AssistedConception.org

There are currently several different clinical treatments for infertility. The course of treatment recommended for you and your partner will depend on the nature of your fertility problem. When seeking fertility advice you should discuss all aspects of you and/or your partners infertility with your consultant. If you are not sure why you have been reccommended for a specific treatment then make sure that you ask the questions. You do not have to “just accept it” just becuase this feels like your only hope to have a child.

(more…)

Instituto Marques is one of the leading fertility clinics in Spain, offering a host of fertility related treatments. Representatives of the IM clinic approached us early in 2006 and invited us to visit their establishment to both observe how their clinic facilitates its treatments and to meet the medical staff working directly with patients at every level.

(more…)

Don’t get too stressed about this part of the process. It is likely to be much easier than you think..

Getting Your Partner to Help With Injections

Getting your partner to administer the injections can really make them feel involved and a useful part of the whole process. It’s only a good idea if you are both comfortable with it, but even if you have reservations, you may be surprised by just how good they can be at the job. It also takes the pressure of you.

(more…)

IUI is a technique which can be done in one of two ways: either by using your partners sperm or using a donors sperm, depending on your fertilty problem.

It is a procedure whereby the woman is usually stimulated to produce eggs (oocytes) using a procedure specific to her clinic. Some clinics will also initially down-regulate a woman’s cycle, which involves the administration of another drug to dampen down all other hormones in her body.

(more…)

ICSI is a relatively new procedure which has been successfully perfomed throughout the world since the late 1980’s. For many couples, particularly those where the male partner has fertility problems, ICSI may be the only option.

The ICSI process is identical to that of IVF, with one additional step: a single egg is injected with a single sperm. This is a micro-manipulation technique which overcomes the problems of low sperm count, poor motility or abnormal sperm.

If no sperm are present in a semen sample, procedures are available that can allow sperm to be collected from different parts of the male reproductive tract, depending on the nature of the problem.

IVF is the process by which a woman’s (or donor’s) eggs are fertilised with either her partner’s (or donor’s) sperm inside a glass dish, In-vitro (Latin for ‘in glass’). In order for this procedure to be carried out, the woman’s normal fertility cycle must first be suppressed, clinically referred to as ‘down regulation’. This is done using fertility drugs known as gonadatrophins, which are normally administered either as a nasal spray or injection. Down regulation can take anything between 7 to 28 days to occur with an average of 15 days. During down regulation you may have a period but this is not always the case; blood samples and scans may be used to check that you have down regulated satisfactorily. Once the normal hormonal cycle is suppressed, doctors now have control over your cycle, which enables them to stimulate your ovaries using gonadotrphins in the form of daily hormone injections. The hormone injections usualy last between 7 to 14 days, with an average of 10 or 11 days.

(more…)