. They will need to use a sperm donor, and that can either be someone that they know or a sperm donor bank.

They can start off with a fairly simple treatment called insemination. And that’s where the donor sperm is just inserted within the uterus, or within the cervix, at the right time of the menstrual cycle, and natural ovulation, and natural fertilisation still occurs.

It’s also an option, and sometimes necessary to move to using IVF for same-sex couples. So that’s where the young woman would have hormones to stimulate the ovaries, multiple eggs are produced in a cycle, and then the donor sperm is injected or mixed with those eggs to form embryos, and then the embryo is implanted within the uterus. Some couples do choose for one partner to be, we say, it’s the egg donor. So the one partner produces the eggs, so they go through that stimulation process, and then the other partner carries the pregnancy.

So they would then have the embryo inserted within their uterus and carry the pregnancy from there.

Dr Katrina Rowan is a fertility specialist, reproductive endocrinologist and reproductive surgeon with consulting rooms in the heart of Sydney’s CBD. Katrina prides herself in her ability to guide and educate her patients. With her support, patients feel comfortable and deepen their understanding of their own unique fertility situation.https://monashivf.com/specialists/dr-katrina-rowan/