The truth about IVF…

It’s a wonderful thing is IVF. Giving people like me the best opportunity to fall pregnant. What people don’t know is just how tough it can be.

For me and my husband it’s the waiting! Not only the waiting that you have in relation to the IVF but also the waiting when your body has different ideas from the expected process.

I talk openly to so many people and they are surprised by how much is involved with the IVF process. I guess we all know what we know and if you have no reason to have an understanding of it then why would you know? Saying that I’m not sure if people have assumptions about IVF (like a Virgin Mary immaculate conception). It surprises me how little people know about what you have to undertake when going through IVF but then I remind myself that I too was a little naive about the process.

There are differences in everyone’s journey. Neil and I were not able to be funded via the NHS as we had conceived Kora and Ava naturally. All our tests came back as having no fertility issues. When I say all our tests, we did not have as many as others as the initials ones showed no problems. Our tests included hormone blood tests on day 1-3 of the menstrual cycle and day 21. This is to show that as the woman I am in fact ovulating. Neil had to have a sperm test which came back very favourably especially considering his age (43 at the time).

Therefore for us it meant that the only way we could have IVF was to pay privately. You may wonder why we chose IVF if we could conceive naturally and our answer would be our age. W wanted to give ourselves the opportunity and freeze my eggs before I was 40 years old.

So let’s start with the money! IVF is not cheap as it involves medication, medical procedures, scans, blood tests and follow up consultations. There are different options to support with the finances however we were not able to use any of these. For example if I was younger I could share my eggs collected with another woman who does not produce her own. This would almost halve the cost of IVF. I am a geriatric mum being over 35 years of age so would not be allowed to undertake this option.

Neil and I chose to pay as we go. The first round is more expensive as you are paying for more procedures including egg collection, stimulation drugs for your ovaries and the transfer of the embryos. However on any further rounds if you were fortunate enough to freeze any embryos then you pay for the transfer and medication making it cheaper.

Have I lost your concentration already?

The waiting as I mentioned is very difficult. It’s a strange concept to be willing your first day of your menstrual cycle when you are used to hoping it doesn’t arrive and you are in fact pregnant. However when undertaking IVF you wait for day one to ring the clinic. This is because you start your first injection on day 21.

That’s right you read that correctly, injections. The woman who is going to have the eggs collected and/or transferred has to inject in her stomach everyday and that can increase to twice a day.

One of the drugs I had to inject was buserelin. It works by acting on the pituitary gland in your brain to stop the production of natural hormones that control the release of eggs from your ovaries. This is so that the fertility clinic can take control of when you ovulate to allow them to set the date for egg collection.

I had menopausal side affects from this medication. I most definitely had mood swings and hot sweats. There are many side affects from the drugs and how they affect people vary. I think we were lucky with the affects on the whole.

The next injections we had to take was to stimulate my ovaries. We had to add this injection whilst reducing but still injecting buserelin. I must admit I don’t remember any side affects of the stimulation drugs.

It is after the stimulation injections that you have to administer a “trigger” injection. You are told by your clinic when to administer this as they scan to check how your ovaries are responding.

The trigger injection has to be taken 24 hours before your egg collection. We were fortunate that ours was at 11pm for our appointment at 11am.

We have seen on forums lots of couples have egg collection and get only a few and some retrieved none. Here is where it gets complicated. We had 16 eggs collected. Over 20 eggs is high and can lead to over stimulation and potentially a delay in the transfer. This means a wait again for the body to return to a norm before starting a frozen cycle.

The transfer after egg collection hopefully happens 5 days later and is called a fresh transfer. If the transfer can’t happen for reasons stated above or if you are blessed to have embryos to freeze then you can have a further transfer which is a frozen cycle.

The embryologist stated that you can expect half of the eggs collected to fertilise. At the point of egg collection for the woman the sperm collection happens. This is then added to the dish of eggs and is monitored in the lab. This is where you have to wait again. you get a call the following day to say how many if any have fertilised. We had 9 fertilise which again was a very good number and over half!

Then you wait again to see how many of them reach 5 days and are able to be transferred and/or frozen. This is a very anxious time and you can only hope that you have some fertWe again were very fortunate and had 6 very good embryos. They are given a grade they transfer the best one or two.

I must admit we did not worry about the grades. We thought it will either work or it won’t. We had two embryos transferred. At this point you have to wait again. This is probably the most difficult wait as you hope that the embryo(S) implant. 14 days later you can take a test. Although I have seen many women take the test earlier (not recommended by professionals).

During this wait you will be blessed with putting progesterone pessaries into either your vagina or bottom to thicken the lining of the womb to help the embryo implant. I told you the truth about IVF is it is hard both physically, financially and most of all emotionally.

We were going out of our mind during this wait as we scrutinised every single feeling and symptom. Ultimately all you can do at this point though is wait.

If you have read my previous blogs then you know our fresh cycle resulted in a heterotrophic pregnancy. Another loss of two babies. With only a 2% chance of one of the embryos going the wrong way into the tube, it had happened.

This meant more waiting for us! We had to wait for my body to repair from the operation and we had to make sure our emotional state of mind was in a good place before going for a frozen cycle.

After going through IVF and looking at the forums my advice would be to take it in your stride. I know it’s an easy thing to say and I can expect many people would want to punch me in the face for that comment! However the clinic said to us that we were a very relaxed couple and that they felt we would have a success.

At times I did not feel relaxed (far from it) but what I’ve learnt through all our losses is that it was all out of our hands. We could not have done anything more or different to make the outcome change. Nature can be very cruel and it doesn’t matter how many avocados or pineapples you eat. Just be as healthy as possible, look after yourself and most importantly be kind to yourselves!