11th July 2010 , Posted by Yi Lin
Counting Chances
About 2 weeks ago, I took an afternoon off work to attend a briefing on IVF before we signed the consent papers for the procedure proper.
The good studentThe doctor from the IVF centre took us through the details of the IVF procedure. We were all given a pretty busy flowchart to mentally digest but although complicated-looking, it was easy enough to comprehend. We’ll be sharing more details about the procedure at a later stage – so that I can pepper my posts with actual photos of me stabbing myself with a needle everyday… More interesting for readers right? 
I have to share that Dan was very conscientiously following the doctor’s every word and even took it upon himself to jot down some notes against the chart. I thought it was quite funny when he zoomed in onto the stage “Embryo Transfer” and scribbled “into womb” under it. I mean, where else did he think our little fertilized ones were going? Up my nose? When I brought up the question, he looked at me in all seriousness and said, “It’s better to be clear.” Oh, ok. Gee, chill. Just when I was starting to find his diligence quite cute.
The doctor went on to show us some IVF statistics. I’ve never been a fan of numerical tables, charts and statistics, but I decided that now was the time to put in ALOT more effort into understanding figures than I did for my GCE ‘O’ and ‘A’ Level papers.
The first table showed KKH’s IVF success rate for females in 3 different age groups. I can’t remember the exact percentages (I did say that I’m not exactly a genius with numbers) but they went something like:
Age 29 years and below: 60-something % successful implantation
Age 30 to 37 years: 52% (that’s the category I fall into)
Age 38 years and above: 30-40% success
And for my age group, out of these 52% success stories at the initial stage, only 40-plus % make it to a live birth. Yeaaaahhhh, I guess the numbers aren’t exactly the most reassuring, but if there’s a chance (and in our case, it’s a decent one for us given our current age and status of health), we’ll take it.
Now, at one stage of the IVF treatment, the woman is administered daily injections for a good 3 weeks to stimulate follicle growth, the end product being the retrieval of as many eggs as possible to be mixed with the sperm sample. Some patients respond well to the drugs and can produce a good number of healthy eggs for extraction, while others unfortunately don’t respond well at all and are unable to produce sufficient healthy eggs to give them a good shot at being an IVF success story.
According to the doctor, it is preferred to start IVF treatment with at least 5 eggs available for the fertilization process. For women in my age category (30 to 37 years old), the average number of eggs produced is 9.5, which gives Dan and I a pretty good chance at creating sufficient healthy embryos for implantation during this IVF cycle, and to be frozen for future use. Keep your fingers crossed for us, everyone!
Then came the question of how many embryos to transfer into the womb. The average number is 2 (if patients wish to qualify for the Government grant for Assisted Reproductive Technology treatments) or 3. One couple at the briefing asked the doctor if they could have only 1 embryo transferred to the womb as they wanted to completely avoid ending up with twins. The doctor replied that if a woman was less than 30 years old, the chances of successful implantation and live birth were very high, so the hospital would usually accede to a younger patient’s request to have only 1 embryo implanted. However, women aged 30 years and above were strongly advised to have at least 2 embryos transferred.
For us? Just give us 2 please! I know we shouldn’t be counting our babies before they hatch but it would be perfect if we could have twins.
Wish us luck!
4 Comments
Celine Yeo
July 14th, 2010 at 10:44 am
LUCK LUCK LUCK LUCK and TONS of LUCK!! Hope you’ll be able to take your maternity leave next year
MC
July 14th, 2010 at 1:13 pm
Where do you atted the briefing on IVF?
Yi Lin
July 15th, 2010 at 5:14 pm
Thanks Celine!
Hi MC, I went to the KKH IVF Centre. The briefing is done closer to the date that you’re scheduled to start IVF, on the day that you have to sign all the consent forms for IVF procedures to be done on you.
Jaime Teo
July 16th, 2010 at 9:59 am
LUCK!!
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