In Vitro Fertilization (IVF)

In vitro fertilization (IVF) is a type of assisted reproductive technology (ART) where eggs are fertilized by sperm outside the body, in a laboratory, and then transferred into the uterus.

What is In Vitro Fertilization (IVF)?

In vitro fertilization (IVF) is a procedure in which a reproductive endocrinologist fertilizes one or more eggs with sperm inside the embryology laboratory. The most viable embryos are then transferred into the uterus. IVF is the most successful treatment you can do using your own eggs and sperm (or those of a donor). Fertility Centers of Illinois uses the most innovative and advanced technologies which are the key to our high success rates.

IVF Step-By-Step Timeline

A standard IVF cycle usually takes about 5–8 weeks, starting from the first day of your period and ending with your pregnancy test. Because every journey is unique, your timeline may differ based on your individual needs. The IVF process includes ovarian stimulation and monitoring, egg retrieval, semen preparation, fertilization, optional PGT testing, and embryo transfer.

The IVF Process

Your journey begins with a conversation with your physician to explore your goals, vision, and dreams of building a family. Together, you’ll create a personalized action plan tailored to give you the best chance of success. Miracles don’t happen overnight, but we’re here to support your pace — whether you’re eager to move quickly or prefer to take things slow.

Your IVF Journey Step-By-Step Timeline (5) 2

Consultation and Fertility Testing: Consultation and Fertility Testing: Discuss your goals with your physician who will order fertility testing to identify any underlying causes of infertility and determine your personalized treatment plan.
Prepare for Treatment: Ensure your pre-treatment checklist is completed. This includes signing all consents, gaining medical and financial clearance, confirming your pharmacy, ordering and receiving medications, and reviewing your calendar for medications. You may be prescribed medications, including birth control, to prepare your ovaries prior to beginning IVF treatment.
Period Starts: Day 1 of IVF treatment starts on the first day of your menstrual cycle. Once your period begins, notify the nurses.
Ovarian Stimulation: Your care team will let you know when to begin your daily medications, which are designed to stimulate your ovaries to produce and develop multiple follicles. Follicles contain eggs, so the ovaries are stimulated to produce as many healthy follicles as possible.
Bloodwork and Ultrasound Monitoring: You will return to the clinic to assess your response to medications and avoid under or over-stimulation. Ultrasound measures follicle size to make sure they are growing. Bloodwork measures hormone levels and medications are adjusted accordingly.
Trigger Shot: A hormone injection that triggers the final maturation of eggs will be administered around days 9-12 to get your eggs ready for collection. This shot is time-sensitive. Your care team will give you a specific time of day that the shot needs to be administered. Your egg retrieval will occur 36 hours later.
Egg Retrieval: Around days 13-14, you will have an egg retrieval procedure. General anesthesia will be administered during the retrieval to ensure comfort. Following the procedure, your care team will inform you of how many eggs were collected.
Fertilization: The eggs collected will be fertilized with a semen sample on the same day as the egg retrieval.
Embryo Development: The fertilized eggs will develop in an incubator for 5-6 days after fertilization where their cells will hopefully divide and develop into blastocysts, signifying they are maturing to evolve into a healthy embryo.
Preimplantation Genetic Testing (PGT) (Optional): PGT to screen for genetic and chromosomal abnormalities is optional once your embryo reaches the blastocyst stage. PGT will require a frozen embryo transfer (FET). PGT results take up to 2 weeks to receive.
Embryo Transfer (Fresh or Frozen): The highest quality embryos are viable for transfer and transferred into the uterus during a quick procedure that requires no anesthesia. The timing of your transfer will be based on your specific circumstances and menstrual cycle.
Pregnancy Test: A blood test will reveal your pregnancy results within 2 weeks following your embryo transfer. If your test is positive, we will schedule an ultrasound approximately 3 weeks later.

*Timeline varies based on your individual circumstances. Birth control may be prescribed to prepare your ovaries for IVF.

Download the IVF Timeline

Check out our downloadable IVF timeline. We understand this is a lot to take in, so you can easily view, save, or print the PDF version for your convenience.

View PDF Timeline

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When to Seek IVF Treatment

Once diagnostic testing is complete, your physician will review your treatment options. Many patients start with basic, ‘low-tech’ treatments like hormone therapies or IUI and then transition to IVF if needed. While IVF is not always the first step in treatment, it is a highly effective approach that fertility specialists use when less aggressive options are not successful.

There are instances when IVF would be the first line of treatment. IVF is recommended for patients with the following conditions:

Advanced maternal age: Age is the single biggest factor affecting the chances of conceiving and having a healthy baby because egg quantity and quality decline with age. By age 40, the chance of getting pregnant on your own each month is approximately 1%.

Tubal disease or tubal ligation: If a patient has a tubal ligation, IVF treatment would be the best treatment option since it bypasses the Fallopian tubes to achieve pregnancy.

Severe male factor infertility: If the semen analysis shows there are not enough healthy sperm to be successful with more basic treatment, such as intrauterine insemination (IUI), then IVF treatment can help patients overcome male factor infertility. With IVF treatment, an advanced method of fertilization known as intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) (pronounced “ick-see”) can be performed in the lab. With ICSI, only one healthy sperm is needed for each egg.

Severe Endometriosis: For women who have this condition, their endometrial tissue (the tissue lining the inside of the uterus) grows outside of the uterus. The endometrial tissue can attach to other organs in the abdominal cavity, such as the ovaries and the Fallopian tubes. The uterus will respond to this tissue the same way it responds to menstrual cycle hormones – it will swell and thicken and ultimately, shed.

Recurrent miscarriage: Recurrent miscarriage, also called recurrent pregnancy loss, is defined as two or more consecutive clinical pregnancy losses before 20 weeks gestation. It is important to consider clinical pregnancies rather than biochemical pregnancies, as biochemical pregnancies are usually not included in a diagnosis of recurrent pregnancy loss.

Poor ovarian reserve: Diminished ovarian reserve, also referred to as low ovarian reserve or low egg count, is when there are fewer eggs in the ovaries compared to people of the same age. If there is a low ovarian reserve, the chance of getting pregnant decreases while the chance of miscarriage increases.

FAQ

IVF offers the highest chances of success for many of our patients compared to other treatments, with a nearly 50% live birth rate for women under the age of 35, whereas the success rate for IUI is approximately up to 20% per cycle.

Children born through IVF are no less real than any other child. They come from an egg and a sperm, they’re healthy, and they bring joy to their families. Research actually suggests that there is little to no difference between IVF and non-IVF babies born with a disease/defect.

Technological advancements have drastically reduced the potential for multiples, with the twin rate decreasing to around 16% and triplets to less than 1 %of live births in women under 35.

If you’re under 35 and have been unsuccessful in conceiving after 12 months of unprotected intercourse, or if you’re over 35 and have been trying for 6 months or more, we recommend that you and your partner get evaluated by a fertility specialist. In some circumstances, seeing a fertility specialist is recommended such as instances where there is a known medical condition or advanced maternal age. A consultation with a fertility specialist will help you get your questions answered and determine the course of action for you.

The first step on the path to parenthood is identifying all the factors that might be contributing to a couple’s infertility. This is done through a basic infertility work-up that includes testing of both the male and female partner.

The work-up includes:

Initial consultation: Your physician will take a detailed medical history that includes medical and lifestyle factors that may affect conception.
Day 3 testing: This consists of simple bloodwork to determine a women’s hormone levels and a pelvic ultrasound to count the potential eggs in each ovary. These tests will help your doctor select the proper dosing and types of medication for your treatment.
Anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) testing: AMH is the most accurate predictor of a woman’s egg supply. Determined through a blood test, a higher AMH level would indicate a large amount of antral follicles and a strong ovarian reserve where as a lower value would lead your physician to believe there has been a decrease in the ovarian reserve.
Hysterosalpingogram (HSG): An x-ray dye test used to assess the uterine cavity and the Fallopian tubes. This allows the doctor to check for abnormalities in the cavity of the uterus and to verify your Fallopian tubes are open.
Semen analysis: Because male factor counts for 40 to 50 percent of all infertility cases, it’s critical to have a semen analysis as part of the basic infertility work-up. In this non-invasive test, we will analyze a sample of semen from the male partner under a microscope to evaluate the number and quality of the sperm. The test measures volume, concentration, motility (movement), and morphology (shape).

At the beginning of each cycle, your body produces several eggs that may develop, with just one that is mature enough to result in a pregnancy. Normally only one matures and ovulates while the others die. With IVF, all the eggs that are naturally recruited that month get stimulated so they all get an opportunity to mature. Nothing happens to all of the other eggs that are in the ovaries for subsequent menstrual cycles, which does not diminish your ovarian reserve or impair your future fertility.

You can participate in the Shared Risk 100% Refund Program for donor eggs. Many insurance companies do not cover the cost of donor egg treatment, but this program can help you significantly save on costs. The Shared Risk 100% Refund Program entitles the patient to undergo up to six cycles of fresh or frozen donor egg treatment, as well as any subsequent frozen embryo transfer (FET) cycles and receive a 100 percent refund if a baby is not delivered (some exclusions apply).

It can be difficult to interpret all of the various statistics quoted by fertility programs. However, there is a mechanism in place to help understand statistics associated with IVF and other assisted reproductive technologies (ART). Fertility centers report (in a standardized format) their annual statistics to the Society for Reproductive Medicine (SART).

This report is comprehensive and provides valuable information about a program, including:

Number of cycles performed
Pregnancy rates by age, with or without male factor infertility
Miscarriage rates
Average patient age

An analysis of this data will reveal trends or patterns that will provide insight as to the quality, stability, and experience of the programs being considered, especially if evaluated over time.

It is reasonable and recommended that you request documentation on the statistics being discussed as well as a breakdown by age and diagnosis. Fertility Centers of Illinois has remained committed to providing to the public a comprehensive statistical analysis of all assisted reproductive technologies (ART) performed in our center and their outcomes. This information is updated annually and is available in our patient packets upon request. We strongly encourage anyone considering advanced fertility treatment to obtain the same comprehensive information from each program they are considering.

IVF is usually not the first choice for many patients. However, if you’ve undergone IUI, ovulation induction, and you still can’t get pregnant even though your partner’s sperm/semen are healthy, then you may benefit from our donor egg program.

Because it is so popular, many people think IVF is undeniably the best infertility treatment. In reality, we have patients that didn’t need IVF to get pregnant and benefitted from IUI (Intrauterine Insemination) or ovulation induction. Everyone’s fertility journey is different, which is why the treatment we recommend depends on your personal situation.

IVF might be right for you if you and/or your partner suffer from:

Damaged fallopian tubes
Endometriosis
Poor semen quality
Low sperm count

Resources

What makes Fertility Centers of Illinois Unique

IVF Patient Experience at Fertility Centers of Illinois

Patient Stories