RE psych consultation

handsomecowboo

I am working on IUI in December and it's almost overwhelming with a long to-do list. I've seen so many of us go through the frustration of having to do a psych consult/eval. I was just told that both my boyfriend and I need to do it. Can anyone tell me what we might expect from it besides a $200 fee?

diane&tammy

Why do you need a psych eval for an IUI? That seems strange to me.

Mommy2016

I have to have one too. It is scheduled for next week, so I am curious to see the responses here. Mine is $375 though, so sounds like you have a better option than I do.

Good luck!

melandfo

I had one for my IUI cycle. My RE only had that protocol for Same Sex couples and I believe non married couples.

It was super easy! I was so nervous but it was really just an hour conversation with a therapist. She wanted to know about each of us individually: what we did for work, interests, hobbies, our family etc. Then she wanted to know about us as a couple: how did we meet, how long we had been together, just asked us questions about us as a couple. The bulk of it was how we felt about being parents, the stresses of trying to conceive, how many IUI's would we try before IVF, how we would handle it if we could not get pregnant. She also wanted to know how our families felt and if we had a support system that would be there.

It went fast and she told us that she rarely ever recommends for someone to not do fertility services. She wrote up our recommendation letter while we were sitting there.

handsomecowboo

Having to one seems strange to us also. Mostly it feels a bit invasive. And to be honest, I'm a little worried that they will ask a big question that we haven't ever even considered or that we might not agree on. Fortunately we can do it all by phone so I think that will make it a little bit less intimidating.

Mommy2016

They are letting you do this by phone? I am totally jealous. I have to drive over and hour to see an "approved" therapist and the counseling session is 2 hours long.

grovehill123

In Canada to get ANY sperm from a bank, one needs the Psych Evaluation. The psychologist made me start from the beginning of time, and very little was actually about reproduction. To boot I as on my first ever ativan after a bad experiences the previous hour doing the sono hysterogram. Yeah it was a utter mess, couldn't remember half of what I said as I was emotionally drained. I don't get these laws here, just went through a donor embryo , no assessment but for some reason sperm alone is "special". Ohh and even better the government 'covered' it.

Mommy2016

I had mine last night and it was fine. She said she'd have the report and the RE's office today, but she saw no issues with me using donor sperm.

Of course my brakes went out last night so now I will have that huge expense, so who knows when I'll actually get to try now.

handsomecowboo

Update:

Just for anyone who is curious, the evaluation or meeting with the psychologist was more of an educational meeting. These are some of the questions that they asked us:

How did we choose the donor? And if we decided to tell our child about being from a donor, we should consider the way we talk about it (emphasizing that we choose that donor and therefore, that child).
Who have or would we tell about the ttc and use of a donor?
What are our occupational, health/medical, and ttc histories?
What are our family relationships and dynamics?
If we did IVF and had extra eggs, what would we do with them (donate, destroy...)
Otherwise it was just information about when we might consider talking to our child(ten) for these big conversations.

blkbrd3

My RE addresses these questions in office during the initial treatment consult. We had a general conversation about the supports I have in my life which may help me raise a child and how I might approach the stresses of TTC and parenthood. It was a pretty easy 20 minute conversation.