IVF referral stage and what’s to come

[Kerry1487]

Hi, I’m 36 and my partner is 38 and we have been referred to the Hewitt Centre with recommendations for ivf as my partner has low sperm morphology.

We have our first consultation coming up this month but we aren’t sure what to expect nor how long the process will take.

Can anyone please share any of their experiences as first timers to IVF?

Myself and my husband are currently going through our first cycle. I'm 40 had low egg reserve and my husband had to have surgical sperm retrieval.
We paid privately but from my first tests to now being 6 days into my first cycle of short protocol was about 4 months. Lots of blood tests and paperwork and a slightly depressing consultation where they laid out the odds and here we are.
My husband didn't find his retrieval too bad as he was completely sedated and had no issues. I'm 6 days into injecting myself to stimulate my ovaries to get as many eggs as possible, scan to see how it's going tomorrow. The injections are no way as bad as I thought and I'm terrified of needles! but the bloating is horrible, luckily I have two weeks off work. Its been a bit of a surreal roller coaster. No idea how the egg collection or transfer will go but I wish you the best of luck on your journey.

@GwenH82 thank you for responding. From the information gathered so far it seems we’ll have a bit of a wait before we can start treatment. I’m hoping they can use our recent results rather than do more testing apart from any scans I may need and we haven’t even got to the funding stage. We will need to weigh up if we should go private if it takes too long as I know amh levels reduce.

Good luck to you x