After our trip to Thailand for Intrauterine Insemination, several of my friends and family have asked for more details to have a clear understanding of the procedure- so I'm going to post all I know about it as well as our experience.... so this blog posting is probably not suitable for youngins.... or my dad and brother. Hahaha!
Scott and I chose to get IUI (also known as Artificial Insemination) because we have been married for 3 1/2 years and hadn't been able to conceive; we never used birth control because we were just hoping to be suprised one day.
Once we started being more intentional, but every month we came up empty handed. Last year I had a laprascopy to remove my level two Endometriosis, and we started taking the fertility medication, Clomid, to help things along.
After 4 months we still were not pregnant- we asked our doctor- Dr. Waikwamdee Poonsak- if he thought IUI was the right step and he said it was a good idea to do any fertility procedures now before the Endometriosis grows back and destroys anything else in the womb.
So here is the actual procedure:
On the third day of my period, I took 100 mg of Clomid for 5 days. We went in for a follicle scan 11 days after beginning the Clomid and the doctor found 5 maturing eggs (sizes 16, 14, 9, 8 ,4) and said that the 16 and 14 would most definitely ovulate in the next few days (the 9, 8 and 4 probably not) The follicle scan is important because it makes sure that the money we're about to drop on this procedure is not all for nothing- if you aren't ovulating, there's nothing to inseminate!
According to the follicle scan and my blood work, Dr. Poonsak could pinpoint that I would ovulate 4 days from then.
36 hours before the procedure, I went back to the hospital for a booster shot. This shot triggers the mature eggs to leave the ovaries and begin the journey down the tubes.
On the said day, the technicians separate the sperm from the semen, and also extract the healthiest sperm with the help of a microscope.
For my part, I simply rested on a table much like you would for a pap smear, and after opening my cervix with that thing that looks like a ducks mouth, he used a long flexible needle to put the sperm all the way in my cervix next to my fallopian tubes.
The whole procedure lasted about 5 minutes, and although it was a tad uncomfortable, there was no bleeding. I rested in the doctors office for 30 minutes. Some doctors will cap the cervix with a special tool that you can later remove on your own, but my doctor did not.
For the two weeks following the procedure, I took 10mg of progesterone to prevent a 'chemical pregnancy' or an early miscarriage.
We chose this procedure because Scott's sperm count, although high, has a lower number of active swimmers. We also found out that my body wasn't producing the cervical mucous that the sperm needs to swim through- so that alone could be why we failed to get pregnant.
We also chose to opt for a fertility treatment so soon because there is no cure for Endometriosis, and with every period, there is more build up of scar tissue- our window of opportunity was closing quickly.
One of our biggest questions about this before we went was how much it would cost. Thankfully, Thailand is very affordable. The most expensive thing for us was the plane flight to and from.
Here were the costs, besides plane flight and hotel and our daily mango sticky rice treat:
Clomid: $300 for 6 months worth ($50/ a month)
Booster Shot: $ 215
Follicle Scan: $130
Blood Work: $ 25
Scott's Blood Work: $80 (this was to rule out HIV or other diseases)
IUI procedure: $ 266
Sperm Washing: $190
Duphasonte (10 mg progesterone hormone): $30
All together the cost came to $1,236. It sounds scary to see it written out like that, but you can expect to pay between $400-500 more in America for the actual procedure. Praise the Lord we live so close to Thailand!
So for those of you who asked, I hope this answers all your questions, and to those who wish you hadn't read this.... I'm sorry.
Read a professional explanation! http://www.fertilityplus.org/faq/iui.html
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