Diana and Johnny decided to give IUI a try in Alpha IVF. They were prescribed with some clomid tablets to be taken daily for 5 days and hormone injection (gonal F) to go along with at every alternate day for 1 week. Pregnyl injection was then given two day before the IUI date.
The procedure itself was fast and painless, just like doing a papsmear. But the anxiousness, fear and awkward feeling as you are surrounded by staff and doctor inside the operating room were the things to overcome with. Then come to the most anxious part, the urine pregnancy test 3 weeks after the IUI. Alas, Diana got her period on the 3rd week. So, the treatment was not successful.
Under the package, they had 1 more IUI chance they can gamble on. Cut the story short, everything were the same. Including the disappointment. IUI treatment just did not work for them.
Their hearts really sunk. They were aware that IUI success rate is about 10% and even lower for Diana’s age. But still, the pill of reality was just too difficult to swallow.
Johnny planned a vacation to Singapore to get away from the sad moments and relived their focus in the relationship instead. Everything about baby sounded so daunting and depressing especially when you were inside the loop of the vicious cycle. And yes it helped! To Johnny’s surprise, Diana said she wanted to do IVF. A huge leap of faith this time.
Johnny did not consent immediately as IVF costed more and still, it is not a guaranteed that they would end up with a baby in their hands.
That night, Johnny couldn’t sleep. He searched a lot of information on IVF, how to make the success rates higher and which best place to go as they want the best chance for their attempt.
The choice still fell to Alpha IVF as the fertility centre has all the technology that could support their hope for high chance of hitting a successful IVF attempt. Furthermore, they were comfortable with the good service offered by the doctor and nurses which he did not think of any reason why they shouldn’t proceed to do IVF with the same place they did their IUI.
So finally they returned to Alpha IVF Clinic again, and this time was for IVF treatment.
Diana was prescribed with Gonal-F injection 300 iu per day for 10 days and in between she had to come back twice for follow up before the eggs were matured and ready to be harvested.
Her follicle growth responded well as they were growing healthily.
Diana had 7 follicles with ideal size of 18-20mm at the right ovaries and 15 with the same size at the left ovary. There were about 5 more slow growers, but doctor said he would take them all regardless of the sizes.
Diana had some slight headache during the 2 weeks injection time, but it was just trivial matter compare to the big outcome they were anticipating for. Johnny had been so supportive by helping to do the injection sometime. He also become more attentive to Diana’s need and emotion.
Then here come the day of the egg pick up (OPU).
Diana was super nervous. She was on empty stomach since 12 midnight as the requirement for the general aneasthesia procedure. To their surprise, the procedure was like a thunderbolt hit. Diana was only 15 mins in the operating theater and in the next 3 hours she was ready to go home.
Diana got to know that she had 23 eggs retrieved at the same day. So next was to see how many were fertilised and how many became blastocysts.
Diana received update via messenger from their IVF’s embryologist 1 day after her OPU, saying that 20 out of 23 eggs were fertilised. Another message was sent 6 days after her OPU that revealed the good news that they have 6 healthy blastocysts kept in the storage, ready for them to transfer whenever they want!
Diana and Johnny couldn’t be more happier. Their hard work paid off and they have another battle to go now, the embryo transfer.
Diana wanted to have a break. So she accepted the option to do frozen embryo transfer well so that she could get some rest and prep her body for the embryo transfer later. Besides, with the advanced technology offered at their IVF clinic such as cryotec, as well as the statistical data that suggests higher success rates via frozen embryo transfer, Diana did not want to take any chance.
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