Sunshinedays, I was at the Hammersmith in November/December and am now fifteen weeks pregnant with my first. They are an excellent clinic. Such a contrast to the private clinic that gave me no baby and endless neuroses about leaving it too late in July (no need to name them here) You will probably find that the clinic doctors are against you waiting till blastocyst stage for transfer. I suggested this and was told that medical thinking had moved on since the books I had been reading were published and that it is now thought that the best place for the embryo to develop is in the womb as the most natural place. We only had three eggs and only one then fertilised, but were assured that one good embryo is all you need. Well, we took home a photo of our four cell embryo and focussed lots of love in that direction. I realise it sounds a bit out there but I do think it is important to be very loving with each other and love those four cells to bits if you can be hopeful enough to do this.
My advice in the lead up would be, guess, try to eliminate every other source of stress from your life as IVF related stress is enough and you can't NOT be stressed about IVF. It's impossible. I was so depressed by our failed private cycle and the attitude of the consultants that I guess I accidentally sucked all the energy out of every other aspect of my life - I do not recommend depression as a preparatory measure of course. However, I definitely "wound down" efforts at work which I think IS a good move. Because we had been told IVF was a no go by the hated clinic (and to "get over it"), we upped our efforts to try and magically open my faulty tube by diet and meditation, and this I think did help in preparing for IVF. Zita West is very good if you want to follow this.
By the time we came to the Hammersmith in November, we both had not smoked a cigarette for over two years, had not consumed any alcohol or caffeine for almost twelve months, had not eaten any junk food for almost six months, had not eaten any processed food, or anything with preservative or E numbers for the same period, had very little red meat in our diets and no dairy, drank a litre and a half of water each a day, and were exercising outdoors every weekend and making sure we did really nice things for ourselves so we were "welcoming" any potential baby into as good a home as we could imagine for it. We also switched all our cleaning products for non-phospate (Ecover has a range of everything so it is quite easy to do this) and my boyfriend who is a builder tried to keep out of the way when all the painting and other strong solvents were being used. It sounds very regimented but in fact it just becomes a lifestyle thing - and it is great preparation for pregnancy, although I had to reverse tracks on the dairy thing of course. I could not get my partner to do the yoga and meditation but I did and got a lot of calm out of it, which saw me through the depression and the next IVF cycle, and through the nail biting two weeks until the BFP.
I hope this is helpful. I will probably think of something else as soon as I post, but that's par for the course.
The other important thing is to really, really trust in the advice you are getting from your clinic - you are lucky in the Hammersmith, but it does help to try and know as much about the process as you can ahead of time so nothing is frightening. For example, I had a problem with poor response to the stimulating drugs in my first and miserable cycle. The consultants were quick to point to ovarian reserve and ipso facto you are too old, but I was convinced by what I had read that I would do better on a shorter protocol and was lucky that I knew enough to suggest this to the doctors at the Hammersmith in our induction interviews. I think once I felt listened to and they actioned the information I gave them, my confidence levels in my care skyrocketed and this may have contributed to the level of calm I maintained through that cycle.
You might find it useful to have a recent FSH level reading as well. If you can get it in your work-up, it is handy to have a reading from more than one month, but I have never known anyone who has managed this and mine was really old when I finally started my Hammersmith cycle. We had two different analyses done on my partner's side as well, to see if his motility levels changed once it had been six months since giving up alcohol (they did!).