IVF Treatment and Process

Now to the part of the process I wasn’t particularly looking forward to: the IVF medication. Before egg collection, you need to have injections in the lead-up to the procedure.

If you’re someone like me who feels uneasy at the thought of needles, I completely understand! The good news is that it’s not as scary as it seems. By the time I actually used the needles, I could barely feel a thing (see tip at the end of the post).

Before starting medication, you attend an orientation at the IVF clinic. This step is important because there are several parts to the treatment. I scheduled mine with the nursing team and was looking forward to learning everything. My mum came with me, armed with plenty of questions, just as I expected! Two friendly nurses greeted us, and we went into a small office to go through the details. I was able to ask all my questions and left feeling much more prepared.

Here’s how the process was explained to me:

• On the first day of your period, call the nursing team.
• On the second day, you go in for a blood test.
• That same day, you’ll get a phone call to confirm if you can start treatment. If everything looks good, you’re ready to begin.

Each day, for at least 10 days, you inject yourself around the stomach area at the same time. I did mine in the evenings. For the first 5 days, you use one type of medication with one injection. Then, for the next 5 days, you add a second type of medication — so that’s two injections each evening.

Throughout this time, you also go for regular scans to see how your body is responding. Thankfully, my clinic opened at 7am, so I could pop in before work and avoid too much disruption to my schedule. That was something I had worried about, but it ended up working out well.

At the end of this stage, about 36 hours before egg collection, you administer the final injection, known as the trigger injection. The first two medications help your ovaries produce more eggs than usual, and the trigger injection prompts ovulation so the eggs mature and are ready to be collected.

This whole process carried its fair share of stress. At first, I felt anxious about the injections, then my worries shifted to whether they would even work. The thought of repeating everything was overwhelming at times. I balanced a mix of hope and anxiety while continuing with my usual work routine, and there were moments when managing it all felt heavy.

I don’t want to come across as ungrateful/whingy — I truly feel fortunate to have the opportunity to undergo IVF. But I also want to acknowledge the range of emotions involved. While I practised daily gratitude, I didn’t always feel positive.

One tip for anyone facing the injections: use an ice pack on your stomach for 5–10 minutes beforehand. I did this every night and honestly didn’t feel a thing. I remember feeling sick with nerves before my first injection, then jabbed it in and paused. “Wow, I didn’t feel a thing!” I thought. My advice — freeze, freeze, freeze!

After completing all the injections and scans, I finally got the green light for the trigger injection. Thirty-six hours later, I was off to the hospital for egg collection.

Getting through the injections wasn’t easy, but it gave me a sense of reassurance. Each step completed meant I was one step closer to the goal, and now it was time to prepare for egg collection.

📖 If you missed it, you can read my previous post about Practising Self-Love Through the IVF Process.
💬 Next, I’ll be sharing more about IVF Egg Collection.

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