The Typical Infertility Treatment Journey

While everyone has unique reasons for seeking a fertility clinic, many end up traveling a similar path. Whether you are being treated for female or male infertility issues—or a combination of both—your Reproductive Endocrinologist will select from a range of treatments and technologies to help you on your journey to a healthy pregnancy and baby.

 

The Best Plan for You

Your personalized treatment plan is developed to treat your unique fertility challenges. Throughout your treatment, we will make sure you have all the information you need regarding the benefits and risks of each procedure. We will also take your medical needs, emotional comfort, and financial situation into consideration when creating your plan. One, or a combination, of the following options may be recommended for you.

 

Fertility Medications

Frequently, fertility treatments are meant to increase the possibility of a successful embryo implanting in the patient’s uterus. In order for this to happen, it is important that you be as healthy as possible and that your uterine environment be optimized to increase the probability of a good sperm meeting a good egg.

This is where fertility medications come into play. Oral medications can make ovulation more consistent and predictable. For those who ovulate infrequently, we hope to increase the frequency to once per month. For those who ovulate regularly, the medications are used to try to increase ovulation to 2 eggs per month. This increase in the number of eggs increases pregnancy rates and can, occasionally, result in a twin pregnancy.

At times, fertility medications can result in ovulation of 3 eggs; in this situation triplets are a possibility. Our treatment goal is a healthy singleton pregnancy. However, the possibility of a multiple pregnancy should be considered and it is important to discuss this with your physician prior to starting treatment.

Injectable Hormones

When oral medications alone do not cause a successful pregnancy, we may add injectable hormones to increase the number of eggs to 2–4 per cycle. The benefit here is an increased pregnancy rate, however the cost and probability of a multiple pregnancy also increases.

IUI

When we need to focus delivery of sperm to the reproductive tract, an Intrauterine Insemination (IUI) is the treatment of choice. This may be done in a natural cycle or combined with ovulation medications.

IVF

When ovulation medications and intrauterine inseminations do not produce a successful outcome, the treatment journey often leads to In Vitro Fertilization (IVF). The standard of care is typically 3 cycles with medications and IUI before IVF, but this path may be adjusted based on a patient’s individual circumstances.