When I started my IVF journey, I had unrealistic expectations of how long it would really take to get to where I would be taking pregnancy tests and feeling great, happy, excited for the start of our family. I am writing this to provide clarity to any other women out there that haven't had a lot of up front explanations of all the "unknowns" and other factors that make IVF truly a waiting game full of many ups and downs. In my case more downs than ups, but I hope that not all women have this experience and I'm sure some will have more or less time invested than myself.
That being said, after you set up the initial consultation and do your intake blood work, ultrasound, HSG, mock transfer, and of course set up the financials of everything you start out by taking birth control for about 2 weeks for a Fresh Embryo Transfer or even a Frozen Embryo Transfer (if you've already done a Fresh retrieval and have eggs from that leftover). Every single protocol whether you are doing a fresh retrieval/transfer or a frozen transfer revolves around the start of "Day 1" aka when you get your period. So when you are going through IVF, the process can often lead to a lot of waiting for day 1 to begin things. Just get used to waiting for things in general, because IVF is a constant waiting game in general.
For a fresh retrieval, you can expect to be doing medications for about 2 months before you will be doing your fresh transfer, and after the retrieval it will really depend on when the doctor feels your embryo blastocysts are ready for transfer back into your uterus. Some prefer to wait at least 5 days, while others may say to do the transfer after only 3 as long as the egg and sperm fertilized properly. If you are doing Pre-genetic Screening (PGS), then all of your fertilized embryo's will be frozen to allow for the time to do a biopsy and test them for irregularities. Therefore you will be forced to start a frozen transfer cycle and do more medications in order to start a transfer using PGS, so that will add at least another 4-6 weeks on before you can even have the embryo transferred.
For a frozen transfer, there are less doctors office visits and less time until the transfer can occur, but you should still plan for about a month's time there as well. If you have any complications with your lining (See my post on thin linings), that time until transfer could take months as I found out. And then sometimes after a failed FET, you may not get a period for over a month. This was something I recently experienced, and the whole lining issue is supposedly rare, but I know several people that have been in my situation with the lining not thickening/shedding as planned so just be prepared for things to be delayed. There are a lot of things that can occur as far as reactions to medications go and overstimulation.
All this being said, I started IVF medications last March 2017, thinking for sure I'd be real close to having a baby if not having one as we speak, however I'm still no closer to even seeing a positive pregnancy test now towards the end of February 2018. I've been waiting to start IVF #2 for 54 days now, but my period has been nowhere to be found from the high levels of estrogen that were injected into me back in December's failed transfer. So I tell people this just to realize you may not have as much "time" as you think you do to start the process. I don't want to scare people just warn them that things aren't as quick as you might be hoping that they are. Then there's also the 40-50% success rates, as I found, even if you do Pregenetic screening and think you're doing everything right, you could still lose the embryo and have to start over again.
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