I am new here, I will be starting IVF in Jan/Feb. My Dr has put me on Metformin. Has anybody had this before? Also can somebody tell me what are the stages in IVF and how they will prep you for the first stage. I am so scared here and definitely appreciate some help/info. BTW, I live in US and I am doing my IVF here in NJ.
lavender: Welcome to the board, and the rollercoaster that is IVF!!! I hope you will find, like i have, that the forum is a good place to find support and information. As for your question re: metformin... it is a medication that improves insulin resistance, and which has been found to improve fertility in patients w/ PCOS. As i don't have PCOS, i don't know much more than that. I'm sure there are women here that can tell you all about it.
I am not sure what you mean by "stages" of IVF but can guess you are referring to 1)stimulation 2)egg retrieval 3)embryo transfer? something like that? In general, your RE will use one of several "protocols" to stimulate your ovaries to produce large amounts of follicles, and then will give you medication to keep you from ovulating those eggs(usually 10-12 day process). During egg retrieval, he will go in (usually transvaginally, and often under IV sedation), and "harvest" the eggs out of the follicles.
That day, your eggs and dh sperm will be mixed, either using regular IVF, or using ICSI to manually insert one sperm into each egg. The next day, you will find out how many of the eggs were fertilized...and therefore how many embryos you have. it gets more complicated after this, because you may have a 3 or 5 day transfer, depending on the practice of your clinic...but also sometimes all embryos are frozen to do a frozen embryo transfer (FET) at a later date. Don't know if this was more basic than what you were asking for, sorry if that was the case, i couldn't tell for sure.
Once you know your schedule, i suggest you join one of the cycling group threads off the general forum so that you can discuss things, and have support from people who are cycling at the same time. The first time was a bit overwhelming for me b/c i had absolutely no idea what i was doing, and hadn't joined the forum, so felt i was a bit lost. It is an exciting process for sure.... Good luck to you!!!
6 fresh IVFs plus one cancelation
Last Chance FET--- Pregnant with triplets!
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