IVF stands for in vitro fertilisation. An egg is combined with sperm in the laboratory. In conventional IVF, sperm and egg cells are combined in a Petri dish. In ICSI, a single sperm cell is injected into each egg. Ever since the inception of our centre in , we have been conducting research on children who were conceived with ART at our centre.
Your natural menstrual cycle is temporarily replaced by a medically controlled cycle. You will be given hormones to stimulate the ovaries and develop multiple oocytes. Just before ovulation, you go to the operating room where the doctor punctures the ovarian follicles with a fine, hollow needle and the eggs are collected in follicular fluid.
This is usually done under local anaesthesia. The Petri dish goes into an incubator that mimics the conditions in the uterus as closely as possible. Several eggs are fertilised and embryos developed.
As agreed with your consulting physician and in accordance with Belgian legislation, one or more embryos will be selected for embryo transfer. Additional good-quality embryos can be frozen for subsequent transfer of thawed embryos. An embryo is transferred to your womb after three to five days, so that implantation can take place.
Any good-quality supernumerary embryos are frozen in that case. If you fail to get pregnant after the first transfer or if you want another child later, the preserved embryos are used first for a subsequent transfer. The treatment is less stressful because it does not require hormonal ovarian stimulation or egg retrieval. The chances of implantation of the thawed embryo are usually the same as during a fresh embryo transfer.
