If you are considering going for or are about to start an IVF treatment. Here are a short lists of what to expect during the process. Things listed here are based on my personal IVF experience and hopefully will give you a head start on what to expect.
Lots of injection – every day for atleast 1 month
The two main steps of IVF treatment, suppressing your natural cycle and boosting your egg supply, require injections of hormones into your body. These two steps can last from 3-5 weeks or even longer depending on how your body response to the treatment.
For the suppression step, one injection per day is required. Once your system got hijacked, the egg stimulation process can be started, for which two injections per day are needed.
The clinic will teach you to do the injection yourself either on tummy or thigh. Or if you prefer your partner could do the injection for you. You will need a lot of courage at the beginning to start injecting yourself with needles, but once you done a few, it gets a lot easier and quicker to get through.
Side effect from the hormones
The main adverse effect of the hormones that bother me the most are headache and make me constantly being tired and sleepy. Here are some side effects that I experienced:
- headache – mine was really bad sharp headache lasted all day. Drinking lots seem to help a bit
- exhausted and sleepy all day – it made to go to bed super early (like 9pm) every day.
- hot flushes
- pimples – lots pop out on ma face once I started the inhection
- bloated
- skin rash and very itchy on the injection site
Bleeding during the first stage of injection
Before egg stimulation can be started, the doctor will make sure that your natural cycle is being under control. This can be done by blood test for the level of hormones and ultrasound scan to check the thickness of your womb lining.
Bleeding during this stage is normally a good sign. It means that your natural cycle is getting suppressed and ready to start the next step of treatment which is egg stimulation.
Believe me… you will never be that keen for a period to start. Just be patient, the bleeding will start eventually. It took 16 days after hormone injection for my period to start. I remember, I have never wanted to have period that badly.
Swollen ovaries
Toward the end of egg stimulation your ovaries will be generally bigger than normal carrying, hopefully, a lots of large follicles (containing mature eggs). Enlarged ovaries will make you feel quite bloated. You might feel that there are something big and heavy in your tummy on both sides.
At this this stage you should avoid any high-impact exercise or abrupt movement because it can lead to ovarian torsion.
Lot of scans and blood tests
You will need to be a bit flexible with your work and able to go for a regular ultrasound scans and blood tests. It could be once or twice a week or more often than that. This is varied depending on how your body respond to the treatment.
The scan is done vaginally and normally to check the overall status of your uterus, womb lining, ovaries and follicles.
Any abnormalities such as fibroids will need to be noted before starting medications. Once you start hormones, blood tests will be done to measure the level of hormones in your body. Scans will be scheduled to monitor the thickness of your womb lining and the growth of follicles in the ovaries.
Emotional rollercoaster
The whole precess is the real up and down emotionally. From wondering:
- how many eggs will be retrieved,
- how many will be fertilised,
- how many good quality blastocysts you will have
- and if the embryo will be implanted after transfer
- etc…
The two week wait or the waiting time before you can get a reliable pregnancy test result after embryo transfer is the most killing period of all.
When you are hoping for positive outcome and knowing that there is a fertilised egg, an embryo, in your womb. And the final step away from being pregnant is for that embryo to implant and stick to your uterine wall. It is hard to have to wait for so many days, not knowing what the outcome will be.
The ‘two-week wait’ after embryo transfer could drive you mad. Every symptoms you experience or not feel raise these two main questions over and over again:
- Is this a sign of early pregnancy symptoms? OR
- this feel pretty much like my period is about to come, is it over then?
The truth is you will never know which one is the right answer until you do pregnancy test on day 14 after egg collection (9 days post 5-day embryo transfer or 11 days post 3-day embryo transfer).
This is because any symptoms could be a result of the treatment (e.g from progesterone passary). On the other hand if you feel nothing at all it could be due to the fact that it is far too early to have any pregnancy symptoms.
So be prepare for these dilemma. My suggestion is to try to keep yourself busy, be positive and hopeful. Try some soothing music and relax as much as you can. No need to worry yourself about things that are out of your control. Nothing you can do to change the outcome, so why not just try to be happy.
Let me tell you that it is easily said than done, but try your best to not go mad or too overwhelm with how your body feel.