Okay guys, here come my two cents!
I told the nurse of my clinic about some of the stuff I read here... about how other clinics forbid their patients to have baths (she burst out laughing and said it was ridiculous! That made me choose not to talk about the chocolate and cotton wool and ginger and ice cream and so on...
) and how some recommended bed rest (she said it was unncessary). My clinic recommended me the logical stuff: no intercourse (orgasms stimulate uterine contractions, very mild, but still, and make the cervix move, not to mention the intercourse itself), intense or violent exercise, lifting more than 10 pounds. For the rest, of course, one must act as if pregnant. No drugs or alcohol and such.
Just a note about baths, though. It's TRUE that you can't take baths for a good week after any surgery that left a wound
on your skin. Some clinics do egg retrieval through general anaesthesia and laparoscopy. Of course people can't take baths then because of infection risks! They have surgery wounds!! But with more "mainstream" ER, there's no reason to worry about infections. The thing about hottubs is that pregnant women are told to be very CAREFUL about taking too hot jacuzzis (same for kids under 12), because the too hot water could make their blood pressure rise too much and cause trouble. But they're not forbidden to take hot tubs or jacuzzis because of that; just told to be careful about water temperature.
As for work, she told me some patients ask for a doctor's paper to get off work till the pregnancy blood test.
She said it's completely unncessary. She insisted that implantation occurs within
3 to 5 days after transfer, so two weeks off work is unnecessary. If one's work does not involve a possibility of shocks, physical stuff or very stressful stuff, it's absolutely
not needed to miss more than the day of the transfer, she said. Given Procrea's amazing success rates and her 11 years of experience at the clinic, I tend to believe her advice.
But there's more. I checked on MEDline for scientific articles on IVF and specifically about bed rest. I don't remember who here is a massage therapist and talked about the dangers of bed rest for blood circulation, but she was totally right. ALL of the studies I read concluded that bed rest after embryo transfer, whether as little as 20 minutes after transfer or 24 hours after transfer, has
absolutely no impact on implantation or pregnancy rates.
The reason why some clinics still recommend it is that, at the very beginning of IVF procedures, when the knowledge was not as detailed as it is today, doctors recommended complete bed rest because it was the logical thing for them to do. And then gradually, people started to question that and tested that theory. The results are there, and on thousands of IVF patients.
It makes no difference. If your clinic recommends you 48 hours of complete bed rest, I would question them about whether or not they've read the recent scientific literature.
Some studies went further than just testing whether or not bed rest makes a difference, however. They tested whether bed rest had a
negative impact on implantation and pregnancy rates. Some studies found it is the case. They compared a 20 minutes bed rest after transfer to a 24h bed rest and found that the women who were in bed rest for 24 hours had significantly
lower implantation and pregnancy rates than the others.
Some of these studies also tested other things patients did despite what their clinic recommended: walking slower, no exercise at all, avoiding stairs, and so on. Again...
no impact on implantation or pregnancy whatsoever.
It's tempting for me to do all these things anyway as well; I'm like all of you, I want to give it the best try possible. However, I'll keep these studies in mind and I'll keep the nurse's advice in mind. Don't misunderstand me; I don't judge those who'll choose to do all kinds of small and big extra things in hopes that it will impact on their chances, but I'll do my best to avoid doing that. Those things are done so women feel better about themselves and are reassured, but medically, it has no use whatsoever. And in some cases, when you limit yourself so much that you either become overstressed, unhappy, or impair
your blood flow by staying too inactive, it can actually impact negatively on your chances.
My two cents... that info helped me; it might help others.
Sophie
. If only there was a way to know.