In vitro fertilization (IVF):
In vitro fertilization (IVF) is a technology that helps people have babies (ART). It involves taking eggs out of a woman’s ovaries and putting sperm on them to make babies. This egg that has been fertilized is called an embryo. The embryo can then be frozen for later use or moved to a woman’s uterus.
IVF can use, depending on your situation:
- Your eggs and your partner’s sperm
- Your eggs and donor sperm
- Donor eggs and your partner’s sperm
- Donor eggs and donor sperm
- Donated embryos
Your doctor can also put embryos in a gestational carrier, also known as a surrogate, who will carry your baby.
During the IVF treatment, you may need to take various injections; you should speak to your doctor to understand the IVF injection’s cost.
Why is IVF treatment recommended?
IVF helps people who can’t have children naturally but want to do so. IVF is expensive and invasive, so couples often try other ways to get pregnant before going through with IVF. Some methods include using fertility medications and others include intrauterine insemination. During that procedure, a doctor puts sperm right into a woman’s uterus.
IVF may be needed for the following causes of infertility:
- When a woman reaches the age of 40, her fertility begins to decline.
- Blocked or damaged fallopian tubes
- Reduced ovarian function
- Endometriosis
- Uterine fibroids
- Male infertility
- Unexplained infertility
IVF may also be a choice for parents who might pass on a genetic disorder to their children. In a medical lab, the embryos can be checked for problems with their genes. Then, a doctor will only put in embryos with no genetic problems.
The steps involved in in vitro fertilization:
Here is the IVF procedure step by step, that is involved,
Before IVF, your uterus and fallopian tubes will be checked to ensure no problems needing surgery. Pre-cycle testing looks at hormones to check thyroid function and ovarian reserve. Both partners are also checked for sexually transmitted infections, and the male partner’s sperm is looked at.
Most women take drugs to stimulate their ovaries for 8–14 days, with 10–11 days being the average. Ovarian stimulation is used to get multiple eggs to mature so they can be taken out. Fertility drugs are used to make more than one egg, even if ovulation is normal because the chance of getting pregnant is higher when there are more eggs. For IVF, usually, between 10 and 20 eggs are taken. However, you can’t use all of them because, on average, only about two-thirds of them are ready. Seeking help from the Best IVF Centres in Maldives can make your pregnancy dream come true.
Egg retrieval:
- Before the eggs ovulate, between 34 and 36 hours after you get the trigger shot, you’ll have surgery to remove the eggs from the follicles in your ovaries.
- During this egg retrieval procedure, an ultrasound guides a small needle through the top of the vagina, into one ovary, and then the other.
- During the process, you shouldn’t feel any pain or discomfort because you’ll be sedated through an IV and closely watched by an anesthesiologist.
- The needle is used to get into the follicles, and the fluid inside them is removed with gentle suction, taking the egg with it.
- Typically, the whole thing may be done in under 30 minutes.
- You might feel a little cramping on the day of the procedure, but it should go away by the next day.
- Because the ovary stimulation causes the ovaries to grow, you may feel full or under pressure. This might continue on for a few weeks.
Fertilization:
- When eggs get to the lab, experts look at them to see how old and good they are.
- When the eggs are ready, they are put into a special medium, incubated, and fertilized with sperm within a few hours.
- There are two ways to fertilize an egg: traditional insemination and intracytoplasmic injection (ICSI).
- Your IVF specialist in Maldives will decide which process to use, and it will depend on many things about the couple going through IVF.
- About the same number of people succeed with each method.
- ICSI is used about 70% of the time when poor-quality sperm or a failed IVF treatment makes fertilization less likely.
- For the traditional method, sperm is put in the culture medium in a small petri dish with an egg.
- The dish with the sperm and egg is put in a lab incubator, which lets the sperm find its way into the egg.
- For ICSI, a needle and a high-tech operative microscope inject one sperm into the egg’s cytoplasm. Fertilization is checked the next morning, no matter what method is used.
Embryo transfer:
- After fertilization, the IVF team and the couple decide when the embryo transfer will happen.
- This can be anywhere from 1 to 6 days after egg retrieval, but it’s usually between 3 and 5 days.
- But if it is decided to do genetic testing, the embryo is first given a biopsy, which is usually done on culture day 5 or 6.
- Most of the time, 3 to 8 cells are sent to an outside lab for testing while the embryos are frozen and kept in the IVF lab.
- After the genetic test results are in, the chosen embryo is thawed and put into the uterus, usually within one to two months after the egg is taken.
- The couple’s age is one of the things that affects how many embryos are made.
- In the past, multiple embryos were transferred at once to increase the chance of success.
- However, this often led to twins or, less often, triplets, which can cause serious problems for both the babies and the mother.
The safest thing to do is to transfer one embryo at a time. The embryologist chooses the healthiest embryo based on a grading system to evaluate each embryo. This is done to increase the chance of success as much as possible.
And after embryo transfer, it is ultimately pregnancy. You will be advised to wait for 3-4 weeks before taking a pregnancy test.
IVF treatment is very personal and hard to explain. Talk to your doctor or nurse about everything to know what to expect. During your treatment, your healthcare team is there to help you and your partner. People with infertility can seek treatments for infertility IUI and IVF.