In April 2018, I had my first round of IVF at a clinic in Brno, Czech Republic, called Reprofit. We did the short protocol, and had six eggs retrieved. Only three of them were mature, with just one making it to blastocyst. Despite it being a top quality blast, the cycle failed.
Sure, both clinics offer the same type of IVF services, they’re both relatively cheap compared to the UK and they both are in the Czech Republic. But how are they different, and which one would I choose? Here’s my verdict. 1. Location Reprofit – based in Brno, Czech Republic, the country’s second largest city. You…Continue Reading “Seven main differences between Reprofit and GENNET”
Yesterday was egg retrieval day, and it was a completely different experience to the one I had in Reprofit, Czech Republic. Here’s how. Pre and post care Unlike cycle one, the nurse at Jessops actually talked us through the process, from the cannula, sedation and procedure, to the phone calls we’d receive from the embryologist…Continue Reading “Egg retrieval – UK vs Czech Republic”
Yesterday I had my follow-up chat with Reprofit following our failed first IVF round a month ago. I was dreading it. Why was I dreading it? Firstly, it was over Skype, which I hate. Always a bad signal, or a time delay or technology failure… Secondly, it brought up all these horrible sad feelings from…Continue Reading “Follow-up consultation with Reprofit”
I woke up today feeling blue. I know why: I’m going to a friend’s baby party today (she had her newborn the same weekend we found our first round of IVF had failed) and I just don’t want to. I know it’ll be full of yummy mommies and smug daddies, and cute babies everywhere. Because…Continue Reading “Practising gratitude on those down days”
Ulgh, I’ve had one of those days where I’ve been a right negative ninny on the IVF-front. I didn’t sleep well, so I woke up feeling knackered before the day even began. Then we had a meeting at work, where every other person was pregnant (or it seemed that way). And this was swiftly followed…Continue Reading “6 common negative IVF thoughts and how to reframe them”
About a week after we found out out first round of IVF had failed, I got an email from the company that owns Pink Pad, the app I use to track my periods, to say the app was no longer available from 4 May 2018. Unbelievable timing! So now I have to find a new…Continue Reading “Choosing an AF period tracker”
This week former Emmerdale star, Lisa Riley, spoke out about people buying into ‘false hope’ by overseas fertility clinics that claim exceptionally high success rates. According to Riley, who admitted to struggling with fertility issues, some IVF clinics abroad are claiming 98% success rates. This compares with 32.5% in the UK, which she says is…Continue Reading “Lies, damned lies, and statistics – IVF abroad”
When I found out late 2017 that me and my other half would need IVF if we wanted to start a family, I didn’t know who to tell. The first person I told was my mom. I was up in Sheffield helping her clear out some of my detritus that she’d been storing in her…Continue Reading “IVF: who to tell?”
In April 2018, me and my other half went to Reprofit in Brno, Czech Republic, for our first IVF cycle. We did so because we didn’t qualify for NHS funding, and it was considerably cheaper than cycling in the UK. As my hormone profile is A-OK, I thought we should be a fairly straightforward case…Continue Reading “What you should know about going abroad for IVF”
If it wasn’t bad enough that I got a BFN after IVF cycle no. 1, I got an email yesterday from the company that owns my period tracker app telling me that – as of next week – my tracker will cease to work! That’s a year and a half of periods that I need…Continue Reading “My period tracker app is finished!”