IVF - sooner than I thought

[patch77]

Been for our appointment to learn to use the drugs, as my day one is today they said that I would probably be able to start this cycle. Hopefully I will hear tomorrow whether its a go or not. Now slightly freaked that I have to inject myself earlier than I thought. The nurse said that we would be on the long protocol, this is starting the drugs on day 21 to down reg??

P

Hi Patch, I'm currently on cd26, so did my sixth injection this morning. I'm also on long protocol and its works like this for me:

cd21 start buserelin injections to down reg for 2-3 weeks- this stops your normal cycle, you should have a bleed and towards the end of these injections have a scan (dildo cam I'm afraid) to check that the lining of the womb I sufficiently thin. If it is, you move on to the next phase (if not you carry on down regging, while being monitored). The second phase for me me is daily injections of both buserelin and menopur. I understand that the buserelin continues to suppress your natural cycle, and the menopur stimulates your ovaries to produce many eggs instead of the usual one. This phases lasts 10-14 days and you will be scanned again a few times to check in the development of follicles/eggs. When the clinic tells you, you'll do a trigger shot (its really important to do this at the EXACT time they say as it matures the eggs and gives then a window of a few hours to collect). 36 hours after trigger you'll undergo egg collection- at my clinic this is under ga, but some do sedation instead. This is a procedure where they pass a large needle through you vaginal wall into the ovaries to collect the eggs. Your OH/DH if you are doing this with a male partner will have to provide a sperm sample that day and they mix the two together. You'll go home and await updates on how many fertilise/how they're growing and then, sometime between 2-5 days later they'll transfer and embryo or blastocyst into your womb (via a catheter), then you wait for approx two weeks and test.

It was quite shocking to find we needed ivf, we are quite young and had been trying just less than a year when we found out we have severe mfi. That was back in December and the hardest part has been waiting for funding approval/things being out of our hand for so long. Things are still out of our hands but I feel so much better to actually be doing something that might work.

Good luck and if you have any questions feel free to ask