IVF #3, FET #3: Baseline Scan

May the Fourth was obviously Star Wars Day but this year for us it was something a little more important. It was also Baseline Scan Day.

It's probably not quite as exciting as Star Wars Day, but it's a pretty important day in the frozen embryo transfer process because it's the one which tells you whether you're ready to start the next lot of meds. Last year when we did our second FET it didn't go quite as planned and we had to postpone everything by a week until my body got itself in gear. And that was why I was feeling a bit nervous about this one.

I suspect this was why I didn't sleep too well the night before. We had a very early start (ten to five, ouch!) before the usual trek (car, boat, train, bus) to the hospital. Thankfully this appointment was at 9am so the journey was a little more relaxed than the last one.

I knew that this appointment would be for the baseline scan but I wasn't sure whether I would need to have any blood taken. It's ironic that when you're having an internal ultrasound, also known as the dildocam owing to its strong resemblance to the sort of thing you'd normally buy from a shop like Ann Summers, it's the blood test you look forward to the least! I guess that means I'm pretty used to the process by now.

It was the usual process. Summoned from the waiting room by a nurse (who was very friendly but I can't for the life of me remember her name now). She remembered us and asked about the island and our journey.

Mr Click got to have a nice little chat with her and her assistant nurse, I on the other hand was given a drape and sent off to the bathroom to disrobe from the waist down. Then it was up on the bed, legs in the stirrups and time for the close encounter with the scanner.

The baseline scan checks what's going on with your womb lining. The Prostap injection aimed to shut down my body's hormones and put me into a menopausal state. I had been told to expect a bleed some time after the jab and my body was a little bit slow to respond. Eventually, twelve days after the jab my uterus went into self-destruct mode, and it did such a good job that my lining measured a mere 3.2mm.

Last year it was still too thick at this stage so we'd had to wait another week for it to thin out some more. This time I got the go ahead to more on to stage two, Progynova, also known as HRT.

As of this morning I'm taking three of these little pills each day which will be doing their thing to plump up my womb lining for the next couple of weeks before I head back to the hospital to check my lining is scoring over 6mm.

Meanwhile, towards the end of next week my Prostap jab will be wearing off but we obviously don't want to risk me ovulating or my hormones getting any funny ideas about doing their own thing, so that's where the Suprecur nasal spray will come in. This is actually the same stuff I used as my trigger injection before egg collection (except that was injected, whereas this will be snorted).

Whereas the pills are taking once a day at roughly the same time, the nasal spray is far more exact. It has to be taken at 7am, 12pm, 6pm and 11pm each day (I actually count myself lucky here, I've seen some clinics instructing it to be taken every six hours - 6am, 12pm, 6pm, 12am - which is easier to remember but a lot easier to miss a dose). The really good thing about snorting the stuff at those times is that I get a hell of a lot of reading done trying to keep myself awake until 11pm; one of the Progynova side effects is tiredness.

Once we'd gone over all the meds, stowed them away in Mr Click's bag, confirmed what was being taken and when, updated all of our paperwork, and set a date and time for our return appointment, we were free to go.

By the time we go back I'll have been popping and snorting for two weeks and a week respectively. Fingers crossed we'll get a good result on the next scan.