On the advice of a friend, she made an appointment at the Irvine clinic with Asch, at the time considered one of the leading IVF doctors in the nation. All over his desk there were piles of books and papers. You could tell there was a lot going on. She thought it over for a few months and agreed. Conn. Today, the procedure typically involves the woman getting daily injections of drugs, beginning a few days into her cycle, that stimulate the development of many eggs at once.
Doctors monitor the process through blood tests and ultrasound.
Monitoring the laparoscope's journey by ultrasound, the doctor targets the maturing follicles, inserts a fine needle into them, and withdraws their contents. The harvested material is then delivered to an embryologist, who isolates the eggs and places them individually into petri dishes. The partner's sperm is combined with the eggs, and if all goes well, fertilized embryos develop. Should that happen, the progress of the embryos is monitored for three to five days. Then the strongest two to four are transferred into the woman's uterus, where it is hoped they will implant.