The two week wait period is probably one of the most stressful time for most women during an IVF treatment process. This waiting period before you can do a pregnancy test could cause tremendous amount of anxiety and stress. You are most likely keep asking yourself “Will I be pregnant or not?” or keep noticing every slight changes you felt in your body and doubting if it is an early pregnancy symptoms or signs? If you have difficulty going through this two week wait and if it is driving you mad. Here are ways to cpoe with the two week wait to take out some of the stress while waiting for your pregnancy test result. Also, if you are interested to know ‘what I did during the two-week-wait to help embryo implantation’, you can read here.
-
Think positive and try to relax as much as possible
There is not much you can do now. Lots of laugh and relaxation are known to encourage implantation. So why not try to drop all the worries you have and enjoy the moment of knowing that there is an embryo(s) in your womb and it is only one step away from becoming pregnant! Keep in mind that there is a possibility that you might be pregnant in a few days time. Not long to wait at all after what you’ve been through. Always hope for the best result.
-
Engage yourself with activities you enjoy doing
Just keep distract yourself from worrying with activities that you love doing. For example, you can go shopping, sit on a sofa watching movies or eating out – do whatever you enjoy doing! But make sure it does not involve heavy physical exertion or heavy lifting. Basically just keep yourself busy with things to keep your mind off anxiety. I spent a lot of time watching my favourite shows on Amazon Prime Video (you can get 30-day free trial).
-
Rest as much as you need
You are likely to feel tired from all the hormone injections and excitement or anxiety you had during the IVF process. So it is now the time to rest as much as you feel like. Your body is definitely need some good rest. I found lying on the sofa or bed with reading books and falling asleep made me worry less. Resting or sleeping helps reduce your stress level and it does make time go a little faster during the two week wait.
-
Share your worries with your partner
Talk with your partner openly about how you feel or what worrying you can help lowering your stress. He/She is the one who most likely understand what you are going through and will give you support you need. You might also want to share your thoughts on how you both want to cope with the either positive or negative outcome. Remember that worrying does not stop bad things to happen but prevent you from enjoy the good stuffs you have.
-
Do not over analysing every symptoms you feel
Any symptoms that you experience during the two week wait is likely due to the medications or from the treatment procedures. Many of the symptoms from progesterone pessary mimic early pregnancy symptoms. And many early pregnancy symptoms are the same as when your period is coming. Cramping or bleeding could mean good or bad, you will never know for sure until the test day. So over analysing symptoms could unnecessarily drive you mad. Also don’t feel down if you don’t experience any symptom at all because for many cases it is too early for pregnancy symptoms to show up. I had no symptoms what so ever and I got positive pregnancy test the the end of the two week wait!
-
Do not test early
Testing too early could give you either false positive or false negative results. I have explained why that might be the case in blog post ‘When to test after egg transfer‘. Follow your clinic recommendation on when you should do pregnancy test. You might get a negative result if you test earlier than that even if you are indeed pregnant. This is because it takes some time for pregnancy hormone to go high enough to be detected by a urine pregnancy test. It also depends on how sensitive the home pregnancy test is. The most reliable test would be blood test for HCG level if your clinic offer one.