IVF embryo transfer and the waiting game

Liz, in her third round of IVF, heads to the hospital for embryo transfer - an altogether different experience to the egg collection six days earlier. Her bladder is full and her fingers are crossed as she and her husband find out how many of their eight embryos have made it through to the implantation stage and whether her womb will accept them...

Egg collection and embryo transfers are almost diametrically opposite procedures - with the exception of physical location, that remains the same...

During egg collection I was in a beautiful, chemically-induced, sleep. The downside of which was that I’d been nil by mouth since the previous night. I turned up to the clinic parched, and silently cursed the water cooler by my bed as it enticingly dispensed cool, clear water to everyone but me.

By contrast the embryo transfer, which is performed whilst fully conscious, needs to be done with a full bladder (mine, not the Doctor's). That water cooler continued to act as an instrument of torture as I listened, with aching bladder and tightly crossed legs, to the running, flowing water.

I was so petrified that I wouldn’t be full enough and I’d be sent back to drink more (as had happened during my second IVF) that I'd gorged on water. I was scanned to check and when they saw just how full I was the doctor, recognising my plight, gave me a (disposable) cup.

'You can fill two cups...' my hero allowed as I hurtled to the toilet. '...But no more!' His voice echoed behind me as I scrambled to lock the door and lift my hospital gown at the same time.

I don't think you've ever fully experienced the true meaning of bliss until you've eased a straining bladder. Equally, might I recommend a new method of torture to the despots of the world? Forcing someone to stop mid-flow after a mere two cups-full.

The embryologist came to see the husband and me, as we waited to go in for the embryo transfer, to let us know how the embryos were looking and what, of the original eight which had fertilised, remained. Just two had reached the required blastocyst stage, the other six had gradually dropped out of the running. However, the two that remain are good quality, not excellent, but I’m happy enough (and the quality in no way reflects on the end result in terms of the baby, but just the likelihood of implantation).

Despite the full bladder, the embryo grading and the pain-killer that had been shoved two hours previously where the sun don’t shine, I still had no idea whether the embryo transfer would actually take place or if our embryos would be consigned to the freezer. This decision hung on the width and quality of my womb lining - it needed to be at least 8mm and at my last scan it was a paltry 7.4mm. Today it made it at 9.2mm and was declared fit to house my little ones.