The IVF Consultation Appointment

The consultation appointment for in vitro fertilization is about $400 and it is not covered by insurance so we wanted to be serious about it before we went. When we got to the University of Utah Center for Reproductive Medicine or the UCRM everyone was very friendly and we felt totally comfortable there. We met with Dr. Mark Gibson and at first I felt like he was grilling me a little. He said that usually they require that couples try at least a year to get pregnant and because of the reversal healing time we probably had only been trying about 6 months. He wanted me to explain to him why I was so sure that we needed to take this route. I explained to him that the doctor who had done John's reversal told us that if we weren't pregnant by Christmas we might want to explore other routes. I also told him that because of John's age (He is 49 right now) and my school schedule it would be beneficial if we could do it sooner rather than later and we felt we needed to find out about our options so we could plan ahead. We have a few friends who have had vasectomy reversals. One of them ended up doing in vitro because after the reversal the sperm was not strong enough to penetrate the egg. The other couple are still not pregnant and are saving up to do IVF. Dr. Gibson said that he would like us to try a few round of IUI (Artificial Insemination, about $350 per cycle) before we went the much more expensive route of IVF(about $15,000 with medications).

During that appointment we had a vaginal ultrasound to check my ovaries and make sure they looked healthy. I had 8 maturing eggs in one ovary and 10 in the other. We also had a test where they put saline in the fallopian tubes to make sure they were open. Everything looked great.

We learned so much during this appointment. One thing we learned was that a woman has all of the eggs she will ever have when she is born. Each month the eggs compete to be the most mature one. The eggs are microscopic but each egg has its own follicle. The follicle is the part that matures. The follicle fills with fluid and the egg that has the biggest follicle is the one that "wins" and that is the egg that you ovulate that month. The average ovulation day is about Day 12 in your cycle.

The next step we needed to do was get another semen sample. It had been about 6 months since the previous one so we needed to see what we were working with to see if it was worth it to try IUI.