At Bloom Fertility, Atlanta’s first INVOcenter, Dr. Sue Ellen Carpenter and her team of fertility care specialists offer a more intimate and affordable way for anyone dreaming of having a family, to realize their path to parenthood.
INVOcell® provides women the unique alternative to traditional IVF that uses the female body for fertilization and incubation. This option is particularly special for lesbian couples who both want to participate in the pregnancy, and here’s how:
Reciprocal IVF: What exactly is it?
Reciprocal IVF allows both women to participate in the pregnancy as one woman donates the egg, and the other, carries the baby. Yes! The process is like traditional IVF except that one partner’s egg is removed and fertilized, then transferred to her partner’s uterus giving lesbian couples, both, a biologic link to their baby. What can be more personal than that?
At Bloom, the inseminated eggs are placed in a miraculous device, the INVOcell. With INVOcell, the embryos are cultured in a woman’s body rather than an incubator in the embryology lab. For lesbian couples, this step offers a third opportunity for either partner to participate in their baby’s development: one partner donates eggs, one carries the INVOcell, and one carries the pregnancy! A couple has the option to decide who will be the primary participant at each of 3 stages.
How it Works
Ovarian Stimulation
2. Egg Retrieval
3. Embryo Development
4. Transfer
5. Pregnancy Test
How do we synchronize the cycle?
Most often, both women use a short course of low dose birth control pills to synchronize the cycle. In general, the egg donor’s cycle is more delicate and determinative than the embryo recipient’s cycle.
How does ovarian stimulation work?
Every cycle, a woman has a cohort of eggs (20-30) available for ovulation. Your body begins to select a dominant egg in the cycle before it ovulates, and the rest of the cohort dies off. We use birth control pills for the egg donor to suppress this selection process and allow a larger cohort to develop than would naturally be the case.
The embryo recipient uses birth control pills to synchronize her uterine cycle to her partner’s ovarian cycle.
What is ovarian stimulation?
Bloom uses a modest egg stimulation protocol to reduce the burden of IVF for patients. This decreases the cost of treatment and the disruption to a woman’s life by limiting ovarian hyperstimulation and the number of visits to our office. Our combination of oral and injectable ovarian stimulation medication results in the retrieval of 5-15 eggs per cycle.
At the same time, the embryo recipient takes estradiol pills to stimulate the development of her uterine lining.
What is egg retrieval, also known as egg “pick up”?
We use an ultrasound guided needle to gently enter the ovary and drain each developing ovarian “follicle”. The follicle is the cyst that forms around the egg. At Bloom, we use oral sedation to help with the procedure. In more traditional programs, full anesthesia is used. Our motive for adopting this technique is to save our patient’s money. Happily, we have found that patients and their partners also feel more involved in the procedure and aware of the results as we go. We complete the retrievals in <10 minutes. While the patient recovers in our procedure room with her partner and our medical assistant, the embryology lab inseminates each mature egg with one sperm via ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection).
Once the eggs are inseminated, they are placed in the INVOcell device and the INVOcell is placed in one partner’s vagina for 5 days of embryo incubation. Either the egg donor or the embryo recipient can choose to carry the INVOcell.
The Embryo Transfer
The couple returns to our office after 5 days, the INVOcell is removed from our patient’s vagina and the embryos are identified and graded. Embryo transfer is very gentle and straightforward. The recipient has a speculum exam and an abdominal ultrasound. A very gentle transfer catheter is placed into the uterine cavity under direct visualization and the embryo(s) are placed in the mid-cavity.
A pregnancy test is done 10 days after the embryo transfer. We follow the HCG levels, progesterone level and help the couple return to their general OBGYN for care!
What Factors are Considered?
Both partners will complete a medical history. Age, BMI, life-style choices (smoking, alcohol, caffeine consumption) are each considered.
We check “ovarian reserve” for both partners, especially the partner intending to donate eggs. This evaluation consists of bloodwork and an ultrasound.
We check obstetrical history (if any) for the partner intending to carry the pregnancy and evaluate the uterine cavity shape with a small procedure called saline infusion sonogram. We also practice the embryo transfer procedure to be sure we know the path and that the actual transfer will be as atraumatic as possible.
Once this testing is complete and a sperm donor is identified, the cycle can begin.