No worries, feel free to ask any more questions. It feels crap at the start, but before long you are trucking along and it's not as bad as you might imagine once you know a few details.

Basically if and when fertilisation occurs (usually observed the following day after the egg/sperm party) they give the embryos three to five days to develop. Depends on the clinic - many transfer at Day 3, but some clinics prefer to wait until they reach what is known as Blastocyst which is a more complex and developed embryo and this usually occurs around Day 5. The theory behind waiting until Day 5 is that it sorts the better from the poorer, but many people have success with Day 3 transfers anyway.

As for the egg collection - my wife had a rough go with her first, but she was bloated like a whale from the drugs because she is tiny and the drugs were readily absorbed and too effective (known as Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome), from which people bounce back fairly quickly generally. The second was much much better and took probably 30 mins and she wasn't more than a bit uncomfortable. The insertion of the embryos is a 5 minute job, no wrse than a pap smear apparently and generally they will repalce only one embryo, but sometimes two on agreement from you. Never any more than two. Don't worry about OctoMum, she's American and, well, yeah....

I'm not familiar with DH's situation, but if he is producing any sperm at all, they may be able to retrieve them doing a quick biopsy procedure at the same time as your egg retrieval. No guarantees that they would be useable though - but you're fertility specialist can guide you through that process. It may be that a donor is the only option, but cross that bridge when you get to it as obviously your DH and you have enough turmoil and upset to process at the moment.

Cost is a suck factor, no doubt. Depending on your clinic and if tehy charge what is considered by the Govt. to be reasonable fees, once you are about $1100 out of pocket you get 80% of everything back via Medicare. So even though a cycle used to cost us upfront about $7,000, we only ended up a couple of K out of pocket. Things have changed a bit since we did it (ie. new rules this year) but the principles are much the same.