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Family Beginnings offers Ovulation Induction and Intrauterine Insemination as treatment options for our patients.
Ovulation Induction (OI) is where you take medication to trigger your ovaries produce a few eggs. This is useful if a woman doesn’t ovulate regularly. The ovaries are carefully monitored by ultrasound and lab work. Once the eggs are mature and ready to ovulate, you can either have timed intercourse or have an IUI performed.
An intrauterine insemination (IUI) is a procedure where processed sperm is placed in your uterus around the time of ovulation. IUIs can either be natural cycles (without medication) or combined with OI, and they can be done with a male partner’s sperm or donor sperm.
IUIs are useful if the male partner’s sperm quality isn’t great. The semen sample is washed before the insemination so that the best sperm is put into the uterus – see the video to the right for an example of semen pre- and post-prep. The IUI gives the sperm a head start toward the egg by letting it bypass the cervix. This increases the chance for pregnancy, and it’s been shown that IUIs have a success rate of up to 20% per cycle. Inseminations are performed in our office and generally take about 1 hour.
If you’re interested in learning more about OI/IUI, please call the office to schedule an appointment.