#AtoZChallenge: F is for Forms

This is the sixth of a series of posts that I’m posting during the A to Z Challenge; that’s a blogging challenge where you aim to post a blog post for each letter of the alphabet throughout the month of April (with Sundays off for good behaviour). During my first A to Z Challenge I wrote about infertility, which I’m sort of revisiting during A to Z Challenge 2015.

My theme this year is IVF/ICSI, a process we’re starting at the moment and today it’s F for Forms.

It’s easy to think that the process of IVF or ICSI is all about drugs, scans, blood tests and hospital appointments, partly because that’s mainly what I’m spoken about during this challenge so far. Well, let me tell you, there’s a lot of paperwork involved as well.

During your first few appointments it’ll be the doctors or nurses who are filling in the forms. They’ll have a folder (which may not be particularly slim depending on your fertility history) and you’ll be asked lots of questions which they’ll dutifully note down into the forms inside.

It may feel like you’re going over much of the same ground with these appointments. You’ll repeat your name, address and date of birth so many times that you can rattle it off without thinking about it. Alternatively you’ll worry that you sound weird and suspicious because you have to correct yourself when you give your personal information incorrectly. Don’t worry, doctors and nurses are used to people being a bit anxious, they’ll laugh it off if you give your date of birth as this year.

But that’s not all. When everything is getting started, before you get onto the fun stuff like internal scans and daily injections, you get to fill in forms. Lots and lots of forms.

It’s complicated because you and your partner will be sharing medical details with one another (the man’s medical details will end up in the woman’s file), so you have to consent to that. You have to consent to your eggs and sperm being used, you have to consent to embryos being created from them, your partner has to consent to raising any offspring produced as a result of the treatment.

And then there’s things you need to think about a little more carefully. Like whether you consent to your products being used in training or research and if the male partner gives permission to the woman to use any embryos if he ‘becomes mentally incapacitated or dies’.

It’s a little bit weird, especially as you’re doing all of this before you’ve even got any embryos and it’s not pleasant to think about your partner dying. But it is necessary. Obviously if you say no to some bits it will kind of put the scuppers on the process. And they are important things to talk about. It’s a big thing to go through and you need to make sure that you and your partner are on the same page.

If you’re on the outside looking in, there’s not so much you can do to be involved during this stage. Your friend or family member probably wouldn’t appreciate being quizzed on what their plans are for unusable eggs or embryos. But, as someone who is going through it all, just knowing that your friends and family understand that you’re being asked to make yet another in a series of big decisions is reassuring.