Anyone do unmonitored IUI with OPK's?

• ilovethesun
• 2 years ago

I did not personally (we did a monitored IUI) but I know my RE does IUIs without trigger/based off OPKs. It was an option on my protocol sheet. You call when you get a positive OPK and go in the next day for the IUI. As far as skipping the ultrasound- idk. If you’re not triggering, I guess it doesn’t matter how many follicles you have because you’re probably only going to release one. I’ve never heard of it being done that way but it’s worth asking your doctor about. I would explain that you can give yourself an ultrasound and see what they say. My RE also doesn’t do baseline bloodwork for IUIs so that should be okay to skip but I imagine each place has their own protocols. Are you currently seeing an OB or RE? In my experience, OBs tend to stick to the basics so I’m inclined to think this might be better discussed with an RE. Good luck! Hopefully someone has more of the experience you’re looking for and will be a better help than me!

• 1989anonbee
• 2 years ago

I did! 

I did it under a RE. Because the issue was presumed to be with my husband, the doctors wanted me to try an unmedicated IUI first. So no drugs, no monitoring, just used opks. I was prepared to go medicated (letrozole) if I needed more than one try, but that would have been unmonitored also just opks. It ended up working the first time so I didn’t need to try the drugs. 

If you ovulate regularly it sounds like you would be a good candidate for an unmonitored cycle also. My ‘low impact’ options were unmedicated, unmonitored cycle and then letrozole, unmonitored cycle. After that they would have moved to injectibles and a monitored cycle I believe.

For mine the protocol was that I was to take an opk first thing in the morning and then call that day for the iui in the afternoon. I was a little concerned with this because A. I had read that LH is synthesized through the morning so typically you’d get positive later in the day, and B. Because I had read that the best results for an opk timed IUI in terms of success rates was 24-48h after positive opk (which makes sense). Then I thought about it, and the cycle before my iui I did my normal testing of mid day ish AND the first morning testing my RE wanted. And it works out that I got my positive mid day and then it was (for me) still positive the next day and by the time I got the IUI it was perfectly in that 24-48h window. So I did that on my IUI cycle and it worked. 15.5 weeks now. 

I also know someone who did a clomid/IUI cycle that was just opks and not monitored, she ended up pregnant with twins on the first try. So my understanding is that you can do unmonitored on either unmedicated IUI cycles or the lower intensity stimulator drugs (aka letrozole or clomid), but anything more intense like injectibles that might produce many/more than two eggs they would need to monitor. But even the letrozole/clomid night vary by practice. 

One thing I might recommend requesting is having a progesterone test (about a week after you think you ovulated) to confirm it actually happened, apparently you can get an LH surge and not actually ovulate. I didn’t do this before but they did it the cycle I did my IUI to confirm I had in fact ovulated, so this might not be standard practice before an IUI. Just something to consider if you wanted confirmation you release an egg!

sorry that’s super long. Hope I answered everything!