A new plan

When I called the Dr office to set up monitoring for my 3rd cycle, I had asked the nurse what the next step was going to be since, this will be my 3rd unmedicated round and at this point I don't have much hope of it working. She mentioned maybe clomid but nothing to specific. Well I got a call yesterday from them and basically my Dr said that after this IUI if it doesn't work then we are off to IVF.
I am happy that I have a plan and scared also but kind of wondering why we did unmedicated this whole time only to jump to IVF. I mean, if it was medicated wouldn't that have maybe increased my chances if I were producing more than one mature egg?
Either way, like I said, I am just happy to have a new plan and of course a whole bunch of new things to stress myself out over!

Re: A new plan

If I were you I would probably ask about medicated IUI cycles first I would just want to know out of curiosity because it seems like medicated vs. unmedicated would increase your chances! I guess it really all depends on your specific case. In my case, I need all the help I can get producing mature follies and ovulating.....

Good luck with your new protocol!!!!!!

Re: A new plan

This is pretty much the same thing that my DH and I are going through right now. When we first met with my Dr. he recommended doing 3-4 unmedicated IUIs and then if we did not have success with those, moving straight to IVF. I asked him about medicated IUIs and he said that given our situation (MF issues) he did not think that medicated IUIs would be helpful.

At the time of that consult we were thinking the SA results would show about 10 million. For my first IUI we only had 3 million, , and we asked what we would do if the counts were that low again. The Dr. suggested straight to IVF, but wanted to see what the results of the SA were during our second round. For the second IUIs we had 15 million both days, , which seemed like a great improvement. I haven't spoken to the Dr. yet (he was out of the office for both my second IUIs), but I get the impression that for our situation he doesn't recommend medicated.

However, when I had a consult with another center, the Dr. there recommended 1 cycle of unmedicated IUI and then 3-4 medicated IUI cycles.

Here is the question I am struggling with - why would medicated IUIs be a 'wasted' step? Someone on this board once wrote that medicated rounds are great since they give you more mature eggs to work with, thereby increasing the chances of success. But it seemed like my Dr. at NSUH felt that since the sperm wasn't penetrating the egg with a count of 15 million, adding more eggs wouldn't really help.

Has anyone received contradictory advice??

At this point I think that we're leaning towards 2 more IUIs and then moving on to IVF.

Good luck with your journey!!

Message edited 4/2/2010 9:17:56 AM.

Re: A new plan

Jenn, i have dr K also and i had 4 unmedicated cycles of iui's. Have you had a hsg recently.. if not ask him about it.. the only thing that concerned me was i asked him about it after my 3rd failed cycle and he said i didnt need it.. i had one 8 years ago.. while doing my ivf cycle, it was found that i needed one.. and sure enough.. the reasons the iui's didnt work were because my uterus was lined with polyps and there was no place for baby to attach.. i love dr k but if you have any questions.. make sure you ask him.