What You Should and Shouldn’t Do During the 2 Week Wait When Undergoing IVF

Most IVF patients dread the two week wait which is often the most nerve-wracking part of their treatment. A quiet two week time period of waiting and hoping follows after a huge flurry of activity with injections, scans, visits to the IVF clinic for monitoring, medical inspections during superovulation, egg collection and finally the embryo transfer. In this two week period, patients feel unusually alone.

IVF clinics do not bother patients during this period and have less support to offer except advise to the patients for taking their luteal phase meds. During this idle phase following turmoil, patients are more often tricked by their own minds as the hours pass agonizingly slowly. Moreover, patients are often clueless as to what they should and should not do during this period.

They are confused about the smallest of health problems such as whether they should take antibiotics if they have a cough and whether it is enough if their family doctor prescribes them medicine instead of their running to their IVF doctor. Patients are often even flummoxed whether they can take symptomatic medication for headaches, constipation or fever without any fear of affecting the IVF treatment.

Family doctors often take a defensive attitude to such queries as they know little about IVF procedures and are afraid of prescribing medicines that may unknowingly affect their chances of success. They usually advise the patient to consult their IVF doctor. The IVF doctor on the other hand is least interested in prescribing cold and cough medications because they feel that they have already taken a lot of effort for the patient and so the patient gets shunted off to the family doctor again. Doubtless patients feel abandoned, confused and lost during this phase. So they finally resort to taking no extra medication at all during their 2 week waiting period for the fear of affecting the success of their IVF treatment. 

Not sure how to handle your 2 ww ? Please send me your medical details by filling in the form at www.drmalpani.com/malpaniform.htm so that I can guide you better !