Mini IVF

Have you heard of the Mini-IVF?

I've never heard of it myself until I stumbled upon it recently while doing what desperate-infertile-women-seeking-fertility-miracles do on the internet.

If you've had to defer IVF because of money problems or you don't like drugs and injections much, you might wanna check out this procedure that was developed a few years ago in Japan. From what I understand, it does have quite a few advantages over regular IVF:

• costs a lot less because less drugs are used
• drugs are taken orally with no or minimal injections
• no risk of ovarian hyperstimulation
• older women or women with high FSH can be accepted for treatment
• there is no waiting time between cycles if Mini-IVF fails because the body does not require a rest period due to fewer drugs and lower dosages used
• fewer cancelled IVFs due to insufficient production of eggs because the Mini-IVF does not depend on high number of eggs

What I find interesting is that the goal of Mini-IVF is to produce fewer but "better quality" eggs. With regular IVF, the goal is to make the woman produce tons of eggs in hoping that a few out of the lot is usable. But here's the important bit that women need to know: 

• women (particularly those above age 35) do not produce more than 2 good eggs in any cycle no matter what drugs were used or how much
• generally, the best egg from any cycle comes from the largest follicle, regardless of what drugs were used or how much

From this, I deduce that pumping a woman with a ton of bank-breaking drugs and forcing loads of eggs out of one cycle is really quite pointless - especially if you're running out of eggs - because only a couple of those are your best candidates for pregnancy anyway. Doctors against Mini-IVF argue that because only one egg is used, then all your $$$ is gone if pregnancy fails to happen, whereas with IVF - though the initial outlay of money is so much higher - at least you have more eggs to work with and you can still use the eggs leftover from that stim cycle later on. The point for consideration is: are any of those leftover eggs any good? If not, IVF actually wipes out more of your money if it all fails.  

The reported success rate for Mini-IVF however is not as good as IVF though. But it seems that this is because of the parameters used - Mini-IVF only transfers one fertilized embryo at a time while IVF transfers multiple embryos at a time, which skew the results a bit. This procedure is also relatively new and there is insufficient data at the moment.

Basically, the main consideration for Mini-IVF is the cost saving for women. The toughest question women will have to answer for themselves is what the odds of success are vs money spent on each of the procedures. And how many attempts they can afford before successive failed Mini-IVFs negate their cost savings. 

Before you jump up and down with excitement, know that very few clinics are willing to provide this procedure. And some clinics may already being using a similar Mini-IVF protocol but don't call it that.

For more info on this topic, you can read about it here (scroll halfway), here and here. For professional opinions on this procedure look here.

Although I am not a good candidate for IVF and am focusing on TCM right now instead to help me get pregnant, I always like to know what my options are. Mini-IVF is not for me, at least not right now, but I hope some of you might find this info useful. I know quite a few women who had to give up IVF because they can't afford it. And it breaks my heart that money might be the only thing coming between them and their dream baby.  So maybe there is an option here for them. 

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Before I go, I want to share with you a funny dream I had recently.

I dreamt that I was pursued by 3 men for the purpose of reproduction:

1) The first guy decided to go for a swim in the ocean and unfortunately, dived off a rock all wrong, and landed splat!... Flat in the water and destroyed any reproductive potential he had in his man parts! So moving on to candidate two...

2) I found out that it was Richard Gere who had the hots for me and was sitting at a cafe waiting for me. I happened to be walking around completely naked which strangely, nobody seemed to be making a fuss of. But then before anything happened, candidate no.3 interrupted the scene...

3) He came out of nowhere and grabbed my completely naked body from behind with his hands. While he tried to drag me off and subdue a frantic me, I was wondering why he wasn't even having an erection from my nakedness. (Yes, it's a good time to be having such thoughts while being kidnapped!) I mean, we were body to body and my butt was right up his crotch while he was holding me! I managed to free myself and ran for my life. He came after me. I lost him after a while and I ended up in a hotel room. I locked the door and waited, thinking I had lost him. But then after a few moments, he found me. I saw his shadow lurking underneath, outside my door. I panicked! He was going to barge down my door! Moments passed, yet nothing happened. Suddenly, a piece of paper was slipped under my door. And he left. I picked up the paper. On it, he said that he would like to make a baby with me. And if I agreed, he would pay me

$201,000,000,000!

Yeah right! If only I could!!!!