Part one
My cooperation with Dr Olga Zaytseff
I got pregnant at first try at her clinic - it is a success story of a married couple of Yugoslav.
Olga Zaytseff is a medical doctor who provides medical service for international patients (in the Clinic located in Saint Petersburg, Russia).
After seven-month correspondence and personal contacts with her, I feel free to give my opinion about her work and patient management. She is an excellent doctor, ready to deal with the most demanding patients.
And I certainly was the one. I wanted to be actively involved in all steps of the treatment plan and I had so many questions, worries and fears, but Dr Olga exhibited great professionalism in dealing with all that, even with my occasional impatience.
I do not have a medical background to understand all medical terms, but I followed and compared therapy schemes of other patients with my diagnosis (POF), who were also in preparation for DE. I realized a lot of differences.
There were differences in pretreatment dynamics, as well as in certain medications and their dosage. My opinion is that the individual approach in creating a treatment plan is just the key of Dr Olga’s great success.
Moreover, she has a perfect combination of necessary professionalism and politeness in communication with the patient, but also recognize the moment when patient, in this delicate procedure of IVF treatment, needs and wants something more! Simply: she gives the impression that she truly cares for her patients. And because of that, I would recommend to all her future patients just to leave everything to her, and certainly that is the best way for successful ET.
This is a snapshot from my experience during treatment protocol
On my first examination, the PGD method was scheduled to achieve better implantation of the embryos. Surprisingly, Dr Olga informed us about new discoveries in this field, where this method, when is used in DEIVF, due to its high sensitivity, disqualifies some cells and therefore may reduce a significant number of healthy embryos capable for implantation.
However, she let us make a decision and we chose not to proceed with PGD. Initially, there were 12 fertilized embryos, but on the fifth day only 2 were transferred at the blastocyst stage and additional 2 that survived, were cryopreserved in the morula stage. There were no extra! We would spend more money on PGD and probably lose more embryos. Dr Olga was frank and honest with us, keeping our best interest in mind and that’s why we appreciate and respect her even more.
We believe that Dr Olga Zaytseff was trained by the best in the Russian Federation. She will remain modest, in spite of her widely recognized competence, and dedicated to her patients. The clinic, thanks to her, will be ahead of the others for a long time.
My husband and I wish her cordially all the happiness in her life and a lot of successful IVFs! If anybody has some questions, I `ll be so glad to answer, about my treatment plan and DEIVF in t. Petersburg.
Part 2.
I got pregnant on the first try at the clinic in St. Petersburg.
A successful story by a married couple from former Yugoslavia.
There is a message I want to convey to everybody who wants to have a baby through egg donation: that miracles are possible and they don’t happen just to other people. Because for us DEIVF treatment was successful after the first try at the clinic in St. Petersburg in the Russian Federation. The first step to make this dream come true is that every woman makes an honest decision about this. The decision has to be hers, not because her partner asks. It has to be with her partner’s support. The next and even more important step is to pick a clinic that you trust completely and whose high standards in embryo transfer convince how seriously they regard their medical service.
Our success story is accompanied by lots of signs, good intuition, and in end the “finger of destiny.” After many months reading about different clinics, our top choices were three clinics in the Czech Republic and we were ready to send applications with all of our test results. However, our plans changed. From our forum, I heard about the clinic in St. Petersburg. Thanks to Mini, our countrywoman, (now she is my cyber godmother) that lives in London who searched and checked the ratings of clinics on the English forum www.fertilityfriends.uk. She recommended the clinic because, unlike other ones, this clinic works with donors who have their own healthy children already. Until then I didn’t even know that you can do egg donation in Russia. Especially not with donors who have their own children already. I went to their website and I believe I didn’t take a break for the next 48 hrs. I opened absolutely every webpage on the site, even those that weren’t about egg donation. I wanted to know everything. I wanted to know more than they had presented on the site. I analyzed the physicians, how old they were, their biographies and illustrations. I analyzed their approach and explanations about why it is important to come in person for the first consultation. This kind of approach showed me how serious they were about it. I realized that the clinic wants to use an individual approach with each patient. Early on they use screening and testing to increase the success rates of in-vitro. All the arguments were in favor of this clinic. They also emphasized that there was no waiting list. What captured my attention was their detailed explanation of the risks of multiple pregnancies and their strict laws about how many embryos can be transferred. The clinics always obey this law and they don’t care about statistics or success rates or any financial motivation. What interested me was their methodical approach and I hoped that they would adhere to their principles. I compared the details with other clinics.
And then suddenly I remembered that I know a lot about Russian history, even about their current politics, and above all, about Russian literature… similar languages, same religion. There was no reason for me to be indecisive, except one. The price of the treatment. But at the same time, I became aware of the fact that with my almost 39 years I had to give myself the best and have faith and hope in a successful outcome. I know I didn’t have time, or extra money, to try other clinics more times, probably without success. This sounds like a fantasy but I had a strong wish and faith that it would be successful after the first try. Even on the day of the transfer I still had faith in success. I confided in Dr. Olga my intuition when I was laying on the table. She understood. I knew that this was my chance. I felt it.
Everything after that was like a movie. In an act of kindness, a company provided money for the DEIVF treatment as soon as I contacted them. There was no end to my happiness. Everything was so ideal that I was in the clouds all the way until my first consultation visit. My dream became a reality. When you want something very much and when your decision is final I think that nobody can stop you. And a good clinic can make dreams come true because…I am now pregnant.
I’ll leave it to the doctors to explain the reasons for using an egg donor but in my case, it was early menopause…with an FSH higher than 80. I didn’t have any alternative for any new treatments or experiments. After early menopause when I was 33 I decided not to use HRT. That’s why I needed more time than others to get ready for the DEIVF treatment. It was still a shorter time than planned, thanks to an excellent response to the therapy. If this seemed to anybody that it was ideal it wasn’t. There was lots of anxiety and worry about the unknown. I especially remember the days when we were trying to decide about using an anonymous donor based on her available data. We asked the clinic for alternative donors as well. My husband and I could not easily choose between, on one hand, the first donor with the same blood type and RH factor as me, and one the other hand, O blood type and RH negative. Unexpectedly we chose the second one. We decided based on the greater possibility of physical similarities with me and possibly more successful implantation with blood type O. But we will remember those days always together. The whole thing was like we were in a cartoon. After studying all day and night about A, O, and B blood types, we began to see people as their blood type letters. Following their policy of the anonymity of donors, after we picked the donor the doctor said she already had two successful donations. We knew we made the right decision. Because we believed we made the best decision, we put off DEIVF for two months because the donor we picked had developed a cyst. We didn’t want to accept a 3rd alternative donor. We decided to wait for our best opportunity.
During our embryo transfer, we spent about 10 beautiful days in St. Petersburg, probably one of the nicest cities in the world where when you walk you have a feeling that you’re in a 21st-century fairy tale because wonderful architecture, luxurious mansions, and the history of Czarist Russia is everywhere. During that time we went to the clinic a couple of times. We weren’t nervous or tense. We let Dr. Olga evaluate the situation. We waited 5 days for embryo transfer after the egg retrieval, and this is a very important fact because when you transfer the embryo in the blastocyst stage it means a more successful treatment. The process of embryo transfer is very precisely described on the clinic’s website, but Dr. Olga emphasized that it would be painless, and it was. Within an hour after the embryo transfer, I felt a specific reaction in my stomach in a specific spot and that continued for the next couple of days.
I was mistaken about mandatory immobilization after ET. Except for a short still period for about 20 minutes right after my transfer Dr. Olga said I could move freely. I want to specifically emphasize this because we had a long flight home through Moscow. They have very strict rules right now, but we were able to transport 80 injections in our carry-on. Even though it’s against the regulations, thanks to a note from the clinic and the understanding of the airport personnel, it was no problem. They understood the importance of the injections, which prevented bleeding, as well as my obsessive worry not to separate from my injections, which were not expensive but for us, they were very valuable medication. Fortunately, the bleeding did not occur. Today I remember our experience during the flight from Moscow fondly even though we went through turbulence almost the whole time. But those are now just beautiful memories. Now we are following pregnancy week by week. After our ultrasound that confirmed the pregnancy, we are happy to have our baby and jokingly we say that our baby is going to have a Russian heart and our soul.
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