Short IVF course delivers up a beauty

Christine Hutchby with her 9-month-old daughter Amelia, who was conceived with the help of short-course IVF. Photo / Dean Purcell

Christine Hutchby found her short one-month course of in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment easy.

And it gave her a blonde, blue-eyed baby, Amelia, now 9 months old.

"Amelia is lovely; she's a really good baby," her mother from Papatoetoe in South Auckland said yesterday.

Mrs Hutchby has a 4-year-old daughter, Lexie, who was conceived naturally, but after failing to become pregnant again, she opted for IVF, at a cost of about $10,000.

She was the first to have the newer, short course of IVF treatment at the Repromed Auckland clinic after it was made the preferred option for suitable patients in 2007.

Taking about a month - about half the time of traditional IVF - it is now used with 60 per cent of the clinic's IVF patients.

Buy not all specialists favour short IVF, and is used on only 20 per cent of IVF patients at rival Fertility Associates.

Repromed Auckland's medical director, Dr Guy Gudex, said short IVF required many fewer days of injections, "meaning the hormonal impact on women is less and the psychological stress of waiting for the various milestones of the IVF process is reduced, as it's much quicker".

"The pregnancy rates are proving to be the same ..."

But Dr Richard Fisher, of Fertility Associates, disagreed.

"The international literature still has doubt whether it's as good as the traditional protocols," Dr Fisher said. "Certainly in younger women it is not likely to be quite so good.

"It certainly is more convenient and there is no question people like it. Our view is that until the evidence is absolutely clear, convenience is secondary to outcomes."

Mrs Hutchby, 36, said friends who had had traditional IVF had experienced problems such as mood swings.

Another who had the short treatment is Nicola Forster, 38, of Tauranga.

She has a daughter, Izzie, now nearly 2 years old, who was conceived through traditional IVF.

Mrs Forster went through a later cycle of traditional IVF and then a short one - both unsuccessfully - but is now 17 weeks' pregnant after a second short cycle.

She did not experience hormonal mood swings, but said that, given her age, the greater time taken up with the long cycles, when added to the "stand-down" required between IVF cycles, was very stressful.

"You're watching your fertility ticking away."