How many vials did you originally purchase? I would like to get about 8, in hopes that we could maybe get 2 pregnancies with it. How many vials are typically used per IUI? My RE recommended us to get at least 3 so we could attempt 2-3 cycles. But to me that seems like a small amount, 1 vial per IUI? I was just wondering if anyone could tell me how many they purchased/used? Thanks so much!!!
Re: Question for those who used donor sperm...
LO #1 - 1 unmedicated/self-monitored IUI w/ donor sperm.
LO #2 - 1 m/c, 2 BFNs, 4th IUI worked (unmedicated/self-monitored with new donor sperm).
Life is beautiful!
We bought 12 vials, knowing we'd want to have at least two kids and would want them to be full biological siblings to each other. We had a balancing act to figure out of how many vials to ship to the office at any one time (shipping fees are a few hundred dollars) because once they left the cryobank, we couldn't return them and we might have to pay additional storage fees on remaining vials at our RE's office ... so we didn't want to ship to many and we didn't want to ship too few. We opted to ship 3 at a time. We got pregnant with DD on our second IUI so we had the third unit that was left over at the RE's office destroyed because we didn't want to pay additional storage fees for it and we knew we had 9 units left at the cryobank.
We again had 3 units shipped for this pregnancy and got pregnant on the second try so we have one remaining unit at the RE's office that we'll again have to destroy because they want to charge us $142/year for that one unit and we're still paying storage at the cryobank for the other 6. The 6 we still have left at the cryobank we'll probably store for another year or two, until we know for sure if we do or don't want a third baby. If we don't want more, we can sell back those 6 vials, if we choose, and get half of our money back. We originally bought 12 vials thinking that statistically it would probably take us 4 tries to get pregnant each time. We got lucky that it only took half the time both times.
Our doctor uses two vials per IUI within 24 hours of each other. Since the donor we are using has plenty of vials available, we are purchasing 6 at first. Best case scenario, we only need 2 to get pregnant on the first IUI and have 4 left over for a future child. Worst case scenario, we go through all 6 in 3 rounds of IUI's and we'll need to purchase more down the line.
No matter what though, if we do get pregnant with the first or second IUI, were going to purchase enough vials to place in storage for future kids so they are all biologically related.