IVF… injections always needed?

[Cherrytree86]

Hello, I am going to be having an initial appointment to discuss potential IVF soon. And I was just wondering…does the woman always need to have injections? What if the issue is that the men’s sperm is poor quality… does the woman still need injections then?
I guess I’m just wondering are there more or less invasive options for the treatment?
thanks so much
sam

IVF - traditional IVF injections are hormone stimulation you administer in order to have your body produce multiple eggs in one go which can then be retrieved, fertilized (which helps with male factor infertility/MFI) and cultured into embryos you can later transfer. The medications can change but the injection part generally doesn't. As a result, the use of them isn't really impacted by whether or not you're doing IVF primarily for MFI. The goal is to get as many healthy eggs so you can get as many healthy embryos as possible because the attrition rate from egg retrieval to Day5 Blast is quite high. For example, some people retrieve 15-20 eggs and wind up with only 3 or 4 blasts to transfer. Additionally, depending on where you live, PGT genetic testing can even further slim down your final number.

There are some doctors/clinics that will do non-injection IVF which could save you money but would mean you are only getting one egg each cycle and you'd be undergoing egg retrievals under sedation each time to get that one and then still hoping it can be successfully fertilized, cultured, and transferred. This would also significantly extend your timeline so depending on your age and other factors it could introduce further challenges to fertility via the delay. I've heard that there are some nasal medications that could be used instead of injections but I can't speak to that directly.

Alternatively if you're truly just concerned with MFI, and there are no factors on the woman's side you could consider IUI which attempts to mitigate the MFI by directly placing the sperm where it needs to go. Hope this helps a tiny bit!

@PearOpal

thank you so much! Very helpful 😊

You could try IUI which the clinic cleans the sperm and injects into the uterus of the woman the good sperm.You can do natural cycle if you know you ovulate each cycle which you will be monitored for ovulation. The only issue with this is your chances are already lowered if your partners sperm is low. But if you want your chances to increase then traditional ivf which includes the injections and icsi would be your best bet. Honestly the injections arnt that bad and you get use to them pretty quickly