Hi - I'd agree with everything that Maribou says, except that in my own personal experience, the fertility treatment wasn't really that hard.

Things may have changed in the last nearly twenty years, of course, but in my day what I had to do was this:

- firstly, I had to take drugs (I think it was a nasal spray several times a day as I recall) every day at a certain point in my period (can't remember when, to be honest), and what those drugs did was basically shut down my own menstrual cycle. The drugs are hormones, as I recall, that basically give you a temporary menopause, so you get ratty, etc, but that's all.

- secondly, once my own menstrual cycle had been shut down (took a couple of weeks I think), I took different drugs to start a new 'artificial' cycle that basically gave me a 'super-cycle' - these drugs (hormones again!) simply accelerated the growth of my eggs, until they were completely ripe. This bit of the treatmetn was a bit tougher, as, alas, the drugs have to be injected. Some people go to the doc every day to get it done, but lots just DIY - I did, and it really wasn't that bad. I just had to jab my thigh (it doesn't hurt once it's through the surface layer) and press the squoosher on the syringe..

At that point you have two choices. You can go at it 'au naturel' (!) when your eggs are totally ripe, and you are massivley fertile, and trust that nature does the trick and you get pregnant naturally.

Or, you can do the whole thing in vitro, as in IVF, and have the eggs collected (under sedation, but not necesarily general anesthetic, it's your choice), and fertilised in a test tube. Then you wait a few days to see if they've 'taken' and started to divide into embryos, then you go back a few days after that and have the embryos (up to two I think now) put back in (think reverse smear test!), then you just wait to see if you get a period or not....ie, are you pregnant.

Julie.