What happens on egg collection day?

After two weeks of injections and dawn scans, this is the day everything has been building towards — and it is over surprisingly quickly. Here is the whole day, in order.

The night before

• You will have taken your trigger injection about 36 hours before collection, at an exact time
• No food from midnight, or whatever cut-off your clinic gives; usually clear fluids until a few hours before
• No jewellery, nail varnish, perfume or make-up on the day — theatre rules
• Arrange your escort. You cannot travel home alone after sedation, and clinics will cancel if nobody is with you

Arrival, and about an hour of paperwork

You will change into a gown, confirm your identity and consents several times, meet the anaesthetist and the embryologist, and have your details checked against your partner's or donor's sample. The repetition is deliberate — the whole day is built on identity checks.

The procedure itself

Most UK clinics use conscious sedation rather than a general anaesthetic: strong pain relief and a sedative through a cannula, which leaves you drowsy and largely unaware. A vaginal ultrasound probe guides a fine needle through the vaginal wall into each ovary, and the fluid from each follicle is drawn off and passed straight to the lab. It takes 20 to 30 minutes.

People describe it very differently afterwards. Some remember nothing at all; some remember drifting in and out and hearing the count being called out. Some feel a deep period-like pressure. Very few describe it as painful at the time.

Recovery, one to two hours

You wake up in a recovery bay with cramping and often shoulder-tip discomfort from the gas and fluid shifting around. Tea and toast appear. Before you leave you will be told how many eggs were collected — hold that number lightly, because the number that matters comes tomorrow, when you hear how many fertilised.

The number of eggs collected is almost always lower than the number of follicles seen on the last scan. Some follicles are empty, some contain immature eggs. This is normal biology, not a mistake.

The next 48 hours

• Cramping like a heavy period, easing over one to three days
• Bloating, which often gets worse before it gets better
• Light spotting for a day or two
• Tiredness from the sedation that lasts through the evening
• Constipation, which is common and worth pre-empting with water and fibre

Take paracetamol rather than ibuprofen unless your clinic says otherwise, keep drinking — electrolyte drinks help — and do not plan anything for the rest of the day. Most people are back to a desk the following day, and most wish they had booked that day off too.

When to ring the clinic

1. Severe or rapidly worsening abdominal pain not helped by painkillers
2. Rapid weight gain, a tight swollen abdomen, or breathlessness — possible OHSS
3. Passing very little urine
4. A temperature over 38°C
5. Heavy bleeding, more than a light pad

Every clinic gives you an out-of-hours number. Use it. Nobody on that phone thinks you are overreacting, and OHSS is much easier to manage early.