The Decision

In my previous post, I shared about the journey that led us to learn that we are experiencing infertility. No worries, I had already gotten the consent from the husband to share this with everyone. Personally, I wanted to share our journey because I want to create more awareness to everyone that infertility is common in this age and it is not anyone's fault. 

The next popular question most people would ask - Who and why? Hence, I am using the term 'we' because it's us and we are going through this together.

Before we came into our decision, we did some research online if In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) is the only option for us. In this research, I learned that there are two ways that an egg can be fertilised - traditional and Intra Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI). Traditional is understandable whereby a large number of swimming sperm will be placed next to an egg in a laboratory dish. They have to race to fertilise the egg. ICSI, on the other hand, injects a single sperm directly into the egg. Some centres offer different pricing package for traditional and ICSI. I also came to learn about Intrauterine Insemination (IUI) and the cost is much cheaper simply because the procedure is much simpler - a large group of swimming sperm will be placed directly into the uterus and they have to swim their way to the fallopian tube to fertilise the egg.

A disclaimer here, I am no expert in this. I am just sharing my personal experience and the journey that I had been through with my husband.

While we were scouting and deciding which centre to go to, this particular centre's name came to me twice. There is no price difference between traditional and ICSI. Not only that, they have a team that will assist their patients to compile all the checklist, forms, medical reports and invoices needed for EPF withdrawal application. The best part is they offer cashless facility should the patients opt to use their EPF funds in Account 2 for IVF treatment. Hence, we finally made our move and made the first appointment at Sunfert@Bangsar South. I chose Dr. Eeson as our go-to doctor because I thought he would get along well with the husband. 

Making an appointment was really easy - all I had to do was to download the app and select the doctor's available time slot of our chosen date. We had to be there 2 hours before our scheduled time as the husband had to do semen analysis. This is compulsory for all first consultation. Why 2 hours before the scheduled time? The report will be ready by then when it's our consultation with the doctor. Awesome, right? No time wasting here.

We made our decision on the spot after our first consultation with Dr. Eeson. He is very kind with his words and his words are very reassuring. We do not feel uncomfortable like what we had felt with some other doctors whom we had approached before Dr. Eeson. To be honest, the only regret that I personally had - we wasted too much time and money. We should have seek help at Sunfert in the first place. 

Dr. Eeson informed us that we could start the IVF treatment on the second day of my menstrual cycle which was a week away. He shared with us what we would be going through - from ovarian stimulation to egg collection and finally, embryo transfer. Before we left the centre, we reached out to their EPF Support Team to assist us on EPF funding application and also to apply for cashless facility with Sunfert on our IVF treatment. Other than that, there's nothing much we could do while waiting for my next menstrual cycle. 

In short, numerous of waiting game will be going on throughout this journey which I will share more in my next post.