Is it possible in IVF to fertilize and implant just one egg at a time?

Is the issue that you don't want to create more than one embryo at a time (for example, for religious reasons) -- because you don't want "leftover" embryos? Unfortunately it's very hard to predict how many embryos you will actually end up with after an IVF cycle, because some eggs won't be viable, some won't fertilize, some will fertilize but not develop, etc. So if you don't maximize the number of eggs you produce (using drugs) and the number of eggs that are fertilized, you risk not ending up with any embryos to transfer.

I don't know a ton about this, so maybe someone else will chime in, but if this is what you're concerned about (creating embryos you won't use), you would probably still want to try to get as many eggs as possible from one retrieval, but then don't fertilize them all, and freeze unfertilized eggs instead of embryos. That way you could leave the possibility open for more future tries without having to do the whole process again. You would have to talk about this with your clinic.

Another thing you could look at is "Natural IVF," where IVF is still used to fertilize the egg, but without using stim drugs to make lots of extra eggs. So this replicates what happens in a natural cycle, but with fertilization taking place in the lab. The chance of success with this is going to be much lower than with conventional IVF, though. It's also cheaper than conventional IVF because you aren't paying for the drugs (I don't know what, if anything, UK health care covers, sorry).

/r/infertility Thread