Natural IVF is when we do not use any stimulation medication and only harvest the naturally maturing egg. The mini IVF is when we give a very low dose of injectable hormones or utilize the potential of the body to increase its own natural FSH. This way, we are able to obtain between two and four eggs per treatment cycle. Some women with diminished ovarian reserve will not be able to mature more than three or four eggs regardless. They can inject high-dose FSH and the ovary will still max out at a certain egg number. Because their overall number of eggs in the ovary so low, they’re only very few that can respond to the medication. In such patient’s mini IVF can provide same results as conventional IVF at the fraction of the cost and effort. The Tree of Life Center for Assisted Reproduction recommends mini IVF to patients with poor ovarian reserve that do not respond well to injectable medication.A woman that does have a good ovarian reserve with many potential eggs to grow and respond will benefit more from conventional IVF. However, we have patients who just do not tolerate injections well or cannot have blood and ultrasound tests every two days that voluntarily choose mini IVF over conventional IVF. They need to understand however, that repeat mini IVF cycles might be needed to achieve the same results as conventional IVF. In my experience mini IVF was also useful in patients who underwent tubal ligation and are otherwise very fertile. The cost of mini IVF is comparable to tubal reversal surgery and given that these patients have proven fertility they might only need one or two good embryos to have a very high chance to get pregnant right away.The most severe form of diminished ovarian reserve is when injectable medications shows no effect anymore. This is usually associated with high FSH levels on cycle day 2 or 3. The reason behind this is that your body can produce more FSH hormone than any form of injections that you can give yourself. Shortly before entering menopause your body produces an immense amount of FSH hormone and tries to mature a single egg every month. In that case, us giving you additional FSH hormone is like putting a drop into a full glass of water and we disagree with it. In those patients the only way to perform IVF is to do natural IVF. That means to capture the naturally maturing egg whenever it ovulates. At Tree of Life Center for assisted reproduction,Dr. Jovanovic has specialized in natural cycle IVF. This is particularly difficult because we are not able to manipulate your cycle. We in fact have to adjust the entire treatment based on what is naturally occurring in your ovary. We are not able to predict when exactly the egg harvesting will happen and have to be ready anytime. Therefore, many fertility centers do not want and cannot perform such cycles, since a large fertility clinic relies on being able to schedule and control all cycles. We also use a special retrieval technique with follicle flushing and thus have been able to retrieve eggs in a natural cycle in over 90% of retrievals. The natural IVF however needs to be performed monthly so that over four or five months we can harvest 4 to 5 eggs. Not every egg develops into a good embryo and in many cases we store and bank good embryos until we are ready to put them back.