So IVF treatment is a treatment for infertility where rather than just one egg per month we try to get a woman to produce multiple eggs per month.
That allows us to increase the chances of one of them being good quality, resulting in a good quality embryo and a healthy baby. So to be able to achieve this, a woman needs to have injectable medications. She has FSH or follicle-stimulating hormone and the follicle-stimulating hormone allows the ovaries to produce more than one egg per month.
After somewhere between 10 to 14 days of those injections a woman will then have a small procedure where her eggs are collected out. This is done via ultrasound guidance via a needle into the ovaries. Those eggs are then taken to the laboratory to mix with sperm, the sperm and eggs are mixed together in the laboratory to make embryos, and then those embryos are generally grown for five days to select the strongest one.
That one is then implanted back inside the uterus and any extra embryos that are good quality may be frozen. Following the implantation procedure, most women will have a small amount of medication to help their hormonal environment and then have a pregnancy test approximately 12 days after their embryo transfer.
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/
