Post # 1
Member
1461 posts
Bumble bee
Hey ladies,
As DH and I start to embark on our IVF journey, I am uncertain on which package to chose. We were set with a reassure program but I am starting to have my doubts on if that package is right for us. We aren’t approved for this package yet, but we are trying to get qualified incase we chosen it. So far my cycles are like clock work. All blood tests and ultra sounds have come back good. HSG looked great. The only thing I have is a tilted uterus. DH has bad swimmers (low count, low morph, etc). We want to do ICSI and PGT. The program we were going to select is for 6 fresh/unlimited frozen embryo transfers. That includes 6 egg retrievals. If after 6 cycles no baby, 100% refund. It says if I were to become pregnant on first try I will pay more with this program than traditional fee. Also prescribing tests, anesthia, and surgical treatment due to complications are not included in this package.
The other package I was considering has 2 egg retrievals and 4 embryo transfers. Also partial refund if all egg retrievals are not completed. How many cycles did it take you on IVF to have a baby? Did each cycle require an egg retrieval? What are your thoughts? It’s so much money that I don’t want to pick the wrong thing. Just a note, insurance covers nothing for us.
Post # 2
Member
329 posts
Helper bee
What is the doctor’s average success rate? They should be able to provide you with that stat for your age & infertility issue.
My doctor’s average was something like 1.1 transfers per IVF pregnancy so 9 out of 10 women got pregnant on the first IVF transfer. I was the 1 in 10 who took longer. We did 2 retrievals and 2 transfers before I got pregnant. My office doesn’t sell “packages” but if it did, his stats more closely align with the second package you described. I would let the office’s stats guide you UNLESS package #1 allows for multiple pregnancies and not just the retrievals/ transfers to get baby #1.
Post # 3
Member
1545 posts
Bumble bee
Thankfully we needed only 1 egg retrieval and FET to get pregnant (after a very long TTC journey with our clinic). We were 100% OOP. I did not think the first time would work as I had so many fertility issues including significant hyperprolactinemia. I remember asking one of the doctor’s if they ever had a case like mine and he said, “If we didn’t think it could work, we wouldn’t be suggesting this treatment.” I’m now 35 weeks along. 🙂
I want to wish you all the best on this journey.
Post # 4
Member
3266 posts
Sugar bee
If you respond well to the meds you could end up with a lot of embryos. For me personally 6 retrievals is a lot. I wouldn’t have had 6 in me.
In the end I had 1 retrieval, 1 fresh, 4 transfers. The first retreival yielded 21 that survived to day 5 and were frozen.
Canadian clinics are quite hestitant to transfer more then 1 unless you have had multiple failed transfers. So even after all of that I had loads left over.
After we went to a donor we had 18 day 5s. And we then transfered 4, 3 times and ended up with 1 set of twins (well triplets, but resulted in twin birth).
6 retreivals is very hard on a body and mind. There is also the question of what happens to the embryos that you don’t end up transferring. It is good to think of this now if you have any religious or moral objections to their destruction.
Post # 5
Member
298 posts
Helper bee
I think if your main issue is the male infertility you should hopefully not need 6 retrievals ESP if you’re doing icsi. However I’m not sure how tilted uterus affects implantation or anything and sometimes there are unknown issues with egg quality and other stuff that you just don’t know until you get in there and try. But we did ivf with icsi for sperm issues and ended up pregnant on the first retrieval/transfer with 3 more in the freezer. Hoping to not have to do another retrieval again. There are a lot of women on these boards who overcame male infertility fairly easily as well (I can’t remember if it was on the oct baby thread or the journey of pregnancy after infertility or miscarriage thread) but I think you should talk to your doctor about the expectations for your specific issues.
Post # 6
Member
3748 posts
Sugar bee
We had issues with male infertility as well. We did one retrieval, had one failed fresh transfer (it implanted but was a chemical pregnancy) and got pregnant off of our first FET (currently 31 weeks). My clinic was able to put all of our numbers in to a computer program and give us a probability of success for each trial… does your clinic do that? IVF tends to be pretty successful for couples with MFI only. Best of luck!
Post # 7
Member
1461 posts
Bumble bee
dgirl715 : On their website they have a ton of stats listed. Its for the entire clinic not the doctor personally. It’s also from 2014. They have 2015 preliminary listed. (I dont count that since it is a guess). So for anyone under the age of 35 (that would be me), they had 243 of that 44.9% were just single babies, 12.3% was twins and 0.4% triplets or more. This was listed under their cumulative outcome per egg retrieval cycle. Then for FINAL PRIMARY OUTCOME PER EGG RETRIEVAL CYCLE, it was under for the age of 35, they had 242 of that 32.2% were just single babies, 8.7% was twins and 0.4% triplets or more. Then lastly (the one we are going to do)… FINAL SUBSEQUENT OUTCOME (FROZEN CYCLES) for age 35 and under… they had 81 thawed, of that 39.5% were just single babies, 9.9% was twins and 0% triplets or more. I would assume this is good? The packages do not allow transfers so it would be 1 baby and then thats it. So thats why I am second guessing this. I need to get DH on board with maybe switching. He would be angry if I talk him out of it and it takes more cycles and cost more.
weightwatchers152 : Thank you for sharing and happy healthy remainder of your pregancy. What is OOP?
andielovesj : I thought it was 6 transfers, not 6 rounds of retrevials… which how does this work… If I got for retreival and say I have like 5 good eggs that they can freeze and use one for implanting, do I use the other 4 or do I have to do another round of shots for a retrival? When I went to get an ultra sounds done in January the doctor looked since I was getting ready to O and he said I had a lot of eggs and they look great. I dont think I would have 6 in me and I dont think it would honestly take 6 but you never know. We were sold on the plan because of the 100% refund if it doesnt happen. I just dont know what to do and I think now not undertanding how this works is making it more confusing for me.
bellarose606 : From what I was told the tilted utrus really doesnt affect anything with IVF. Trying to concieve naturally makes it slightly harder since the swimmers need to swim more. At least this is what I am being told. When we talked with the doctor back in January he said he saw us having no issues that we were great candiates. That also has me thinking, so why go for this hefty price then?
hollyberry4 : Did you do PGT? I dont think my clinic does that but I am going to ask. I am happy to hear that a lot of you ladies were able to get pregnant 1-2 tries in. Thank you for sharing 🙂
Post # 8
Member
3266 posts
Sugar bee
If it’s 1 retrieval and 5 FETs I would look to see if it is really cheaper even if it took all 6. FETs were really cheap, like 400 a cycle. It was only the retrieval and stims that were expensive.
As much as it is a very emotional issue the clinic is also looking to make money. I’d suspect that the guaranteed package is what is in their best interest and plays on your heart strings
Post # 9
Member
8016 posts
Bumble Beekeeper
after our 2 IUIs failed, i was starting to worry how we were going to pay for IVF.
even though my state mandates infertility coverage, i have federal insurance. the financial counselor at the RE’s office suggested i purchase seconadary insurance.
i did another round of IUI, then IVF with ICSI. my progesterone got too high prior to transfer and it became a freeze all cycle. we had 2 freeze quality. RE was pushing us to do transfer but at that point the next cycle would be 100% covered since we met our OOP max on the secondary. i went through another fresh round 3 were freeze quality, 1 was transfered. and now we have a 15 months old son.
fast forward to DS turning 1, we wanted to do an FET. this time 100% out of pocket. the shared risk program was a little more than 2 transfers would cost. so we decided to gamble and not do shared risk. 1st transfer was successful and now we are expecting #2, i am almost 17w.
so overall, both my transfers worked on the first try.
i was 33 at retrieval. i have high E2, (eqq quality about 10 years older than I am), a large fibroid outside of my uterus. DH has on the lower side of normal count but very poor morphology.
good luck
Post # 10
Member
298 posts
Helper bee
mama2bee71 : are you looking to get only one baby out of your IVF treatment or have frozen embryos left for future siblings? I think given what you said about the tilted uterus I would go with the second plan. If it allows for 2 retrievals you should hopefully get a few embryos out of those. You might even get enough embryos to freeze some after the first retrieval like I did, then you could do frozen transfers (the second package also includes 4 transfers right?) with those remaining whether it be that the first transfer doesn’t stick or that you want more than one child. I would also price out what it would be if you did the lower package and maybe needed one more retrieval or one more transfer. I feel its more likely that if the lower plan didnt work out then you would only need one or two more retreivals and that 6 retrievals seems like a catastrophic type insurance plan.
Post # 11
Member
1030 posts
Bumble bee
I don’t know anything about packages (I think it’s different in Canada). What I can say is 6 transfers is an awful lot. I would have had a hard time doing more than one or two. If you respond well to meds you will likely have embryos left (as a PP said). So more than a couple retrievals may be unnecessary depending on how many babies you want to have. For us, we did one retrieval, one fresh transfer (failed) and one frozen transfer (successful). I only got 2 embryos despite being expected to respond very well (my clinic low dosed my meds because they didn’t want me to get OHSS). I would have done one more retrieval if I had to but I doubt I could have done more than that. We paid OOP as well.
Post # 12
Member
8016 posts
Bumble Beekeeper
bellarose606 : every shared risk program i have seen, ends when you take home a baby. you can’t carry over transfers for subsequent transfers on multiple children.
so if she uses 1 fresh IVF, is able to freeze from that cycle, and take home a baby. when she is ready for her next child, she will have to go through this process again of shared risk or pay by cycle.
Post # 13
Member
3748 posts
Sugar bee
mama2bee71 : no we didn’t do PGT. It was a big out of pocket expense plus our doctor said he thought we would be fine since I had no egg issues, and we also wanted to do a fresh transfer.
Post # 14
Member
1461 posts
Bumble bee
andielovesj : Thank you. I see the financial department next week so I will ask them this question then.
ajillity81 : Thank you for sharing. Happy to hear it work both first tries!
bellarose606 : I would love 5, but realistically that would not happen. If there was a way to have 2-3 kids I would be thrilled… but one at a min. We only originally picked this reassure program since we don’t want to fork out like 30k and it not work, at least we would get the 30k back. However thinking about it this past week really had me questioning things and thats why I figured I would ask you ladies. To me 6 seems a lot. The fact that we have to test for it too made me think it could be a scam that only couples who could maybe get pregnant one or two tries in pay the huge price. Due to how low DH SAs were, we are just nurves and unsure what to go with with. I did reach out to my doctor this morning and he is recommending the resassure but any package is fine. Yes the second package include 4 transfers.
YogaMama : What is OHSS & OOP? We are going to do frozen for PGT. Also the success rates we were told was much better frozen verse fresh.
ajillity81 : Yes, you are correct. It ends when you have a baby or when you hit the 6 retrivals. So after baby #1, if we have any frozen we would have to pay for the trasnfer. If we have none then we would pay for everything. So here is a question. Say they get 15 eggs from me but only 5 are good. Do they do 5 transfers before going to the next retreival, or no? I need to ask how much trasnfers cost.
hollyberry4 : We want to do PGT since our doctor said they can dismiss eggs that would miscarry. Also incase anything is wrong.
From the sounds of it, all you ladies seem to think this reassure is kind of a rip off? I will have to talk to DH and talk about what plan is best for us and really do a break out of everything. I hate that companies try to scam you because even though it is our choice, that reassure is nice to have it but if they know its not needed they should say something since its such a large amount of money.
Post # 15
Member
1030 posts
Bumble bee
mama2bee71 : OHSS is Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome. Can happen if you are overstimulated with meds. Your clinic should be very aware and try to keep you as safe as possible. OOP is out of pocket 🙂
For my clinic their fresh and frozen transfers had the same success rate and we didn’t do PGS, so it didn’t make as much of a difference for us.
