This past week I've been trawling mumsnet for hysteroscopy experiences. So many of them sounded incredibly traumatic and I worked myself up into a bit of a state about it. Wanted to post my experience in case anyone is in a similar position.
Background: I had fertility investigations about 15 years ago, 3 rounds of IVF and an attempted frozen embryo transfer. I have been pregnant 3 times and now have a 13 year-old daughter. When we first started investigations for fertility issues, the default was to test the woman, and I had a load of different tests and scans, including a HyCosy procedure (where they squirt dye into your fallopian tubes), which I found incredibly traumatic as it had not been explained to me properly beforehand, and it was painful. I felt violated afterwards.
As it happened, I had no fertility issues, but my husband had no detectable living sperm in his sperm sample. So a lot of the invasive tests could have been avoided if they had just asked for a sample first instead of assuming the issue was with me.
Anyway. I was being investigated for a bit of menopausal spotting. During an internal ultrasound they'd seen a small polyp and wanted to look at it and maybe remove it, so I had the hysteroscopy.
When I went into the room and saw the chair you sit on, with a blue sky and flowers picture on the ceiling, I cried. I could not help myself ... I think it brought back memories of the traumatic procedure I had had previously, as well as lots of embryo transfers, internal scans and so on during the IVF (including the one where they tried desperately to find a baby's heartbeat and realised it had died). I found this really triggering, even though the IVF was ultimately successful (and with my husband's sperm too, but that's a whole other story, as they had to cut him open to find some).
Since I have read a lot of horror stories about hysteroscopy I thought I would post my experience on here.
The team (all female) was really, really nice. They introduced themselves by their first names and made me feel like they were human too. They were very understanding when I cried, said I didn't have to do it, and that I could stop at any time.
It was uncomfortable but didn't hurt as much as the HyCosy and also didn't hurt as much as I had expected. I would say it was worse than a smear, partly because I wasn't sure what things would feel like.
They explained everything before they did it. They showed me everything they used before it went inside.
They let me look at the screen, not sure if I enjoyed this or not. Perhaps it was interesting.
Ultimately all they found was a tiny polyp too small to remove so I didn't have any removal done, but I think it wasn't as bad as I expected. There was a bit of cramping but no worse than period pain. The anxiety was worse than the actual experience, in the end.
So if you are about to have this procedure and are worried, I hope this post reassures you a bit.