IVF – In-Vitro Fertilisation

IVF is process with a set of preliminary stages before treatment by your fertility specialist, and post steps following treatment. The Bali Fertility team is here to support you at every turn to explain ‘what’s next, what you can expect and the how to’s in the IVF process. Let’s break it down for a better understanding of what’s involved:

• Stimulate your ovaries to help your body produce eggs it has created naturally. Preliminary stages begin with stimulating your ovaries. This involves a series of injections or medications where fertility hormones are taken daily to boost your egg production. The medications are easy to manage; our friendly nurses will walk you through the process and we have additional resources to guide you at home.
  – During this time, you will receive regular blood tests and ultrasounds by one of our fertility specialists to monitor your ovaries and hormone levels until enough of your eggs have matured and are ready to be removed.
• Egg collection /egg retrieval (oocyte pick up – OPU). We remove those eggs in a simple day procedure called the egg collection or egg retrieval referred to as the oocyte pick up (OPU) with our experienced Bali Fertility Clinicians. This egg retrieval, also known as follicular aspiration, requires a minor surgical out-patient procedure under sedation.
• Your partner provides our laboratory with a sample of his sperm. Sample of sperm is through masturbation. The laboratory will prepare the samples to collect the most viable sperm from the sample for combining with your eggs.
• The embryology team combine and culture the eggs and sperm in our lab. After retrieval, the eggs will be incubated in a dish with the sperm for 2-5 days under optimal conditions for fertilization The aim for our science team is to create as many embryos as possible—the more embryos you have, the greater the chance of some being viable for use.
• If the eggs fertilise, they become embryos and we’ll grow them for five days to the blastocyst stage.
• You’ll come back to the Centre and our fertility specialist will transfer your embryo/s into your uterus. This procedure does not require any recovery time, but exercise or other strenuous activities should be avoided for 1-5 days following implantation.
• We will freeze any additional, viable embryos to use in another cycle if needed.
• After your embryo transfer, there will be a two-week wait while we see if the embryo ‘takes’. The two-week wait can feel emotional and stressful. It’s best to keep busy and distracted during this time if you can. Our fertility team and nurse are here for you if you need to reach out.
• Blood test to see if you’re pregnant. At this time, we will get you to do a blood test to see if you’re pregnant.