New to IVF - After advice

[bubbaflash]

Hi Ladies

I have lurked on here for a while and read lots of the posts. Firstly wishing you all the best of luck, the support on this group seems wonderful!

So my husband and I have started looking into IVF. I am 37 he is 40. We have a son who is 6 and have been trying for another baby for the last 4 years. We have started fertility investigations at our local hospital (peterborough) first app next week. Husband has had a sperm analysis, high count, good motility and very few abnormal, he did have a high white blood cell count but apparantly this is treatable with antibiotics. he has just finnished them and had a repeat analysis done friday.

We conceived our son super easily, so our lack of fertility this time is baffling.

I've had day 21 bloods, all ok, i have regular periods, hoping to get a HSG through the hospital to check tubes. I did have placenta accreta with my son so i wonder if this has played a part?

Anyway I am wondering about a few things. IVF is obviously really expensive and we are not rich people, so if we go down this route then we will need to take out a loan. i have booked us in for an open evening at cambridge IVF in a few weeks time to get some info, they seem to have a PURE IVF package that is more competivley priced but age is not on my side for this!

I have also looked at access fertility, the packages sound good (no idea on price!) and i could do it at bourn hall peterborough which would be handy as we live just outside Peterborough!

Any info/advice on the above would be great as I feel a bit overwhelmed.

Thanks

We did access fertility, the 3 rounds with 50% refund. It's been great knowing that the cycles are paid for but you do need to consider the drugs cost which can be high and changeable which are not included. Good luck

Hello!

If you are having to pay, I would look at the hfea success rates for your age group of different clinics. I would also get an AMH and FSH (on day 3) just so you have a rough idea of your reserve and quality. If things are looking good, it will hopefully indicate that you will have some embryos left over for freezing if the fresh doesn't work. Although the initial IVF costs can be a lot, frozen transfers are much more affordable so you may not have to pay upfront for multiple cycle packages with access.

@LillyLeaf thank you, it's nice to hear someone has used them. do you mind me asking roughly what you've paid?

@zest11 that seems a good idea. apparently cambridge IVF will do an AMH test on their open evening. am I presuming correctly that you can't get this test done on the NHS? If so this might be worth doing first

Cambridge recently removed their free NHS cycle and so packages across the region can be very competitavely priced (can often be even better with Access). But Care Fertility in Northampton was better for me (I live near both Bourne Hall and Northampton and so had a choice) as they had a specialist in female metabolic conditions. I was approx your age when we got passed the free NHS cycle.

@bubbaflash That's great that they do a free one at the open event! Definitely do that! No, it's not available. I reckon FSH is more important which can be done on the NHS though as that indicates quality. My AMH was 11 (low end of normal) but FSH was less than 6 and so we got 5 blasts in total.

@Zest11 I'm not sure if it's free, its not clear from the website, I might ring and ask.

I know cambs got rid of the free cycle, but as we have a child already we were not eligible anyway.

I don't know what will happen when we got to the fertility clinic next week. I'm not sure what if anything they can do for us. I feel both nervous and excited.