7 - Background - Feb/March/April 2008

Although it wasn't in the original plan, we considered doing another insemination in February. However, with this insemination the sperm would have had to have been frozen (because of my husband's schedule). The doctor informed me that the rate for success does decrease when the sperm used for the insemination has been frozen, so we opted to just try naturally in February.

By end of February, we realized that the situation would have to be similar in March - we would have to use frozen sperm again which we really didn't want to do because of a decreased chance of success. Right around this same time, a close friend of my informed me that she knew some people who had great success out at a reproductive center in Colorado. She said she had heard that this place was ranked #1in the country for infertility treatments. I did some of my own research and confirmed that this was true. There was a great write up in Parents magazine (in addition to statistics on the CDC website):

http://www.parents.com/getting-pregnant/fertility/treatments/10-best-fertility-centers/

The place was the Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine or CCRM, located in Lone Tree, Colorado (just outside of (Denver). Not only did I find positive information about CCRM, but I also found out (through research and word of mouth) that the University of Michigan has below average success rates. I actually had the opportunity to speak with a woman who went through IVF at CCRM (after several failed attempts though a couple of places) with much success (twins!). My husband and I discussed it and decided that since we would be spending so much money in the process, we would go to the #1 place. I made a phone call to CCRM the next day to set up a phone consultation for April 24th, 2008. If you are out-of-state they will give you a 1/2 phone consultation for free. Once we set up the phone consultation, they sent us a ton of paperwork to be filled out and sent back prior to the consultation. We were also required to send the results of all of our previous testing and fertility treatments.