Michael Swanson

He was great. I was pleased with his knowledge & bedside manner. I really appreciated his sense of humor, his kindness, & his confidence. We only met with him a couple of times during the entire process, however, I never felt slighted, disregarded, or felt like I was looked at as just another patient with money to spend.

Unfortunately, he has retired. I have referred a lot of friends to him and Conceptions as a whole. My nurses, ultrasound techs were wonderful.

He was wonderful. He took a lot of time with us, answered all of our questions, and was frank with us about the predicted outcomes. He was right!

Our journey has been in three parts with Dr. Swanson. 1) In September of 2012 I met Dr. Swanson. We started testing then and it was decided to move on from IUIs to IVF. 2) We began shots in January of 2013 to prep my body for my egg retrieval. 3) We retrieved my eggs in March 2013. We planned on doing PGD, so I knew we were going to have to wait to transfer. Dr. Swanson gathered 30 eggs. 14 of those eggs fertilized and of those, only 5 made it to the blastocyst stage. We sent those 5 to be genetically tested. I recall it was nice because to take a break because I did slightly overstim a bit and felt AWFUL after my retrieval. 4) I found out that I had a couple of cysts, so we did have to delay my transfer to the fall. I was devastated for the delay. I started meds in early September, and we transferred our boy embryo in late October. I delivered him on his due date in July. For this cycle, what helped me prep was an IVF Calendar that I could read and reminders. A number of shots and pills was crazy and expensive! Since we had one remaining female embryo, we did the same protocol for our girl embryo and transferred last March 2016. Our daughter was born in November 2016. I do recall we used lupron, estrogen, and progesterone to help stim. And of course we had those HUGE shots of progesterone for 12 weeks after my confirmed pregnancies.

Tanya was my primary nurse. I loved her. She was timely, thoughtful, smart, communicative, prompt, and caring. I adored working with her. She was wonderful and I miss her!

I had been to another, rather well-known clinic in the area. So, my experience is based on comfort and gut feelings. Conceptions is warm, welcoming, friendly and helpful. I never felt like I was a cash cow... although I did have to pay out of pocket.

As unpleasant as some of these appointments can be, I always had wonderful monitors. I loved this team so much!

We paid around $20,000 for our retrieval and first FET. Our second FET was around $8,500. These prices include meds.

I followed my doctor's lead on this. He suggested transferring only one embryo due to my "mature age". 33/34 and 36. He cited studies supporting his opinion on transferring one embryo. That worked for us!

I have no complaints about Dr. Swanson. He was wonderful to work with. He has retired since my last visit, otherwise I would continue referring friends to him. I felt he genuinely cared about my husband and I and our outcome. Even in some of the most awkward situations (let's be honest - there's nothing fun about the envasive testing a couple goes through when determining the cause of infertility), he kept me comfortable and happy.

Be honest and fully describe all your symptoms to him. Don't hold back. As embarrassed as you might feel sharing such intimate information about your body, knowing all the details will assist Dr. Swanson, or any doctor, in properly diagnosing you.

Dr. Swanson was very thorough, kind, and made sure that all my questions were answered and that I was comfortable with each process.

We did 3 cycles of monitored Clomid. On cycle 2, we were going to try an IUI, but the results of my husband's SA came back low morph and low numbers and Dr. Swanson advised against it as he feared the outcome would be no different and we would be wasting money. We tried one more cycle of Clomid before moving to IVF.

I don't really have anything bad to say about the nursing staff. My only suggestion would be that when there is bad news to share with a patient, it may be best to either have them meet in the office or make sure the phone call is made while the patient is somewhere private. I was in the middle of a store when I was told that even though I had a positive pregnancy test, my beta numbers were so low that I should prepare to miscarry. I was a crying hot mess trying to leave the store. This policy may have changed and I don't remember the name of the nurse who made the call.

I felt the clinic was very organized. When I needed assistance, I also very quickly received it.

Insurance covered the Clomid monitored cycles and then we were on our own. IVF was a little under $13,000, with medication, if I'm remembering correctly, and it was due before we started the IVF cycle.

We were very much warned about the high possibility of multiples when transferring two, and even the chance that one or both of the embryos could split resulting in indentical twins due to the high embryo quality. We did transfer two and it resulted in a singleton pregnancy.

When we started with Dr. Swanson, we really didn't anticipate any real issue with getting pregnant as we had gotten pregnant, naturally, within the first 2 months of trying, resulting in a healthy son. We tried for nearly a year before we got referred to Swanson and he commented that, given my age (I was then 36) I should have been in his office at 6 months. Given that we live in an area with a doctor that is widely known for his fertility expertise (Schoolcraft), once we realized we were going to have a more challenging time getting pregnant again, I did question whether we were in the right place, but I liked Dr. Swanson and, really, felt like it was going to be a numbers game, no matter where we were, so feeling comfortable with the doctor was important.

I found Dr. Swanson to be quite direct, but that was appropriate for me/us. If you enter this process already quite emotional, I think you need to give his staff that input so that he has a heads-up.

Overall, I really like the team. We didn't spend a ton of time with Dr. Swanson, but he was candid about our chances and the options--which I appreciate. The rest of the team was great. I spent a LOT of time in their offices and they were always friendly and professional.

There were a lot of moving pieces for each of our rounds. I think the nursing staff did a good job of staying on top of the details and explaining things. Probably most importantly, any time I had questions, they were available by phone.