The Real Day One - The Starting Point for Egg Freezing Treatment

Continued from previous post "I'm 34 and I'm freezing my eggs...".

Before you can start the process of daily hormone injections, you need to arrange for a baseline scan of your ovaries and uterus. This has to be performed in the fertility clinic and is arranged by calling the clinic on the “real day one” of your cycle. From my understanding, the baseline scan must be performed within three days of the “real day one” or else you’ve missed the window.  

It was at my information session with the clinic (see blog post Information Overload) that I first encountered the term “real day one”. When the nurse said this to me, I thought to myself, what the hell does that mean? It turns out, it is the first day of the full bleed during your period. This will be different for everyone. Up to this point in my life, I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to when the “real day one” came in my cycle or how I would recognise it. I guess I never had to.

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This immediately caused me anxiety and I had to fight hard against it over the next couple of months in an effort to minimise stress hormones in my body leading up to this first attempt of egg freezing. Luckily, I had two period cycles before I was scheduled to begin the egg freezing process so I was able to pay very close attention to how my own cycle works and when my “real day one” arrived.

Nonetheless, I found it very hard to curb the feeling of unease and I found myself worrying about this “real day one” every day. It’s funny, it should be a minor component of the process. After all, this is just a trigger to call the clinic and arrange the baseline scan. But so far in my journey, this physiological event occupied a large amount of head space.  

When I was ready to undergo my first attempt, I counted down the days to my period and the anxiety was very much present. I worked hard to minimise it as I know the worrying and stress wouldn't do me any favours (by pure chance I had booked myself into a meditation retreat the week before which helped).

And funnily enough, I recognised the “real day one” as soon as it arrived!  

So, as per the plan, I called the clinic on that day and they booked me in for a baseline scan the next day. To my surprise, no matter how prepared I thought I was, I felt a surge of emotion after the call and one or two tears fell. I was beginning to understand that no matter how strong I am, every part of this process can and often will be emotional.

After the call, I texted my family to let them know and my sister called me. Without prompt from me, she acknowledged that this must have been tricky knowing the anxiety I was feeling around the timing of the baseline scan. This little bit of support came at just the right time and reminded me of the importance of support from friends and family throughout this process, especially, if like I was, you are doing this alone.