The Role Of A Dude During IVF

It’s not nearly as much as the woman, but it’s not insignificant either.

I’m now a two-time veteran, two-time missed target IVF dude. I don’t know very much about the science of it, and sometimes the data seems a little bit foggy, but I’ve been through it twice and I’ve seen maybe one or two resources total on the Internet about the role of a dude in the process, so I’ll just put something together quickly that maybe someone will stumble across down the road as their relationship has to take this step.

First off, I guess it’s important to put some high-level concepts and caveats out of the way, and then we’ll get into specific sections. If you’re utterly unfamiliar with the basics of IVF, you’ll learn in the next few days and weeks as you undertake this process. But essentially, your wife or partner does 95% or more of the work, which includes a regimen of hormone shots. Near the end of the arc, on the same day as her “egg retrieval,” you masturbate into a cup in a sterile room somewhere, and said masturbation output is paired with some of those retrieved eggs and theoretically, magic will happen over time outside of the human body. Again, I’m 0-for-2 as of writing this, but that’s the general plan. So a male’s primary commitment in the process is to masturbate in a cup on a specific day. It’s always an interesting time.