DP wants to delay IVF - who is right?

I can see both sides, but on balance, I am Team Wait and Enjoy your Honeymoon first!

Why don't you have your honeymoon straight after the wedding and then crack on with IVF?

Apologies if I missed something.

Im half way between you both.

I get wanting to start now and I get wanting to wait. Why not ask if your clinic has any policy on wait times between retrieval and transfer? If you're doing a FET at my clinic, some couples waited many months in between especially.if they had OHSS. we had a FET but we went straight from retrieval to FET on the next cycle that we could, but we could have waited and j now think we should have taken a little holiday to recover from the first part of the process. It might be nice to get the first bit done and, as you say, let your blasts chill in the freezer and start your implantation cycle when you her back from a lovely honeymoon?

With early pregnancy comes awful morning sickness for some women. I wouldn’t want to risk my holiday being ruined by sickness.

Are you talking about trying to get pregnant via IVF or trying to freeze embryos?

If you want to freeze embryos then why wait. The single biggest factor affecting women's fertility is age. 30 is quite young so you'll probably have similar results now as in a few months time. But January feels like almost a whole year away. That seems a very long time to wait.

I think trying to get frozen embryos you should try as soon as possible.

I did a lot of IVF and travelled as normal when pregnant including to a work thing in the Far East. It was fine. But for a honeymoon I’d bear in mind that IVF hormones can make you moody and bloated including during pregnancy if you use extra progesterone. IVF can also be a bit of an emotional rollercoaster. I’d probably leave it until you get back unless your drs really think it will make a difference. You can always do all the preparatory tests in advance so you’ll be ready to start as soon as you get back.

I had food poisoning on holiday whilst I was pregnant,really not fun ..if you are going in jan that suggests somewhere hot and long haul so why cause yourself extra stress?

I understand how you feel. I TTC for my 1st for 4 years and then suffered 6 miscarriages before my second. However, at 30 starting after January most probably won’t make too much difference but I do think it will make a big difference to your MH. As another PP says, you will look back on this time and be really grateful that you fully embraced your wedding, after the wedding and then your honeymoon.
As another PP suggested, you could feel terrible of you were pregnant on honeymoon, both mentally and physically. I had take cyclogest which you take during IVF for my second pregnancy and it made my sickness worse. I felt sick all day everyday for 16 weeks until I could stop taking them. But not everyone feels this way just another thing to consider.

If you were 10 years older I’d say start IVF, but I think you should wait. I felt so ill when I was in my first trimester. Spend this time enjoying being newlyweds, and focussing on getting yourself as healthy as possible. Then you can come home from honeymoon in great health and well rested ready to begin the IVF.

Best of luck with it whatever you choose.

If you are doing private IVF you could do the first part of the cycle after your wedding and hopefully freeze a decent number of embryos, and postpone the transfer until after your honeymoon.

If you're waiting on an NHS referral then there's a very good chance you'll still be twiddling your thumbs a year from now anyway.

I was in the exact same situation as you and I wanted to push forward and start ASAP, my partner didn’t, they wanted to wait until after wedding/honeymoon.

After speaking to our consultant we decided to wait. I’m so so glad we did. It worked first time for us which was great but early pregnancy was really difficult. I felt awful and was also high risk, I ended up at the early pregnancy assessment unit a couple of times - had I been on my honeymoon this wouldn’t have been possible!

good luck!

Not sure if mentioned by anyone, but Zika is a potential issue in many warm holiday destinations. You probably have already considered, but flagging if not 🤗

Edit: clearly mentioned by the poster above!

Also I don't know where you're travelling to but don't forget about zika! Also second the sickness thing which would be more miserable in hot weather for sure

@waterrat

its a few months to wait. She’s still young.

why not just enjoy the honeymoon? Including cocktails!

Can you move the holiday to e.g spain this summer? Waiting to TTC is hell, but also i get SO tired in 1st trimester, a fabulous long haul holiday would be wasted on me

I had IVF and tbh I'd crack on. Like you say you'd have the medicated round under your belt and if it didn't work the holiday would be a good time to recalibrate. If it did lots of people travel in early pregnancy, it would just change the nature of the trip as no alcohol etc so I see why your husband would want to pause.

I'd wait.

Whilst I haven't had IVF I did conceive after 6 years of trying on Clomid. I just felt so vulnerable and for the first few weeks just felt a mixture of emotions, all of which I wouldn't want to have gone through on honeymoon. I also had bleeding at 6 weeks so was back in the clinic for a scan. Plus I was absolutely shattered, to the point where it took ALL my energy to walk up the stairs.

I'd enjoy your honeymoon, enjoy the activities/cocktails and then try on your return.

Good luck OP.

I think you’re then saying the holiday is more important than the IVF. It’s a bit like a lottery isn’t it? You roll the dice every month. And hopefully it happens quickly for you. But personally I’d think ‘well what if the months that we’d delayed had been the month it worked?’.

Its just not something I would want to delay doing.

But I do see most people are on your DH’s side.

Bringing the honeymoon forward might be a good idea? Of possible.

Having had IVF myself I found it gruelling hormone wise and as it was last chance saloon for us as we had spent so much I wouldn't have wanted to go on holiday.

There's no guarantee it'd work first round so I'd wait until you are focused on that rather than your honeymoon.

But I can understand why you're wanting to get on with it, but it's only a few months.

I’m with your DP.

One round of IVF can take months if you do a long protocol. I think mine was about 8 weeks AFTER I had waited for the first day of my period. I started with the clinic in Oct. Did all their tests and appointments etc. Got my period mid December, had my transfer mid Feb.

As it was successful, I had scans at 6 weeks and 8 weeks.

So I was having appointments for 5/6 months ongoing.

Then, as others said, you may be extremely tired and nauseas in the first trimester. It would really impact the enjoyment of the honeymoon.

Also you are naturally more anxious about an IVF pregnancy (it almost feels too good to be true) so you may not want to be eating out every single meal, away from your regular medical care etc

All the best with your wedding, honeymoon and fertility journey.

I would wait (or bring the holiday forward to closer to the wedding even if you’d switch destination). I’ve had three cycles starting at the same age as you. One failure, one miscarriage, touch wood one going to plan. We started at 30 and spread them over 2 years. I know some people prefer to back to back and it’s all dependent on age, reason for the the need for treatment etc so it’s not one size fits all but it’s what’s worked for us. We had a long haul trip in between the miscarriage and this cycle and it was so nice to have some breathing space as a couple. It helped remind us that we would be ok as a pair even if the worst happened again or it never happened at all. My clinic was perfectly supportive of us taking our time (again, your medical circumstances may vary) so you could always ask if a 4 month delay is likely to have any significant impact on success rates - I’d think it would be minuscule at worst (not like you’re delaying years!).

Nobody in my family had difficult pregnancies but I’ve had severe morning sickness (still going at 30 weeks…). I also really struggled with the IVF drugs (exacerbated the nausea and I hated the pessaries more than the injections). Plus the practicalities of transporting the meds etc. Not what I’d want on honeymoon!

I had HG for 8 months and was hospitalised - I would re think starting early.

I came to mention Zika too but I can see it's already been mentioned, depending where you go the clinic may make you wait a quarantine period after travelling to a Zika affected county

I wouldn't delay starting IVF for a holiday. I'd change the holiday to July and go somewhere like Stella Island with swim up and start IvF asap when we got home.

Also agree with DP. I entirely understand the desperate sense of urgency to get going, but you won't enjoy the holiday if you are part way through a cycle, worried about losing an early pregnancy, etc. My DH and I went on a weekend away just after I got a faint positive on a pregnancy test after some fertility treatment and I was terrified of getting to hot, walking up steep hills, the seat belt pushing my stomach if we brakes suddenly in the car in unfamiliar foreign roads. I started to bleed on the second day and knew I was losing the pregnancy. Almost certainly would have happened anyway but i still wonder what if we hadn't gone (story ends happily though as the treatment we had the next month worked and DS1 is now 10 years old).