In Vitro fertilization is the proper medical name for what the press dubbed ‘test tube babies’ many years ago. The process involves sperm from a woman’s partner or a donor being placed in a dish with eggs that have been removed from her ovaries and fertilizing them before being placed in her womb. In Vitro Fertilization may be recommended for a number of reasons including; age, other techniques have failed, the woman’s tubes are blocked or the infertility cannot be explained.

Techniques of In Vitro Fertilization differ from clinic to clinic but a typical pattern of treatment might go like this: Initially your physician will give you hormone blocking drugs normally produced during your menstrual period. Blocking the hormones helps the doctor have greater control over your egg production. You then take different drugs to make your ovaries produce more than one egg.

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To monitor your developing eggs, vaginal ultrasound scans are taken as well as blood tests to ensure that the eggs are increasing the estrogen level. Once the time is right, another hormone will be injected to help the eggs mature. The reason for this is that the eggs will be collected between 34 and 38 hours later, even if it is the middle of the night. When it is time to collect the eggs, you may be given a general anesthetic or drugs to make you feel drowsy as they are collected by ultrasound guidance and it takes about 30 minutes.

Next the man must produce some fresh sperm at about the same time as the eggs are collected. This will be stored for a short time before the sperm are washed and spun at a high speed, so that the healthiest and most active can be selected. For a woman using donated sperm, the same process is used once the sperm has been taken from the freezer. The process then continues with the eggs and sperm left for 16 to 20 hours in a laboratory dish to mix and after that period, checked to see if they have fertilized. Only those embryos that have fertilized successfully are kept and left for a further day to two days before a final inspection.

Once your eggs have been collected there is a waiting period of two days, then you are given pessaries, an injection or gel to ready the lining of your womb.

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