My IVF journey
I always had an inkling that becoming pregnant wouldn’t be a walk in the park for me. Growing up, I had a fair few gynaecological issues so I thought it would just come with the territory.
After 18 months of ‘trying’ to conceive and a ridiculous amount of negative pregnancy tests, we decided to go and see a doctor and see if we could figure out a solution.
To my surprise, the fault wasn’t just on my side. Thankfully, IVF exists and it was explained to us that this was our best option.
So, in February 2018, we started our IVF journey. The first injections were to stimulate egg production. I was a little anxious about injecting myself, especially in the tummy, but the needle is so small you really can’t feel much. You can feel a small sting when the fluid is going in but it lasts all of a few seconds.
Next, I introduced an injection which was to stop myself from ovulating. This is so that the IVF clinic can be in control of my ovulation, therefore having control over when they could extract my eggs.
The final injection, is the injection telling my body to go on ovulation. The ‘egg collection’ day surgery is scheduled 36 hours after this injection.
I had heard varied opinions about the egg collection so was a little anxious about this. My husband was in the theatre with me for the procedure. I was awake, but given a local anaesthetic and also something to combat the nausea I usually get with any anaesthetic. I felt a little dizzy so lay back and closed my eyes. My husband watched on the screen as they inserted the needle into each ‘sack’ and collected the eggs. It lasted around 15 minutes. The feeling was uncomfortable but not exactly painful.
15 eggs were retrieved during my egg collection, 9 of which were suitable to attempt fertilisation and 6 of which actually did fertilise - therefore resulting in an embryo (the final product).
This was a great outcome and we chose to freeze 5 of the 6 embryos for future attempts, and used 1 for our first attempt.
When inserting the now fertilised embryo back into you, it’s a much more simple procedure and it didn’t require any painkillers. It can basically be compared to having a smear.
Then there is the wait…. two weeks (!) until you go for a blood test and then wait for the phone call to tell you whether it has been successful or not. I’m literally the most impatient person and started testing myself as soon as I thought I could feel any symptoms. The day before we were due to get the results, a pregnancy test confirmed what I had thought, I was pregnant!!! But that phone call was still one of the best phone calls ever.
We were one of the lucky couples with a great IVF experience. I tried to remain realistic throughout the process and not get my hopes up as I had heard so many stories about unsuccessful attempts. It’s difficult because unlike falling pregnant ‘normally’, when you would keep it to yourselves until you reach 12 weeks, IVF tends to be more of a public decision from the beginning making it all the more difficult if it was to be unsuccessful. Thankfully this wasn’t the case, however, and 9 months later our beautiful baby girl was born.
I have my fingers and toes crossed that our next attempt will be just as successful.