TW: infertility
Looking for some advice. I’ve been at my current firm for two years - first as a clerk and now as a 1st year associate
For those who have gone through IVF while working, how manageable was it to juggle all of your appointments with work? Also, I also am a little worried about how my firm will react when I announce my pregnancy given that I am such a new attorney. Do you have any experience with this? I desperately want to be a mom but don’t want to jeopardize my work. TYIA!

Most of the monitoring appointments are early in the morning, so typically it doesn’t impact your work day. On retrieval day, take the entire day, since you’ll have been under anesthesia (any time you shouldn’t be making major decisions for yourself, you also shouldn’t be helping people).

The appointments were fine - all early morning. I wouldn’t worry about pregnancy announcements rn, this journey can be longer than anticipated.

Did three rounds of retrieval in one year. Beautiful baby at home now. I don’t want to discourage you but it has been so so so hard and it does impact my work and performance. The time I spent on treatment, when I can’t respond to emails as quickly and when the tons of hormones are reacting on you and you feel sleepy and you are under pressure to not make mistake. Then with the newborn it’s another challenge. But it’s still doable. My recommendation is to first, keep this absolutely confidential. Do not tell any of your colleagues that you are under treatment, and don’t let them know that you are under some kind of regular treatment either; second, find the best RE you can find, it does matter when it comes to implantation skills. 3-find good acupuncture! Good ones I mean! Feel free to DM.

I did three retrieval rounds and three transfers. First round was extremely manageable. As others have mentioned, the appointments are generally early in the morning and not a problem and injections are in the evenings. I only felt side effects the couple days leading up to the retrieval and a couple days following. However, with each subsequent round my side effects from the meds increased significantly. My last retrieval round they changed up protocol and for one stretch I was getting 7 injections per day plus patches plus 3 pills.
All that to say, each person reacts differently and each round can be different. But if you’re lucky and only need one basic retrieval round, I think you’ll likely find it very manageable. Best wishes!

I did three rounds of egg freezing in one year and while it was a little more to keep track of, I found that the early morning monitoring appointments let me make it into the office as necessary, the retrieval days I admit I did a half day of work because I felt well enough but it’s so not necessary. Cannot speak to the pregnancy part since I am not there yet but the only annoying thing was frankly on the trigger day I did have to use the lactation room to privately give myself shots. Otherwise I chose my own time in the evenings for shots that didn’t interfere with anything else. If you need anyone to talk to feel free to DM!

Agree with A 1