Sarah, your first IVF cycle actually starts about a week before CD1, if that makes any sense at all.

You need to begin a process of down regulation, which basically turns off your ovaries. This is done with either lucrin (injections) or synarel (nasal spray). Sometimes you'll start the pill just to give the doctors complete control, in that case you'd start the synarel/lucrin a couple of days before you stop taking the active tablets.

Generally, you can expect to be on lucrin or synarel for around a week, then AF will arrive. After another week or so (I'm hazy on all of this now, and I can't find my info from the clinic which outlines the protocols) they do a blood test to ensure that your levels are low enough (looking for a low estrogen level), and if everything is ok you start the stimulation drugs... If things aren't ok things get rather interesting - but you don't need to worry about that unless you get there. Trust me to be one of the ones that does!

The stimulation drugs (puregon or gonal F - I don't know what the difference between them is) go for anywhere between 10-14 days, you'll have a series of blood tests and scans to check that everything is going along as it should, and possibly have your dosage of puregon/gonal F adjusted.

When you have a nice number of big fat follies you'll have a trigger shot of HCG, which happens 38 hours before your egg collection. This matures the eggs so that they are ready to go, but the doctors remove them before your body ovulates. You'll need luteal phase support after this - in the form of crinone pessaries or HCG booster shots. I won't go into details of exactly how the eggs are collected - it was something I wish I didn't know beforehand, but was rather glad I was under a full anaesthetic at the time!

The eggs that are collected will then be handed over to the scientists (along with DH's sample) and they do their thing. If it's ICSI, they need to catch each sperm and inject it into the egg. The embryos are watched for a few days and then transfer takes place. This could be anywhere from day 2 to day 5, depending on how long your clinic wants to grow them for.

I think that's the rough idea of what goes on... different clinics will do things slightly differently. I've also only ever done it once, and didn't get to transfer, so that part of things is a bit of a mystery to me!

BW