Tim and Gwen Walz Used the Fertility Treatment IUI to Conceive — Here's How It's Different from IVF

Intrauterine insemination has made headlines ever since the Democratic Vice Presidential nominee said he and his wife Gwen used the procedure to start their family

• Intrauterine insemination (IUI) has made headlines since Tim Walz revealed he and his wife, Gwen, relied on the procedure to build their family

• An expert explains to PEOPLE how the process differs from in vitro fertilization (IVF)

• While IUI — which was commonly called "artificial insemination" — has a lower success rate, it's a simpler procedure that requires fewer visits to the doctor's office

Intrauterine insemination — commonly called IUI — has made headlines since Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz revealed that he and his wife Gwen relied on the procedure to have their daughter Hope, 23, and son Gus, 17.

But what exactly is IUI — and how does it differ from IVF?

As Dr. Shaun WIilliams, a reproductive endocrinologist at Illume Fertility, tells PEOPLE, IUI involves physically placing the sperm closer to the egg to increase chances of fertilization.

“We concentrate as many sperm as we can from a regular semen sample, and we place that sperm in high concentrations all the way to the upper part of the uterus.”

“It's a really simple procedure that just involves bringing the cervix into view — like a regular pap smear — and passing a tiny flexible tube through the cervix and then placing the sperm higher up into the reproductive tract,” Williams tells PEOPLE.

In short, he says, “intrauterine insemination definitely gets more sperm up to where the eggs are.”

Women are given medication to produce more eggs, he explains, and “doing an insemination helps deliver more sperm up to where those eggs are.”

Related: Lala Kent Shares She's Conceiving Her Second Baby via IUI: 'You Don't Need a Man'

The procedure may be “necessary if we're dealing with mild male factor problems, like low sperm counts or decreased sperm motility, where there's still a good number of sperm that are being produced—but not very many sperm are able to just swim up where they need to be naturally.”

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“If somebody has unexplained infertility, which represents maybe 25 to 30% of couples that we see [who] have no identifiable cause of their infertility, then we use intrauterine insemination with medication for the female for a better likelihood of success per treatment month,” he says, adding that it’s also helpful for patients with endometriosis.

The procedure was previously known colloquially as ”artificial insemination,” and according to Williams, who is board-certified in obstetrics, gynecology, reproductive endocrinology and infertility, “some insurance policies, when they say what they cover, they say they will cover artificial insemination or IUI.”

But, he tells PEOPLE, “It's never really been used by the reproductive field as a term for treatment.”

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He adds that some insurance companies will require people try IUI, a “less expensive treatment option” before moving on to “more aggressive treatment.”

That next step would be in vitro fertilization — or IVF. And the process, Williams tells PEOPLE, is profoundly different.

At the start of a woman’s menstrual cycle, Williams explains that they’re given a “follicle stimulating hormone” for about 12 days.

The process involves once or twice a day injections with frequent visits to the doctor's office for ultrasounds to monitor the growth of these follicles because “sometimes with IVF, we need to adjust the medications from one day to the next.”

Related: Celebrities Who've Opened Up About Their Emotional IVF Journeys

Then, the eggs are retrieved, and fertilized in a laboratory, either with a partner’s sperm, or as is often the case for same-sex couples, donor sperm.

“We can control all the steps more completely with IVF,” he says. “And then once we fertilize the eggs, we can watch those embryos develop in the laboratory for several days to pick the best embryo out of that group —because the best embryo is the one that grows the most rapidly.”

With IVF, Williams says doctors can also do additional testing for chromosomal abnormalities that could “lead to miscarriage.”

While, “IVF works a lot better than doing just an insemination,” Williams tells PEOPLE,  “when we do an intrauterine insemination, it's really a much easier treatment cycle with far fewer [doctor's] visits.”

Overall, he says “infertility is often something that couples don't talk about openly and freely. I think that many couples realize that, when they do open up about it, they find that it's a very common problem that couples are faced with and that we have very good treatments."

"We hope all couples take advantage of [these treatments]," he tells PEOPLE, "because they're safe and they help couples achieve those family-building goals.”

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