FET #1

Sensitive post: mentions pregnancy and miscarriage

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Infertility is an endless cycle of not wanting your period to arrive then wishing it would arrive sooner. Waiting to start our first FET was one of those occasions where I longer to see blood on the toilet paper (yes, it's a real headf***.)

With my history of PCOS and adenomyosis we opted for a fully medicated cycle. I figured I'd tried to get my body to do things naturally over the last 4.5 years and it has failed in every way it can so I decided to let science have a go instead.

My protocol was ovamex injections daily from day 2 - 6 as downregulation to make sure my ovaries didn't try to produce their own follicles and oestrogen tablets three times a day from day 2 for the foreseeable future. The ovamex injections stung horrendously. I did them all in my thigh to make it slightly more manageable and stuck a bag of frozen peas on my leg for 10 minutes before the injection. The oestrogen gave me awful headaches for the first few days but that was it for side effects.

I had my first monitoring ultrasound on day 9. My ovaries had behaved and weren't do anything but my lining was too thin. The thickest measurement the nurse could get was 5.4mm and they ideally want >7mm. This has been a recurring problem of mine, when I was having letrozole ovulation induction the nurse made a comment about my lining being too thin and said we would need to think about adding in oestrogen if it was an ongoing issue. Funnily enough it was that cycle that I fell pregnant for the first time but it ended up miscarriage at 5+4 weeks and I've always wondered if the lining was the issue.

This time the nurse checked my previous scans and said even on all the stimulation medication my lining only got to 7.1mm and I'm probably someone who naturally has a thinner lining. It didn't fill me with loads of confidence though and I was a bit gutted that we hadn't had the news we wanted. They asked me to double my oestrogen dose and wanted to scan me again a week later.

The increased dose caused headaches again for a few days and I had a lot of discharge. I tried to tell myself at least these were signs the medication was working and miraculously, when we went back for the second scan, my lining had increased to nearly 8mm! We were given the green light to go ahead with our transfer the following week.

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Transfer Day.

I'm not sure how I felt I transfer day.

Excited? Nervous? Scared?

A mixture of everything I think. You have to go to the appointment with a full bladder which was probably the most stressful part, I had no idea if I'd drunk enough but I was also desperate for a nervous wee when we go to the clinic and had to sit in the waiting room feeling very uncomfortable.

We were taken to a clinic room and both of us were asked to leave our shoes outside the room. I took up my position on the bed with my new best mate the stirrups and after filling in some more paperwork and meeting the embryologist who confirmed our A-grade embryo had thawed 'beautifully' and was already starting to hatch, we got started.

I had 2 nurses in the room with us. One pressing the ultrasound probe onto my abdomen (not comfortable with a full bladder), and the other was at the action end and would be performing the transfer. It wasn't the most comfortable procedure. I was nervous and stressed and I don't think that helped. They have to use a speculum without lubrication because embryos don't like lube so that wasn't very pleasant and then it took the nurse ages to get the catheter through my cervix (I'm talking several minutes with several adjustments made to the catheter to try and get it to work). I couldn't feel the catheter but the dry speculum and probe digging into my bladder made it all very uncomfortable.

She finally managed to get through (which also makes me wonder if this has been another issue... clearly my cervix was adamant it wasn't letting anything through it!) and the embryologist appeared with a tiny catheter containing our embryo and in it went. We saw a little flash on the screen and sat still for 30 seconds hoping it would stay in place.

They never actually explained this to me beforehand but the embryologist then took the catheter away to check the embryo wasn't still inside. I just knew it would be and when the embryologist went to get a colleague to check I knew we'd be having to do the whole procedure again. Apparently the embryo had fully hatched out and stuck around in the catheter so we went again. This time the catheter passed through my cervix with ease and we saw the little flash on the screen again. Thankfully it decided to behave and the catheter was clear and I was finally free to go to the toilet.

Going for a wee straight after embryo transfer is a weird experience but they kept reassuring me it wouldn't fall out.

And that was it, we left the clinic and they sent us a long document on our online portal explaining what to do next.

Official test day in 13 days time.

L x