When we first started fertility treatments I remember walking into my doctor’s office and desperately asking “You don’t think we’ll have to do IVF do you?” I was terrified of IVF. It was invasive, expensive, and I didn’t know if I had the courage to do it.
Fast forward to months and months of failed fertility treatments, surgeries, and procedures, and I reached a breaking point. I walked into my doctor’s office just knowing what I had to do and basically told her to “give me the needles.” I was ready for IVF. I was determined.
Despite my resolve, I was still terrified. To ease my fears, I scoured the internet for tips, tricks, and first hand accounts of what the IVF process is actually like. Believe it or not there isnt’ too much out there about the day by day experience so I wanted to share what it was like for me in the hopes that it gives someone about to start IVF an idea of what’s to come and just to help educate people about this process.
Please know that everyone’s IVF experience is different. It depends on many factors like the cause of your infertility, your age, clinic protocols, and overall life situation. In fact you can do multiple cycles and have different outcomes and experiences each time.
Before Your Treatment
To schedule our IVF treatment, they put me on birth control while we waited for insurance approvals and the medicines to be ordered.
Getting your IVF meds is a whole other set of stress – they are expensive and insurance hates to pay for them. There’s also just a huge amount of drugs to take. I remember unpacking my med box and staring numbly at all the needles, syringes, vials, and swabs.
Finally, after two weeks we had the meds and insurance approvals. Show time.
IVF Day 1
Day three in the infertility world is what we call “baseline” – this is where on Day 3 of your period you go in for an ultrasound and preliminary bloodwork to check hormone levels. This is to ensure your hormones aren’t too low or high and also make sure you don’t have any cysts that could be aggravated by the fertility meds.
In the afternoon I got the call that my bloodwork came back within range and received my first set of IVF instructions. That night I was to start “Day 1” of treatment and inject the following follicle stimulating hormones:
- Gonal F injection
- Menupour injection
Both of these drugs are like fuel for the engines that are your ovaries. You are pouring massive amounts of “gasoline” in them in the hopes that they spit out a ton of eggs.
The first shot is always the scariest since they go in your belly, but its gets easier the more you do. I promise. The craziest place I did a shot was in the car while driving myself to a doctor appointment. You can see I got pretty good with those needles.
Days 2-3
I continued with injections. I got major headaches and felt nauseous from the high doses of hormones. This went away as my body adjusted. I also felt a lot of twinges and cramps as the drugs started to stimulate my ovaries.
Ovaries are normally the size of walnuts, but by the end of an IVF cycle they will be as big as tennis balls from all the follicles you’ll grow. You’re going to really feel those babies (literally).
Day 4
In for bloodwork and ultrasound. You have to be monitored very closely during IVF. Timing is everything and getting the right dosage of drugs is critical for success. Doctors do this by making you come in for frequent bloodwork and ultrasounds so they can adjust doses as needed. These appointments have to be early in the morning (usually between 5:30 am to 7:30 am) to ensure the doctor can review results and get you med instructions by that afternoon.
The main thing they are watching out for is OHSS – Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome. This is a serious complication of IVF where your estrogen and abdominal fulid levels sky rocket dangerously. If not monitored properly women can be forced to cancel their cycles. Most cases are mild, but if not treated properly it can lead to hospitalization and in extreme cases death.
Days 5-9
At this point I was going in every other day for bloodwork and ultra sounds (even on weekends) and continuing to take my injections of Gonal F and Menupor. They also added in a third injection of Ganerelix to prevent me from ovulating too early. So it was three injections a day. Two at night and one in the morning!
At this point I remember feeling very thirsty from the drugs and had an upset stomach.
Day 10
By now after over a week of injections I could really feel my ovaries with any sudden movement. At this point I was also getting close to ovulation. They needed to make sure that I didn’t ovulate too early or develop OHSS.
To avoid this they had me come in for bloodwork and ultrasounds everyday. I was so tired of being poked and prodded. Continuously invaded. I lived in constant anxiety of every test result and found the daily blood draws, and ultrasounds…wearying, just so wearying. Reaching out to two girlfriends and some private forums with ladies who’d gone through the process are what helped me cope. In these times you 100% need to talk to women who’ve been there. Only they understand and can coach you through.
Day 11-13
Continue daily injections, bloodwork, and ultrasounds. At this point you’re going to start feeling like a human pin cushion.
Day 14
This was the day I triggered ! What is a trigger? It’s basically where you give yourself an injection that will release your eggs so they can be “harvested” during your retrieval surgery. Yup. This is all so sexy and romantic isn’t it? And to think some people can just have sex for free. Ha.
The timing of your trigger shot has to be perfect. I’m talking down to the minute. Why? Because the doctors time your retrieval surgery to be just before you ovulate. This is usually 36 hours exactly after you take the trigger shot. If you take it too soon you ovulate early and you won’t get any eggs to retrieve. Too late and your eggs are aren’t mature enough and your embryo quality will likely be very poor.
At this point I was so swollen and just ready to have the surgery. I wasn’t scared at all and actually looked forward to being put under so I could finally relax.
Day 16
Retrieval day. I woke up and gingerly got myself to the car as I could feel my ovaries with each step that I took. They were huge and full of follicles – the drugs had worked. I was a good responder to the medicines thank god since this is something many women can struggle with. My surgery was scheduled for 9:30 am. I was put under and in thirty minutes the follicles that I had grown were sucked out with a special needle. From there an embryologist took the eggs back to the lab and looked for mature eggs that could be combined with Ted’s sperm.
From what I was told I had 36 follicles visible on my last ultrasound. Remember in a normal cycle your ovary makes one maybe two follicles. In an IVF cycle you make far more than that and this is why your ovaries swell. Thirty six was a fantastic number with good odds – but you don’t know the egg maturity or quality until they are retrieved.
You don’t feel a thing during surgery as your asleep so its nothing to be afraid of. When waking up I felt a bit sore and groggy. My first conscious question to Ted was “how many eggs?” Reproduction is a numbers game and I knew the more mature eggs we got the better our chances. My number was seventeen, I wept with relief because this meant we were in the game still.
At this point everything was out of our hands as we had to wait to see how many embryos we got. I went home, slept and spent the follow days recovering from surgery.
Day 17 – 20
This is probably one of the hardest periods of IVF as you anxiously await the daily embryo phone call updates. They tell you how many eggs fertilized, how the embryos are growing, and finally how many are healthy enough to implant. This usually takes between three to five days. If you’re lucky you’ll get a few embryos that you can either transfer that cycle or freeze for later. To get one or two viable embryos is considered very good so this just tells you what a numbers game this all is!
During this time you’re also recovering from surgery. I felt even more swollen after the surgery. After an egg retrieval your ovaries swell from fluid build up and you become extremely bloated from the procedure. Your ovaries are angry from being forced to work so hard and produce so many eggs at once. It hurt to pee and the stomach cramps were insane. I just felt so sore and tender so I spent my time on the couch watching the Crown.
I also went to an acupuncture appointment and started a whole new regime of drugs to prepare my body for a possible fresh embryo transfer. I was on:
- Baby asprin – helps prevent clotting
- Cabergoline – helps prevent OHSS
- Crinone – this is progesterone
- Zithromax – antibiotic
The combo of these drugs made me nauseas and each morning I’d wake up and almost faint. It was rough.
Day 21 IVF Transfer
Transfer day. I was a candidate for a “fresh” transfer because my hormone levels weren’t too high and I didn’t develop OHSS. Again I got very lucky.
A fresh transfer is where instead of freezing embryos you place one in the uterus fresh from the lab during the same cycle as your retrieval. No embryo freezing happens. The other option is to freeze any viable embryos and wait for your body to heal form the surgery and then later implant the embryo in the uterus.
Despite having seventeen mature eggs at the start and twelve resulting embroys, we found out that after five days we were only left with one viable embryo. Just one. The rest were not strong enough to make it, which meant that we only had one chance for our first round of IVF to work. Ted and I were devastated after all that effort to just have one embryo to show for it. I felt so useless and lost. All we could do was put all of our hopes into this one embryo. If it didn’t work we’d have to see if, and when, we could do IVF again. More time, more physical stress on me, and more money. And if I’m being honest, I 100% thought we were out.
This beautiful cluster of cells is my baby at literally 5 days old. My miracle.
The transfer of an embryo is simpler than the retrieval surgery – you’re awake during the process and they insert a catheter into your uterus and literally “implant” the embryo.
It took a room full of five educated, brilliant women to officially get me pregnant. I remember laying in the room, Ted was in a chair watching the whole thing as a nurse, ultrasound tech, doctor, embryologist, and student all worked to get the embryo safely inside my uterus. It was an incredibly emotional experience. I cried while squeezing my nurses hand not just from the discomfort but also because we had gotten this far and at least had one chance.
From there we left the lab and I went to another acupuncture appointment. I then waited another ten days to find out if I was pregnant.
We Got Lucky
By now you know how things worked, we got our miracle and for some reason this one embryo decided to stick and grow into what is now the baby boy that we are expecting this August.
Despite all of this, I still feel my journey has been easy. So many women have to do multiple rounds of IVF and often suffer through multiple miscarriages and losses. A lot of pain, time and money go into IVF and success is not guaranteed. That’s what makes this so hard. The unknown. In a better and fairer world, all this effort would be rewarded, but a lot of times its not. And that’s the ugly truth. IVF is no guarantee. But it’s a chance. A fairly good one at that. In the end it’s a lot of luck but it also shows you your strength. You will be amazed at what you can mentally get through. I promise. Ted and I got incredibly lucky that on our first try we had success, and we will never take it for granted.
If you’ve gotten this far thank you for reading ! This was my IVF experience and I know this post is long, but if it helps even one woman out there get a better idea of what to expect from the process than it has served its purpose. Thank you for reading <3
