I am writing this post because I truly wish there was an honest post about this clinic I could have found before I transferred my embryos to them.
There may be some patients who feel completely differently and have not experienced the same as what I have. However I believe anyone looking for an IVF clinic should hear both sides to what clinic can be like in order to make an informed decision.
We were at a clinic called Care Fertility Woking and we changed to the Thames Valley Fertility clinic in Maidenhead due to the fact that they were a lot closer, we have since transferred our last embryo back to Care Fertility Woking due to the experience we have had with Thames Valley Fertility.
Initially when we spoke to Tvf we had a consultant appointment over the phone, then a follow-up nurses appointment. This was all fine, however when it came to transferring the embryo they delayed the process by up to 3 weeks by not prioritising any information they received from the last clinic. There were times when I called that I would have to wait 3 to 4 days for a callback. I raised this before we transferred the embryo and I was assured it would never happen once we were a patient and going through the cycle.
On the consultant phone call, he told us I shall be the one to do the transfer I will see you on the transfer day.
We asked if there was anything we should be taking or doing to increase our chances and the answer was, no just the meds for the cycle.
We went in to see the nurse for the scan who was very nice, albeit a bit abrupt.
On the day of the transfer it was a completely different consultant we were not made aware of it until he came into the room I asked him purely out of curiosity about a specific to do with the lubion injection. And he looked at me like a piece of dirt and snapped his answer back at me (My question: i’m just curious why lubion instead of cyclogest, because I forgot to ask on the last consultant call? I have no problem with the injections I’m just curious)
After the transfer I made a call into the clinic which took days to be returned again. I finally made a complaint and asked if I could please have the same consultant who we speak to, as the person who does the transfer as it would be nice to build up some trust and consistency, we were assured this would be the case.
We had the follow-up conversation with the original consultant and was told again he would be doing the transfer, I will see you at the transfer day. When we came in for the scan it was a different nurse and my experience with her was awful, to the point where I had to follow up on are specifically not to be seen by her on the transfer day which was again ignored and she was the nurse on the transfer day.
During the pelvic scan (Which I have had probably 20+ by now and have only taken a few minutes at most) this lady took over 10 minutes and the entire time she looked as though she had no idea what she was looking for. When I asked roughly when the transfer day would be, her response was it doesn’t really matter as you’re on a medicated cycle it might be this Thursday or next Tuesday or later we’ll let you know.
After two unsuccessful rounds I asked a simple question as to whether or not it would be worth considering putting two embryos back, they weren’t great quality.
She kept asking do you really want twins in a very abrupt tone you’ve got a 50% chance, I answered I’m not sure, and her response was “be careful what you wish for fate has a funny way of giving you what you don’t want”. It’s still something that has upset me as obviously when you’re at an IVF clinic the one thing you don’t want is for not to get pregnant.
It wasn’t just the nurse that was changed for this round the consultant and the embryologist were both different even though I had been assured there would be some consistency.
He was meant to be the director of the clinic however I had terrible cramping after that transfer, which was not successful.
I was in a lot of pain when having the transfer done and the nurse (I had asked not to be there) was almost shouting at me to relax my muscles over and over again. I eventually had to raise my voice and tell her to stop saying that I was in pain because of scar tissue from a previous operation.
I called the day after the transfer to speak to the embryology team about the Embryo and it took five days for them to return my call, when they eventually did there was zero apology. And when we told them we would be transferring the last embryo back to our original clinic the embryologist said “good”.
They didn’t have their success rates on their website when I first spoke with the consultant, Who initially told me their success rates were around 50% for frozen cycles, their true success rates have been put up on the website now and the rates are around 18%.
We moved our embryos to them due to the higher success rates and the location, had we known the real success rates then we would have never changed from our previous clinic.
The whole time I was at Tvf I felt like a number and felt like all they wanted was our money and they had no intention of making us feel cared for or taking any of our wishes into consideration.
Finding out about the success rates and having the embryologist speak to me like that was the last blow we were willing to accept. We have since moved our last embryo back to our original clinic and even if it does not work then we know we are in better hands if we need to go for another fresh cycle.
We were Given a call with our original consultant Within three days of contacting them, when I speak with the nurses they are kind and caring and you don’t feel like a number.
The consultant gave us a list vitamins and other things we should be doing to help our chances.
I feel sick thinking there is even a slight possibility that we may have been successful with the last two embryos had we stayed with our original clinic.
If you like this clinic then please just make an informed decision because I don’t want anyone to have to go through what we went through. IVF is hard enough without having the support of the team at your clinic.
Good luck to anyone out there going through ivf this is now our 5th round I am coming up to, I know how hard it can be. We have had one success with one of our embryos in the original clinic so miracles can happen ❤️
. Then the FET failed. We're now going to try Reprofit as Serum don't do PGS testing.