Your Compassionate IVF Clinic in Redwood City  

Our IVF & ICSI Process

The IVF and ICSI process at our Redwood City IVF clinic is designed to maximize your chances of success, with each step tailored to your unique needs. 

From the initial consultation to the final transfer, our team works closely with you to ensure you feel supported throughout the process.

Fertility Assessment and Plan

The first step in the IVF process involves a detailed fertility assessment. This phase typically takes about 3-4 weeks and includes your initial consultation and a series of tests. 

We’ll evaluate your medical history, conduct testing such as antral follicle count, assess your uterus and ovaries, and check your hormone levels. 

After reviewing all the results, our IVF clinic in Redwood City will create a customized treatment plan that best suits your fertility needs.

Ovarian Stimulation and Monitoring

In this phase, the goal is to stimulate your ovaries to produce high-quality eggs. The treatment lasts around 8–12 days and is considered the most time-intensive part of the process. You will administer 2-3 injections daily, and we will monitor your progress with 4-6 office visits over the next two weeks. 

Our Redwood City IVF clinic works closely with you to ensure that your follicles grow synchronously. This synchronized growth increases the chances of retrieving multiple high-quality eggs during the next phase. 

The stimulation process is crucial for optimizing the number of eggs we collect for in vitro fertilization in Redwood City.

Egg Retrieval

Once your eggs have matured, we will retrieve them during a 20-minute procedure at our IVF clinic in San Francisco or Sunnyvale. The process begins with you checking in an hour before the procedure, where you will change into a robe and meet with our anesthesiologist and embryologist.

Once you’re asleep under anesthesia, our specialists use a fine needle to aspirate the eggs from your ovaries. After about 20 minutes, you’ll wake up in the recovery area where our team will ensure you’re comfortable. Most patients take the rest of the day off, with many returning to work the next day.

Selecting Your Sperm

Before fertilization can take place, sperm must be carefully processed in our Andrology lab by expert embryologists. The process takes about 1-2 hours, during which the sperm is washed to remove any unwanted bacteria or impurities. 

We then select the healthiest and most motile sperm, ensuring the best possible quality for fertilization. 

Whether you’re using your own sperm or donor sperm, our Redwood City IVF clinic ensures that the sperm is in optimal condition to maximize fertilization during in vitro fertilization.

Fertilization (IVF/ICSI): Achieving Good Embryos

At this stage, eggs and sperm are inseminated either through conventional IVF or ICSI, depending on your needs. IVF involves mixing the eggs and sperm and allowing fertilization to occur naturally, while ICSI injects a single sperm directly into the egg for those with male infertility factors. 

Both methods are performed by our skilled embryologists using the latest techniques to maximize the chances of successful fertilization.

• IVF (In Vitro Fertilization): Eggs and 50,000 sperm are mixed in a petri dish and left to fertilize naturally.
• ICSI (Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection): A single sperm is injected directly into the egg for higher chances of fertilization.

All of our IVF clinics are dedicated to achieving the best fertilization outcomes, thereby setting the stage for healthy embryo development.

Embryo Development and Care

After fertilization, the embryos are closely monitored in our lab. The morning after insemination, we check if fertilization occurred by looking for two pronuclei, one from the egg and one from the sperm. 

Fertilized eggs are officially called embryos, and we continue to care for them for 5–6 days until they reach the blastocyst stage. If there are fewer healthy embryos, we may choose to transfer them earlier, at the 2 or 3-day stage, without selecting the best one. 

Our IVF labs ensure that each embryo is carefully monitored and nurtured with utmost attention and precision throughout its development.

Pre-implantation Genetic Testing

One of the significant advantages of IVF is the opportunity to test embryos before transferring them into the uterus. Pre-implantation Genetic Testing (PGT) allows us to screen embryos for chromosomal abnormalities (PGT-A) or inherited diseases (PGT-M). 

We sample a few cells from each embryo and send them for analysis, ensuring that only the healthiest embryos are transferred. If you wish, we can also reveal the biological sex of your embryo, though that’s completely optional. While the embryos are being tested, they are safely cryopreserved. 

Cryopreservation is a well-established and safe technique, with over 99% of embryos surviving the process with no negative impact on IVF outcomes. Our Spring Fertility IVF clinic in Redwood City ensures that the genetic testing process adds another layer of precision and care in your fertility treatment.

The Transfer Procedure

The embryo transfer is a crucial moment in the IVF process, carefully timed to your unique plan. During the procedure, the healthiest embryo(s) will be placed into your uterus using a thin, flexible catheter. It’s a painless and straightforward process, though you may experience some cramping afterward. 

Our IVF clinic ensures that the transfer is performed with the highest level of precision to maximize the chances of implantation.

For a detailed explanation of the procedure, Dr. Klatsky provides a more detailed description of the embryo transfer process.

The Results

After the embryo transfer, you enter the “two-week wait,” which is often the hardest part of the process. About 11-13 days after the transfer, you will return to our IVF clinic in Redwood City for a blood test to determine if implantation was successful. 

This period can feel long, but it’s an essential step in confirming whether the embryo has successfully implanted in your uterus. We’ll guide you through the wait and provide support at every step.