How many days off for IVF?

[meadowlark3]

How many days off are required for an IVF cycle? My clinic has informed me I will need a minimum of two scans in addition to one day for egg collection and another for egg transfer. Because the days off will depend on the scan results, how did you manage to take the time from work? Thinking it'll look a bit odd if I take every other day off sick for two weeks...? I haven't told my work I'm doing IVF yet and not sure if I will as it's a large office and news gets around quickly and rather keep this private for now.

xx

I told work that I would have a series of medical appointments at short notice, but not to worry because I wasn't deathly ill or anything.

Where is your clinic in relation to where you live/work? You may need quite a few scans but if it's nearby you don't need long for them and may be able to fit them into/around your work day.

You'll need at least the whole day off for retrieval. Some women find they need longer.

Transfer, again, doesn't take terribly long and there's no particular reason you'd need to take the whole day off if you don't want to.

There will be a policy for IVF if it's a big office / company. My colleague had a few rounds of ivf and with her last round she went sick for 2 weeks and those were the ones that stuck. She spent two weeks completely relaxed. Your manager cannot tell anyone so you shouldn't worry about news spreading. You only have to tell your manager. The most important thing is that you're relaxed and you give these little embryos a chance!

Prob be more like 4 scans as a minimum. First day then possibly 4/7/10/12.

Ec needs Day off tho drug depending and foilicles the date they originally Give you may change

Et is 3/5days after - more often 5 days now but again depends on embryo quality

Clinics say in the 2ww to behave as normal

Having 2ww off resting will not necessary make them stick. Didn't with me

The cycle - 5th - that worked I did nothing diff. Carried on working and dd is 4mths today

I only had the day of EC off each time. I arranged the scans before work and just went in a little bit late. I did ET in my lunch hours but I think every time it ran over so I should probably have just taken the day off for that too. Otherwise I carried on as normal.

I worked throughout my scans, had day off for egg collection then worked from home next day.
Then I took a week off after transfer and I'm glad I did as I got mild OHSS and it was very painful.
Pregnancy was all fine and I have an almost 3 year old now.
Then I had a frozen embryo transfer earlier this year which is much simpler all together, just had a few days off after transfer this time and it was also successful (18 weeks pregnant)

I fit my scans in around work (often had the first scan slot at 7.30am) then took the day of EC and the following 2 days off. For ET I told my boss I had an appointment at the bank (he knew I was buying a house) and literally nipped out and straight back to work an hour later. Successful cycle.

My clinic does scans very early (between 7am and 8:30) so although I was a bit late to work on a couple of days, I barely missed anything. Last round I felt rotten after the collection and would have needed two or three days off (turns out I do not get on with codine) but EC was on a Friday. Transfer only involved a day off because I was under sedation - everyone else I know went back to work after.

I had EC yesterday and slept most of the afternoon. I had planned to take today off work, but currently feeling I should go in... I'm planning on going to a meeting after the transfer next week.

Thank you all for your input. I checked our HR policies and unfortunately no IVF policy that I could find, so will likely use some combination of sick time and annual leave, and have a think about how to chat with my manager.

Congrats to all those with successful cycles and good luck to all still in the process.

xx

My work also doesn't have a clear policy although I can have special leave which is granted by my manager?

I've been advised to have day off for EC & probably the day after too. I'm at high risk of OHSS and have been advised to rest afterwards and also for a 'short period' after ET whatever that means. I have a very busy and active job where I am on my feet for 12+ hours so that may have something to do with it!

I only had the day for EC off which luckily coincided with an annual leave day for something else (which we had to cancel). I was back to work the next day and had all scans previous to EC early before starting work.

You don't need the day off fir a scan, you pop out and Come back.
You do need day off for egg collection. I had embryo transfer under sedative so took that as well plus the day off in between EC and ET so 3 days.