Where East meets West

What can I do to improve my chances of having a successful IVF procedure?

That's the question that I've been asking myself since we discovered that was our last hope of having biological children.

My first thought was...lose weight. They say that a weight loss of only 10% drastically increases your chances of conceiving and maintaining a pregnancy.

After that, I did a bunch of research to see if there were other things that I could do to increase my chances of having a successful pregnancy.

The only other thing that I could find was acupuncture. A little unconventional, but there seems to be real evidence that it can help women not only GET pregnant...but STAY pregnant.

I actually have a small amount of experience with acupuncture. When I was first diagnosed with PCOS, I found an acupuncturist in VA that had a lot of experience with infertility. I went to see her, talked about a personal plan, and had my first session. I left there knowing it was going to cost about $2000 to go through the recommended treatment with the HOPE that at the end my PCOS would be straightened out and we would have a better chance at getting pregnant.

After a lot of prayer and conversation, we decided that we weren't ready to be so 'aggressive' with trying to get pregnant at that point, plus we didn't really have $2000 to spend.

An interesting thing happened...(TMI alert!!!) 12 days after my first acupuncture session, I had some spotting!!! I was thrilled! I thought maybe it might actually work. Unfortunately, the reasons we decided not to move forward still held true, so we didn't pursue it.

Fast forward to now. I found an acupuncturist that works directly with my fertility center. I called and talked with her about my options. She didn't pressure me an any way. She gave me the option to do A LOT or just two treatments the day of my embryo transfer. I wanted to get to know her a little, so I went to see her two weeks ago. I've had two sessions so far and at the very least, it's extremely relaxing...and costs MUCH less than a massage! ;-)

The other side to this is the MFI. I have also read that accu can possibly help improve motility and morphology in men with MFI. That is GREAT news considering those are two of the issues that we're dealing with. The third issue is with something called sperm binding. From what I can tell, sperm binding means that the sperm are genetically programmed to find the egg and 'bind' to it. Without that genetic programming, they will never bind to an egg. Hubby's binding percentage was pretty low - low enough that that number combined with the low morphology and motility are why we are headed to the RE this Thursday. I really want to ask the RE if he thinks it would be worth spending the time and the money to help improve these numbers enough that maybe we can do IUI instead. That's on my list of things that I want to ask. Look for that post in a couple of days! :)

I have my first RE appointment on Thursday. I'm going to talk with him about accu and see what he recommends. It's very likely that I will at least do that two sessions on the day of my ET. I'll tell you more about that later! :)

On another note...I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Until next time...