There are many treatments available for female infertility and the treatment you require depends greatly on what diagnosis you receive.
If you’re not ovulating, the first recommendation will be to have ovulation induction (OI). This treatment ensures you are releasing eggs at the right time, ready for fertilisation, through support of your own menstrual cycle.
There are a number of reasons you may currently not be producing eggs. However, regular ovulation can usually be restored using fertility drugs (pills or injections). Around seven out of 10 women taking these drugs will ovulate, and four out of 10 will conceive in the first three months. The choice of drug will be made by our experts after careful assessment. Fertility drugs stimulate the development and ovulation of mature eggs to be released ready for fertilisation.
Intrauterine insemination (IUI) is another treatment option which involves bringing the eggs and sperm together at the right time. You will have an initial consultation with one of our fertility specialists to agree your personalised treatment plan. You will be closely monitored by regular ultrasound scans and blood or urine tests. Depending on the number and size of your follicles, and the thickness of your endometrium, an injection may be given to induce ovulation. The sperm is carefully washed and prepared, and IUI is performed at the optimum time to achieve a pregnancy.
Other treatment options include:
- IVF – for more information on this please visit our designated FAQs page
- ICSI – Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI) is a lab technique that may be appropriate for you if your sperm need a bit of extra help to achieve successful fertilisation. Your embryos, created using the ICSI technique, are then transferred in exactly the same way as in standard IVF
- Blastocyst culture – This is a scientific term for when your embryos are kept in our laboratory incubators for longer. This ensures they undergo critical developmental changes before being returned to the uterus
- Frozen Embryo Transfer (FET) – If you had embryos frozen during a previous cycle, they can be thawed and placed in your uterus, avoiding the need to go through another IVF cycle
- Surrogacy – In some cases, potential parents need the help of another person to carry and deliver their baby for them
