Consider me consulted!

So I may have done a little (or a lot) of grumbling about the price tag of our IVF consult.  I mean, how many doctors do you work with that all of a sudden charge you $400 to discuss a new treatment??  Seems crazy to me, but what can I do?  I have to say though, it was a great appt.  He didn't rush us, he answered every question I had and encouraged me to write down any more questions I come up with and he'll answer them, or find an answer for them.  We spent close to an hour and a half in there!  So at least I feel I got my money's worth!  Being a huge nerd and keener, I honestly feel like I aced a test, haha!  I went into that consult so well prepared with knowledge and questions - thank you bumpies and dreamers for teaching me so much!  He also sent me home with an info packet to read through - I'm excited to dive in!

We are officially moving on to IVF#1 as soon as CD1 rolls around.  Prior to that, I have an appt on May 13 to have an endometrial biopsy.  Dr. R strongly urges them with IVF patients as there has been promising research and studies on higher success rates after having any kind of "disturbance" of the lining.  (He seemed impressed that I had been reading up on this - point me!)  If it won't cause any harm and could potentially help, I'm all for it.  Hell, I told Dr. R if he told me to dance in the rain because he thought it would help, I would!  After the biopsy, we wait for CD1.  I will go in for my typical CD3 b/w and u/s and start stims.  We are looking at using the same meds I did for our IUI cycles - Puregon and Lupron.  We will probably start the stims a bit higher and then step back as we go, likely starting at 225IU and backing off as we see how I'm responding, and 10IU Lupron.  Honestly, this has really put my mind at ease since I've already used these meds and know what to expect, I was nervous thinking about new meds to get used to and more unknowns, so this little piece of info really carried a lot of weight with me.

ER and ET are done at their associated clinic downtown at what I take it is a really nice ART facility, all my monitoring will be at my usual clinic, 15mins from home - I'm so lucky in that respect.  He explained how the ER works and that almost all patients report it being a fairly pain free procedure - another relief!  They always use ICSI, unless you don't want to, but he explained the benefits of doing it and the very minimal risks to the egg.  He has seen substantially better results with ICSI than "natural fertilization" (that term seems to really not fit when talking about IVF!).  He hands down recommends using it, which we agree with, he made a good case for it.  They also primarily do 3dt, largely because he agrees with the thought that the shorter the time the embryos are out of their natural environment the better.  He gave us about a 60% success rate with a fresh, 3dt of 2 embryos. Considering our best IUI cycle he guesstimated 27% chance of success, that's a big difference.  And it helps to validate the added cost of IVF, if it only increased our chances a small amount, it would be harder to stomach the jump in price, but this really helped.  It also helped when I asked him point blank if he thinks this is the right time for us to move on, considering a couple months ago we discussed up to 6 IUIs.  All 4 of our IUI cycles were perfect on paper - lots of follies, great SAs, and the success rates do tend to drop off after 4 IUIs, so he really did believe this is the best decision for us.  That helped too.  So, there we have it, we are moving forward and praying that this will finally be what brings us our baby.