The two-week wait after my embryo transfer was pretty brutal
the two week wait after my embryo transfer was honestly the most brutal part of ivf for me. not the injections, not the retrieval... the wait.
the thing that got me the most was not knowing if anything i was doing was actually helping. like, does it matter what i eat? should i be resting more? am i moving too much? you just don't know. and even at a really good clinic the success rate is around 60%, which sounds decent until you realize that means 4 out of 10 transfers don't work.
i decided to try acupuncture during the process. there's some research backing it up — brings the odds up a few percent, maybe to around 65%. not huge but when you're in it, you'll take anything.
funny thing is, i didn't find out about it from my doctor or from hours of googling. my dentist mentioned it. turns out his wife had been through something similar. couldn't conceive naturally, went through two years of ivf with no luck, and it wasn't until they added acupuncture that a transfer finally worked. hearing it from someone who watched their own family go through all of that hit differently than reading a study.
did the acupuncture actually help? honestly i have no idea. but i'm glad i did it and i'm glad it didn't hurt anything. what makes this more impressive to me personally. i'm terrified of needles. each session had at least 50 of them and i had to just lie there still for 30 minutes. if you know me, you know that was not easy.
i'm now six months pregnant and it worked on the first transfer. i feel so incredibly blessed. and if you're currently in your two week wait reading this. i see you. it's brutal. hang in there. 🤍