For Anyone in the Two Week Wait After an Embryo Transfer

First of all, I’m sorry. These two weeks are a horribly long and painfully anxious drawn-out stasis time bubble. And you can’t even drink alcohol!

It starts out okay - joyful, even! The first couple of days, you’re in a bit of a hopeful haze; indulging in luxurious rest and coziness, willing the embryo to snuggle in. Then time begins to crawl. Minutes feel like hours, hours feel like days, and each day is a week. The singular thought you're able to conjure is, ‘What if I don’t get pregnant?’

The two week wait likely followed many weeks of prep (that also dragged on) and maybe, many months before that, waiting to get the process started. You’ve been taking hormones and other drugs every day for a good while now, you may have traveled for IVF, endured countless invasive exams, procedures, blood tests, and shots. And not to mention the rollercoaster of stress and grief that you’ve been on.

As much as you can pretend to be PUPO (pregnant until proven otherwise), nothing - and I mean NOTHING - can make you stop obsessing over the state of the embryo inside you. Did it attach? Is it starting to develop? Or was this ALL for nothing and you’ll be right back at square one?

You find yourself Googling to all ends of the internet; from anecdotal forum Q&As to doing IVF math to see when you can reasonably take a pregnancy test. You search for, “the half-life of an HCG shot”, but pee on sticks three times a day anyway, knowing full well that it’s too early to have a definitive answer. You hold your urine for four hours at a time so it’s concentrated and compare strip after strip to the last one. Is the second line getting darker or is it the HCG from the shot? Am I still in the game? Was I ever playing?

You save the tests and analyze them over and over, even when dry, maybe even taking them out of the trash. Did I miss something somehow?

Only some of us are crazy chronic testers (me!) and others prefer to wait until their official test date (another species). The latter is usually recommended, but I’ve learned from years of experience that I am incapable of it.

I’ve thought a lot about why and realized that it’s because I’m personally willing to risk seeing a negative and not knowing for sure or seeing a false positive (and knowing that it might not be real) for the chance of seeing an early real positive, thus ending my agony sooner. (At least this agony; the next phase is worrying about the pregnancy not continuing).

For others, seeing a negative test is too crushing and confusing and they’re really able to distract themselves and hold off on testing. But, personally, I don’t want to build up too much hope for weeks and then have it all be crushed at once, so I opt for as much intel as possible in an attempt to temper my expectations. I think you just have to figure out what works best for you and your sanity. No shame to crazy early testers!

Another piece of advice is to find healthy distractions, like seeing good friends or tackling a new project. However, I become a shut-in because I can’t handle being a “fun person” in any capacity during this time. Also, I simply can’t and don’t want to focus on productive activities. I prefer to be alone to binge TV, take quiet walks in nature, and other things that don’t require my output.

We’re all different, so what helps us the most will be different. I’ve done enough two week waits by now to know how I respond. Whether you’re an obsessive tester or a waiting Wendy, I hope this article has felt relatable and that it has given the emotional struggle of this stage of IVF its due coverage and validation.

If you’ve been through two week waits, what feelings or thoughts do you have about it, and what has helped you get through it? Tell me in the comments.