IVF Without Medication – Is Going Natural for You?

No doubt ovarian stimulation, using self-injected medications to cause your body to produce multiple eggs during a cycle, gives you more eggs to work with during in vitro fertilization. But you might be a candidate for natural IVF, an option in which you just let nature take its course. With natural IVF, our Los Angeles fertility center team retrieves the one naturally produced egg during your cycle for fertilization.

The upside? It can be an effective method of achieving the same means without the cost, hassle and potential side effects of medications used in traditional IVF.

How Does Natural IVF Happen?

During natural IVF, we will closely monitor your menstrual cycle and look for a dominant follicle from which to retrieve the egg. Just like with traditional IVF, that egg will be fertilized with the male partner’s sperm in the lab. We wait to see if an embryo is produced, then transfer it back into your uterus. It’s almost like natural conception, only it happens in the Petri dish!

Can I Trust Natural IVF?

Our Los Angeles fertility center director, Richard Paulson, M.D., and his research colleagues agree that natural IVF is a cost-effective option that doesn’t necessarily require more cycles to produce an embryo. Here are some reasons why you might consider natural IVF:

• You prefer to avoid or cannot tolerate ovarian stimulation medications.
• Ovarian stimulation medications have not worked for you.
• You’d like to try natural IVF rather than traditional IVF to save money, avoid self-injections and reduce office visits prior to IVF.
• Your fertility issues are not with egg production, but sperm. Natural IVF allows for the combination of your partner’s or donor sperm with your naturally produced egg.

Back to the Basics: We’re Here to Help

Did you know the first successful IVF baby in 1978 was conceived through natural IVF? Reproductive medicine moved more toward ovarian stimulation in the 1980s to up the chances of getting more eggs from one cycle. But nonetheless, natural IVF is still an option and one in which we were among the first to publish results. We also offer a modified version of natural IVF, using less medication than traditional IVF.

Contact us for more information.