IVF and The IVF Process

Your IVF cycle typically begins on Day 1 of your period. Contact your clinic so we can confirm your treatment plan and schedule medication, monitoring visits, and key dates.

In short: Notify your clinic, confirm your start date, and prepare for stimulation medications.

During ovarian stimulation, medication encourages your ovaries to develop multiple follicles, each containing a potential egg. In a natural cycle, only one egg usually matures. IVF aims to safely grow several eggs to give you the best chance of creating healthy embryos.

You’ll self-administer daily injections, usually into the lower abdomen using very fine needles. Most people find these injections manageable after the first day or two. Your nurse will teach you exactly how to prepare and give the medication.

What happens during stimulation

• Daily hormone injections stimulate the ovaries.
  
• Tracking appointments in the second week, every 2–3 days, involve blood tests and vaginal ultrasounds to check hormone levels and follicle growth.
  
• Based on your results, your doctor may adjust your medication dose to ensure follicles are growing at a safe and steady rate.
  
• When your follicles reach the right size, you’ll take a trigger injection to prepare the eggs for collection.

How you might feel: You may experience mild physical and emotional changes such as bloating, cramping, breast tenderness, mood shifts, headaches, or fatigue due to rising hormone levels during stimulation.

Your care team will closely monitor your blood tests and scans to ensure follicles are growing at the right pace, hormone levels remain safe, reduce overstimulation risk, and choose the ideal day for egg collection. This real-time monitoring is what allows IVF treatment to be personalised to your body’s response.

Egg retrieval, also called an egg pick up (EPU), is a simple hospital day procedure where your fertility specialist collects the mature eggs from your ovaries. Using high-resolution ultrasound guidance, your specialist gently passes a fine needle into each ovary to draw out the fluid from the follicles.

Eggs are microscopic, so they can’t be seen directly; instead, they are collected from the follicular fluid and then identified in the lab by your embryology team. Only follicles that have grown to the right size are targeted, as these are most likely to contain mature eggs. On average, 8–15 eggs are collected, though this varies depending on age, ovarian reserve, and clinical background.

This is a day procedure performed under light general anaesthetic using ultrasound guidance.

What to expect:

• The procedure takes 20–30 minutes. After the procedure, you’ll rest in recovery while the anaesthetic wears off.
  
• Most people go home within a few hours. You’ll need a support person to take you home, as you won’t be able to drive for the rest of the day.
• Mild bloating or cramping for 24–48 hours is normal.

If you’re using fresh sperm, a sample is usually produced on the morning of your egg retrieval. If you’re using frozen or donor sperm, our embryologist will have the sample thawed, prepared, and ready in the lab. You can review our sperm donors here.

To understand sperm quality, we use a semen analysis to isolate the most viable sperm, which measures key factors such as:

• Motility – how well sperm move
  
• Count – the number of sperm present
  
• Vitality – how many are alive and functioning
  
  

After preparation, the healthiest sperm are ready for the next step in the IVF process. The prepared sperm are then combined with the eggs collected during your egg pick up.

After retrieving the eggs from your ovaries, there are two ways fertilisation may occur:

• Standard IVF: sperm and eggs are placed together in a culture dish
• ICSI: a single healthy sperm is directly injected into each egg (recommended for certain conditions)

After the insemination procedure, we place the inseminated egg(s) into our specialised culture incubators to assess for fertilisation approximately 17 hours later, the next day. We are looking for signs of normal fertilisation - 2 pronuclear bodies known as ‘pronuclei’. One from the egg and one from the sperm. If the egg does not present with 2 pronuclei, then the egg has not been fertilised and will not produce an embryo

Ideally, after combining a sperm with the egg, approximately 17 hours later it will fertilise and begin forming an embryo. Our scientists will culture the developing embryo(s) in a special incubator, where the conditions for growth and development are optimised to grow the best possible embryos.

Creating the ideal environment for growth

We create these perfect growing conditions using a special mix of amino acids, and nutrients similar to the ones your own body would use to nurture the embryo. Our goal is to mimic the body’s natural processes as closely as possible.

How embryos are expected to grow

Our scientists keep a close eye on the embryo’s development over the next 5-6 days. They’re aiming to see:

a two to four-cell embryo on day two

a six to eight-cell embryo on day three (called the cleavage stage)

an embryo of roughly 100 cells by day 5 or 6 (called the blastocyst stage)

Our goal is to grow all embryos to the blastocyst stage. We know that transferring more robust and developed embryos into the uterus boosts your chances of a successful pregnancy.

Not all embryos will progress—and that’s normal

Unfortunately, not all eggs will fertilise or reach each embryo stage. The eggs might not be mature, or the sperm mightn’t be strong enough, or the resulting embryo may not be normal.

We know you’ll be eager for news along the way. Rest assured, we’ll keep you up-to-date on how your embryos are developing. In the meantime, if you have any questions, our friendly team are just a phone call away.

Once a healthy embryo has developed in the lab, the next step is to gently transfer it into your uterus. This is a quick, straightforward procedure known as an embryo transfer.

Preparing for your transfer

Your fertility nurse will contact you beforehand with simple instructions, usually related to timing, bladder comfort, and general preparation. There’s nothing complicated to do, and most people find this step far easier than they expect.

What happens during the procedure

An embryo transfer is very similar to a pap smear. You’ll lie comfortably on the procedure bed while a scientist prepares the embryo in the laboratory, placing it into a very fine, flexible tube called a catheter. This step requires exceptional skill to ensure the embryo is handled as gently as possible.

Your fertility specialist then guides the catheter through your cervix and releases the embryo into the uterus. The whole process usually takes around five minutes.

After the transfer

And that’s it. Your embryo is now safely inside your uterus. There’s:

• No anaesthetic
  
• No recovery time needed
  
• No restrictions on movement
  

You can get up straight away and continue with your day. The embryo will not “fall out” if you stand, walk, or go to the toilet; it is well-protected within the uterus.

Patients who find vaginal examinations very uncomfortable can discuss with their specialist to have the embryo transfer under a general anaesthetic.

Approximately two weeks (10-14 days) after your embryo transfer, you’ll have a blood test to measure your levels of the hormone hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin). The level of hCG in your bloodstream is used to indicate pregnancy. Your nurse will let you know exactly when to have your blood test, as it may vary for some patients.

We understand that the lead-up to this final blood test can be an anxious time. That’s why it’s a good idea to distract yourself if possible. You may even like to plan a fun event around the time you’re expecting your result. A weekend away or a special lunch can ease stress and give you something to look forward to.