My first experience of a fertility clinic was disastrous. I was forced to undergo invasive treatment in a hospital corridor and ended up refusing to go through with it and walking out. The clinic never contacted us again and we never went back.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s just say it wasn\u2019t an auspicious start.<\/strong><\/p>\n Since then I have been through the multiple rounds of IVF and over a dozen clinics. I\u2019ve become a fertility veteran and had every test known to woman and doctor in a bid to diagnose and cure my infertility. Here are my top tips for choosing a clinic and how to separate the good, the bad and the ugly.<\/p>\n I think the first shock about fertility clinics is that most of them don\u2019t look like the sort of place you\u2019d go to create a baby. Over the years I\u2019ve come to expect the unexpected \u2013 from the clinic that looked like it was straight out of a Dickens novel to the one that doubled for some sort of New York contemporary art gallery.<\/p>\n One thing, however, I have never got used to is the fertility clinic<\/a> waiting room. Most places don\u2019t think about the privacy and anonymity that many patients want and need. In the worst offenders, couples are crammed together, chairs facing each other so there\u2019s nowhere else to look, with maybe a pile of children\u2019s toys in the corner to remind you of what you haven\u2019t got.<\/p>\n Three months later it turned out that I was pregnant but the** foetus was ectopic and had implanted in my stomach**. This was a life-threatening situation that could have been avoided if a more accurate pregnancy test had been done at the end of our treatment.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The best waiting room I ever attended had clearly taken the patient experience into consideration in its design. The walls were curved so that each couple got to sit in their own private space. Given that there is always a lot of waiting involved, it made it so much nicer.<\/p>\n Sooner or later in your fertilitetsrejse<\/a>, your partner (or you) are going to experience the horror of the \u2018Producing Room\u2019 \u2013 the place where men and magazines convene to produce a sperm sample. Most rooms are tiny, often doubling as a toilet or a cupboard. The one at our first clinic had a bucket and mop in the corner, boxes of surgical gloves piled from floor to ceiling, the obligatory well-leafed top-shelf magazine and a very uncomfortable looking plastic chair.<\/p>\n It has always disappointed me that couples are not routinely asked if they would like to be together for this part of the process so that, as a mother, you can say to your child: \u201cI was there.\u201d Whenever we\u2019ve been bold enough to request this, the clinic staff have treated us as if we were weird, despite the fact that generally speaking it does take two to make a baby.<\/p>\n Perhaps if producing rooms were designed more like bedrooms with soft lighting and maybe an iPod with a selection of music then couples, if they wanted to, could choose to start the assisted conception process together in a more natural way.<\/p>\n Nowadays most fertility clinics allow partners to be present for the embryo transfer procedure and that\u2019s definitely a positive thing. But one of the best clinics we ever went to also allowed us to watch the ICSI process when the embryologist injected sperm into the egg. The thought that we might be able to say to our child in years to come that we had witnessed that moment was such a privilege.<\/p>\n In addition, new technology such as the Embryoscope \u2013 which takes continuous film footage of your embryos during their first few days in the laboratory \u2013 is amazing. Of course, given the choice, all of us going through fertility treatment would rather conceive a baby naturally but these opportunities are unique and special and do offer some compensation for having to confront what is, let\u2019s face it, an artificial and difficult process.<\/p>\n If you are being treated privately (and most women who are going through fertility treatment are) then taking the time to choose the right environment and quality of care is really important. In the busiest clinics, it can sometimes feel akin to being a cow in a cattle market with a number printed on your backside. I went to one clinic where not only the waiting room was full but you\u2019d regularly find people sitting on the stairs. I also recently spoke to a woman who said that her clinic was so busy that they never answered the phone so if she had a question, however small, she had to get on the train from Brighton and come up to London.<\/p>\n The best fertility clinics have time for you and make you feel like an individual. You are given the opportunity to develop a relationship with one doctor who makes the effort to understand your story and, rather like a detective, attempts to work out what the problem is and what should be done. Ideally, that same doctor will be the person who sets your stimulation drug dose and does your scans, egg collection and embryo transfer.<\/p>\n