So Technical - How We Chose Our Clinic

I said a little while ago that I'd start writing more technical posts about IVF and the process so far. I'm incredibly lazy so I haven't gotten around to it, but I'm biting the bullet and writing it today. Here goes..

First I'll tell you how I narrowed down our clinic of choice:

I searched through pages and pages of the Czech Mates posts on the Inspire forums. This is how I first came to hear about IVF abroad. I'd never realized that this was an option. Most of these women go to a clinic in Zlin, Czech Republic for Donor Egg IVF. This didn't apply to me, so I kept Zlin in mind but continued my search. I also noticed some women referencing Fertility Friends and their forums about IVF abroad as well. I read through all of the information I could get my hands on. On FF, I saw more women doing Own Egg IVF and starting snooping around to see which clinics they went to.

Finally, I made a spreadsheet of all potential IVF clinics in Czech. I sorted them by city, success rates, price, services provided, and anything extra that they might do. I narrowed it down to 4 clinics: Reprogenesis, Reprofit, Zlin's Center for Reproductive Medicine, and Gennett. I emailed all of them. (I actually emailed about 10 different clinics, but I'll focus on these 4).

Zlin's replies were fairly quick, but I had a difficult time communicating with coordinator. English was obviously not her first language and, as I like to ask about 1 billion questions, I thought that communication should be key. I also didn't love that Zlin was in the middle of nowhere (think rolling hillside country). If we wanted to do any day trips and get out of our hotel room, we'd have to hop on a bus, taxi, or train and drive about an hour.

Gennet's responses were good, but ended up being quite a bit more expensive than the others. See, all of the clinics asked for basic blood work - FSH, LH, Estradiol, Prolactin, TSH, and sometimes AMH. But Gennett wanted me to have an EKG done and a bunch of other blood work (in preparation for the anesthesia) that would have undoubtedly cost an arm and a leg. Plus, I didn't want to look for a doctor to do all these tests and have to explain why I needed them. Even though they were in Prague and it would've been awesome to stay in that city, it would've been too expensive, so they were out.

Reprofit responded quickly and their replies were easy to understand. I sent them my information (past blood work, IUI results, HSG tests, sperm analysis, etc) and started down the path with them. But I didn't get a warm and fuzzy feeling from their coordinator, and the doctor I was emailing kept missing several questions I would ask. So I put them on the shelf for a bit.

Then there was Reprogenesis. From the get go, they were wonderful. Every single question I asked would be answered the next morning in complete detail. I sent them my information as well and we had a Skype consultation with their doctor. He was great and we had a very good feeling about them.

We narrowed it down to Reprogenesis and Reprofit - they were identically priced with ReproG being slightly more expensive. This was because ReproG used the Embryoscope which added about $800 extra. I did some research and came to the conclusion that the Embryoscope was mainly beneficial for women who had low quality eggs (generally over 35 or DOR) and that didn't apply to me.

So having shaved off that $800 from the cost, we realized that we really preferred ReproG after all. And that's how we chose our clinic.  :)