If you and your partner are considering this procedure, you'll discover that the first step is the administration of hormones designed to stimulate your ovaries into producing several eggs.

Once the eggs have been produced then a surgeon inserts a needle through the vagina and on into the ovaries in order to retrieve the eggs as well as the fluid the eggs in which the eggs are residing.

While you've not give a general anesthetic for this portion of IVF, you may be given a sedating medication of some kind.

Testing occurs to insure that eggs are indeed within the fluid.

At the same time, the male partner provides the laboratory with a semen sample. He's requested to refrain from sex for several days prior to his giving this sample. The sperm, then, are separated from the semen itself.

Now, is the moment you've been waiting for. The sperm are combined with the eggs in a laboratory dish. This is the part of the procedure from which we get its name: in vitro fertilization. The "in vitro" part of the name refers to a process (and technically any process) which occurs in a laboratory outside a living creature.

Surprisingly, it takes only 18 hours to know if the sperm has fertilized the eggs and if they have begun the process of growing as embryos. If the sperm "have done their job" then the eggs are incubated. Laboratory staff then carefully monitors the progress for the following two to three days.

After that, the doctor transfers what are now referred to as embryos from the laboratory dish into your uterus. He or she does this by going through the cervix using a catheter. For an hour after this occurs, you need to stay in a resting position.

For the two weeks which follow, you'll be given more hormones. If the implantation takes hold, the eggs actually attach themselves to the uterine wall and continue to grow. You'll be given a pregnancy test, to confirm that indeed that everything is on course. And yes, it'll show loud and clear that you are indeed pregnant.

Allie Steffenhager was once diagnosed with infertility. She is now a proud mother and wants to share with you all that she knows about IVF and other fertility solutions. She has also recently published a book entitled, Infertility: Can it Happen? Find All You Need to Know About It. You can also visit her website for a free newsletter about Infertility.

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