Hello! This is my first post on MN but I wanted to jump in with a post for anyone going through, or about to start, PIO injections as part of IVF.
This is my third FET cycle and I'd never previously iced the injection site before. I looked online and read lots of articles from various clinics, and lots of posts / comments on here where people said very strongly not to do it, as it would prevent the oil dispersing. I tried pretty much everything else for my last two cycles, but still found the injections pretty painful.
This time around, I'm at a new clinic with a new doctor who is brilliant, and she told me to absolutely ice the area with an ice pack for a minimum of 10 minutes before the shot. After the shot, you can rub the area, sit on a heat pad, etc, to help the oil disperse into the muscle. Since doing that, I've had zero pain during any of my injections and haven't felt the needle at all. I've bought those small circular gel ice packs from Amazon, and they're the perfect size for the area that you're injecting into.
Of course this comes with a caveat that it may not work for everyone, and there are other techniques out there, however this has made such a difference for me, and when I was looking up info on PIO injections I think I would have appreciated knowing that ice first, heat after, really does seem to work every time.
Hope that helps!