We could use some advice!!

polyhymnia23 · October 2012

Hello friends! My wife and I have been married a little over a year and are hoping to add to our family. We have already decided that we will use a sperm bank and I will carry. We have some friends with experience and have picked their brains, but could still use more advice.

What bank, if any, did you use?

We will be paying cash for all the visits for my testing and such, do you have specific testing you would encourage someone to get before trying to get pregnant?

Any tips or advice you'd like to share?

Thank you!

Two*True · October 2012

Welcome! Check out the FAQs link at the top of the board. As for testing, I think it depends on how aggressive you plan to be and which route you would like to take to TTC. Are you going to try at home? Use your OB? Use an RE? etc.

Momof2Boys21 · October 2012

I would LOVE to give you some advice! My wife and I went through 2 different banks, and we tried almost every method possible from "naturally tracking ovulation" ourselves to IVF! We also paid out of pocket! I'm not sure how to do private messaging- but if it's possible, I can share everything with you!

JGY · October 2012

Welcome and good luck on the TTC journey.

I agree with TwoTrue, a lot will depend on your particular circumstances and preferences for TTC. Your age may play a role, the regularity of your cycle may play a role ... it's difficult to give advice at such an early stage. But we're certainly willing to try!

To answer one of your questions, we used Fairfax Cryobank and were very happy with them. They have a large selection of donors, were very customer friendly, and I personally made use of a lot of the monthly coupons that they send if you join their club.

I look forward to hearing more about you!

hlke · October 2012

Welcome to the board! Like TwoTrue mentioned, definitely check out the FAQ posts.

First, I would double check if you have medical insurance that no testing is covered. My work's insurance does not have any infertility benefits, but they do pay for diagnostic testing.

I would recommend getting the book "Taking Charge of Your Fertility" and beginning to chart your basal body temperature to verify you are ovulating normally. We worked with an alternative insemination program here in Chicago, and they recommend either no or very basic testing before you begin. We had charts that confirmed DW was ovulating normally, but she was 34 when we started and is 35 now, so we opted for some basic bloodwork to begin. We got FSH and estradiol tested on CD3 and a TSH test. After a few cycles of not getting pregnant, we tested progrestrone 7 days after ovulation and found it was low. If I could do it over again, I might get an AMH test (a test of ovarian reserve) and the progesterone test right away.

When you think about tests, always ask how the outcome could potential change your plan. In some cases if your tests come back borderline, the recommendation will be "wait and see" anyway, but if they come back low, a more aggressive approach will be recommended.

We started with home insemination and a known donor, so our per cycle cost was about $300 and we didn't feel the need to do a lot of testing before we tried. Now that we are officially having "trouble" (6 cycles and over 35) we will be getting more testing.

polyhymnia23 · October 2012

Your advice would be amazing! You can e-mail me at polyhymnia23@yahoo.com if there isn't private messaging on here!

polyhymnia23 · October 2012

Thank you so much for all of the information! We are just at the very early stages of planning things. Our plan is to do IUI and I am going to carry. We don't have any coverage for anything, so it will all be out of pocket, so we are going to save as we go. We are not going to use a known donor, due to the many legal problems (I'm an attorney) that could arise and because the banks have more testing done. We know we are going to have to pay out for sperm and so we wanted to get some basic blood work done first, to make sure we aren't wasting our time!

Thank you for the information everyone! I am sure we will be using these boards more often!

2moms2b · October 2012

Hi and welcome!!!

I would highly recommend the day 3 tests and other basic testing such as thyroid levels, progesterone levels, etc. These test can save you a bunch of money in the long run if your results come back low (or high) depending on the test.

Also you will find a bunch of different conception methods between us ladies. Some were successful at home, some successful with a doctor using non-aggressive unmedicated cycles and some of us went directly to aggressive options just to maximize our chances each cycle or to combat fertility issues.

The one piece of advice I would offer is make sure the OB, RE (Reproductive Endocrinologist) or Midwife is completely on board with your preferences. What I mean by this is some people don't want to use medical intervention other than IUI procedure for several cycles. Some doctors offices go straight to medicine and don't like unmedicated cycles where as some offices have a mandatory x number of cycles before medicine is offered. Our office let us take the lead so after they made their recommendations we made the ultimate decisions to use medication or not.

We used CryoLab bank and were very pleased with pricing and customer service.

Feel free to ask away as you will notice we are a very friendly group. These ladies have been lifesavers since we started ttc again!

hlke · October 2012

I also wanted to add that which bank you choose depends on what kind of donor you want and where you are located. A lot of people here use Midwest Sperm Bank because local pickup is free, but they don't have a very large donor selection. If you want an ID release donor, or a donor of a certain ethnicity, lots off people use the bigger national sperm banks - California Cryobank and Fairfax are pretty common choices.

polyhymnia23 · October 2012

Thank you so much! I will be sure to continue asking questions and checking out this board! I am so thankful that there are boards like this out there!

karah0011 · November 2012

We used Farifax in Virgina. They were awesome to work with and had a huge selection. Customer service was great and the pricing was decent. We did IUI through a fertility doctor in town and before they would even do insemination I had to do about 4 tests. One was the HSG I believe and that was $4,000. Thank goodness we have good insurance that covered most of it. I also had to do lots of blood work and other tests. Price wise, they added up quick. I can't imagine not having insurance. After all the tests were done, we did insemination and it worked the first time. I def recommend getting tested before you start the process. It took about 4 months to get all the testing, but it was well worth the wait. I have a friend who has been trying to get pregnant for over a year and refuses to get checked out. They have spent thousands of dollars when there is a chance there is a problem. Anyways, good luck and congrats on taking this exciting step! Let me know if you have any other questions about donors, sperm banks, IUI...etc.

polyhymnia23 · November 2012

karah0011:
We used Farifax in Virgina. They were awesome to work with and had a huge selection. Customer service was great and the pricing was decent. We did IUI through a fertility doctor in town and before they would even do insemination I had to do about 4 tests. One was the HSG I believe and that was $4,000. Thank goodness we have good insurance that covered most of it. I also had to do lots of blood work and other tests. Price wise, they added up quick. I can't imagine not having insurance. After all the tests were done, we did insemination and it worked the first time. I def recommend getting tested before you start the process. It took about 4 months to get all the testing, but it was well worth the wait. I have a friend who has been trying to get pregnant for over a year and refuses to get checked out. They have spent thousands of dollars when there is a chance there is a problem. Anyways, good luck and congrats on taking this exciting step! Let me know if you have any other questions about donors, sperm banks, IUI...etc.

Thank you so much! We are looking into Fairfax...we just have a feeling about it. We'll see!

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