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Start Here: Your Guide to Fertility Treatment
Not sure whether you need a test, a treatment, or just time? This guide walks through what gets checked first, which treatments exist, the order people usually go in, and how to read the success figures.
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hi, I’m Nick — Welcome!
Nick Peplow
the short version
What Is Fertility Treatment?
Fertility treatment is a set of tests and treatments that help you build the family you want, taken one step at a time. It usually starts with testing both partners, moves through medication and IUI, and on to IVF and ICSI where they are needed. Alongside it sit egg, embryo and sperm freezing for people who want to keep their options open, and donor eggs, sperm or embryos, which offer excellent odds when your own are not the right route.
Most people arrive expecting to need IVF and find the first step is a blood test, a scan and a semen analysis. That round of testing is where your plan comes from, and it is the quickest and most affordable part of the whole thing. A male factor is involved in around half of cases, so testing both partners together from the start is the best way to get a clear answer fast.
I built this site to give you the clear answers I couldn’t find in one place: who each test and treatment is for, how it works, what it costs and what your chances are. Where I give a success figure it is the live birth rate per cycle started, by age, because that is the one that answers the question you are actually asking. No jargon, no sales pitch, just what you need to choose well and go ahead with confidence.
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Tests first, in almost every case. Both partners: a semen analysis, ovarian reserve, a hormone panel, a check that the tubes are open and the uterus is normal. It takes a few weeks, costs a fraction of a cycle, and often points somewhere simpler than IVF. Fertility testing covers each test, and Start Here the ladder of treatments above them.
Age is the biggest single factor. Using your own eggs, live birth per cycle started runs roughly a quarter to a third under 35, declines through the late thirties, and falls into single figures by the early forties. Ask any clinic which measure its figure uses, since pregnancy per transfer always runs higher. Start Here explains the difference.
Plan on more than the headline quote. Self-pay IVF is commonly quoted around $12,000 to $20,000 in the US and £5,000 to £8,000 in the UK, and that figure usually excludes drugs, ICSI, freezing, annual storage, later frozen transfers and any add-ons. Ask for the all-in cost in writing and you can budget with confidence. Start Here lists what to check line by line.
It depends on your age when you freeze and how many mature eggs you bank. Frozen eggs give you a real option: they have to survive the thaw, fertilise, become a usable embryo and implant, so the number banked matters. Done early it buys the most; done later it usually means freezing more. Egg freezing sets out the whole chain.
Donor eggs change the odds substantially, because success then tracks the donor's age rather than yours, and donor sperm is the standard route in for single women and female same-sex couples. The law varies enormously by country: anonymity, payment, family limits and surrogacy rules all differ. Donor conception covers it, and ask me if you are comparing countries.
Yes. A male factor is involved in something like a third to a half of cases, on its own or alongside a female factor, and a semen analysis is one of the cheapest and fastest tests there is. Testing both partners together gives you the whole picture from the start. Semen analysis explains what the result changes.
Fertility Testing
The first round of checks: ovarian reserve, hormones, the uterus and tubes, and semen analysis for the other half of the equation.
See all testing guides →
IVF
Eggs collected, fertilised in a laboratory, one embryo put back. Insemination before it, the steps inside the cycle, and embryo testing.
See all IVF guides →
Freezing and Preservation
Storing eggs, embryos, sperm or ovarian tissue for later. What each one can do, who it suits, and what it costs now and again when you use it.
See all freezing guides →
Donor Conception
Treatment using someone else's eggs, sperm or embryos. Some of the highest success rates in fertility care, plus the family and legal decisions worth planning well.
See all donor conception guides →
Male Fertility
A male factor is involved in around half of cases, and a semen analysis is the quickest, most affordable test in fertility care.
See all male fertility guides →