IVF, y'all. It's quite a time.
There are thousands of posts around outlining the exact procedure of IVF, because it's definitely ~noteworthy~ levels of horrible and fascinating and it doesn't take being blogger-minded to realise that it's worth writing about. The only thing I have to add to the wealth of literature on the subject concerns the need to advocate for yourself, or for your significant other.
IVF is invasive, and there is no way to avoid that. However, there are ways to navigate the invasiveness that can mitigate it a bit.
Top tips:
- Make injection-time a comfy, cosy team activity. It took us a few nights to get it right, but once we had it sorted it felt a little less crappy. It was my job to prepare the needles, deliver them to Linda on the couch, take them away and put them in the sharps bin, and return with a heated wheat bag. It was her job to get snuggled on the couch, do the jabs, then lie down with a blanket (& the wheat bag, when I arrived back with it) and rest a while. At first she just tried to jump back up and get on with the evening in order to minimise the big-ness of the whole thing, but that didn't work out and led to more pain for longer. By allowing the big-ness, we actually managed to decrease the invasiveness a bit.
- You can insert your own internal ultrasound thingy. This might not be such a big deal for some people, but for Linda it was huge. Obviously you can't do everything - the speculum might be a challenge - but IVF means a lot of internal ultrasounds and controlling the entry can really help with the violating nature of the whole deal. Some doctors offer for you to do it, but if they don't, you can definitely ask and they'll be fine.
- You can ask for as much pain relief and sedation as you like during egg collection. For this one in particular, I'm looking at the partners*. Linda was too sedated to advocate for herself, but I could see when they pierced the first side that she really felt it, so I asked for more pain relief for her before they went for the second side. Watching the little screen as the collect the eggs is super fascinating, but watching your partner's face for pain or distress is actually way more important. You can actually ask to be knocked out altogether if that's what you'd prefer.
- Pee-testing before blood results really helped us, but it's not for everybody. They make the "are you pregnant or not" phone call mid-afternoon, and as we both work full-time we couldn't be together to get the news at the same time. It felt like another thing being done to us, so we decided to take it into our own hands a bit. We did this during IUI as well - a pee test a couple of days before and the morning of the blood results, so that we were together and had time to process the results before the dreaded phone call.
That's all for now! Keep your fingers crossed for us.
*I know this post is written from a point of privilege: a lot of people navigate the IVF process alone, and to them I take off all of my hats. If that's you, then I highly recommend taking a person you trust along with you to your egg collection, even if you don't want a support person at most appointments.
There are thousands of posts around outlining the exact procedure of IVF, because it's definitely ~noteworthy~ levels of horrible and fascinating and it doesn't take being blogger-minded to realise that it's worth writing about. The only thing I have to add to the wealth of literature on the subject concerns the need to advocate for yourself, or for your significant other.
IVF is invasive, and there is no way to avoid that. However, there are ways to navigate the invasiveness that can mitigate it a bit.
Top tips:
- Make injection-time a comfy, cosy team activity. It took us a few nights to get it right, but once we had it sorted it felt a little less crappy. It was my job to prepare the needles, deliver them to Linda on the couch, take them away and put them in the sharps bin, and return with a heated wheat bag. It was her job to get snuggled on the couch, do the jabs, then lie down with a blanket (& the wheat bag, when I arrived back with it) and rest a while. At first she just tried to jump back up and get on with the evening in order to minimise the big-ness of the whole thing, but that didn't work out and led to more pain for longer. By allowing the big-ness, we actually managed to decrease the invasiveness a bit.
- You can insert your own internal ultrasound thingy. This might not be such a big deal for some people, but for Linda it was huge. Obviously you can't do everything - the speculum might be a challenge - but IVF means a lot of internal ultrasounds and controlling the entry can really help with the violating nature of the whole deal. Some doctors offer for you to do it, but if they don't, you can definitely ask and they'll be fine.
- You can ask for as much pain relief and sedation as you like during egg collection. For this one in particular, I'm looking at the partners*. Linda was too sedated to advocate for herself, but I could see when they pierced the first side that she really felt it, so I asked for more pain relief for her before they went for the second side. Watching the little screen as the collect the eggs is super fascinating, but watching your partner's face for pain or distress is actually way more important. You can actually ask to be knocked out altogether if that's what you'd prefer.
- Pee-testing before blood results really helped us, but it's not for everybody. They make the "are you pregnant or not" phone call mid-afternoon, and as we both work full-time we couldn't be together to get the news at the same time. It felt like another thing being done to us, so we decided to take it into our own hands a bit. We did this during IUI as well - a pee test a couple of days before and the morning of the blood results, so that we were together and had time to process the results before the dreaded phone call.
That's all for now! Keep your fingers crossed for us.
*I know this post is written from a point of privilege: a lot of people navigate the IVF process alone, and to them I take off all of my hats. If that's you, then I highly recommend taking a person you trust along with you to your egg collection, even if you don't want a support person at most appointments.
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