Cycle Monitoring
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What is Cycle Monitoring?
Cycle monitoring is a process using ultrasounds and blood tests to monitor and understand a menstrual cycle. Your doctor will use the results to uncover important insights into your fertility journey. For example, hormone levels, follicle development, and ovulation, determining occurrence and timing of ovulation will help determine your next steps forward.
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When to monitor your cycle
At TRIO Mississauga, we start all treatment plans with cycle monitoring. This allows your medical team to gain a complete understanding of how to properly time interventions to give you the best chance of achieving pregnancy. Whether you’ll be moving forward with In Vitro Fertilization (IVF), Intrauterine Insemination (IUI), Egg Freezing Assessment or other processes, cycle monitoring plays a key role in fertility treatment. We monitor both natural and medicated cycles to provide the best possible care for your treatment process. Cycle monitoring is also used with timed intercourse and is often considered in the following situations:
- Hormonal imbalances
- Anovulation (irregular or absence of ovulation)
- If the lining of the uterus is not thickening
- If doing fertility assessment and consideration of egg freezing
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The Cycle Monitoring Process
After your initial fertility assessment and diagnostic testing, you’ll begin the cycle monitoring process.
On the first day of your menstrual cycle, when you first begin bleeding, you’ll email the Day 1 team at Day1@triomississauga.com to let them know. They will provide instructions about when to start your treatment cycle.
Over a 5-10 day period, you will be required to come to the clinic for a series of blood tests to monitor your hormone levels and transvaginal ultrasounds during the course of your cycle. The ultrasounds allow us to track the growth of follicles and the thickening of the uterine lining. You will also meet with a nurse from your team who will review with you any medications your doctor has prescribed, and show you how to self-administer injections, if applicable.
Just before ovulation (around day 12-14), there will be a sudden rise in one of the body’s hormones, luteinizing hormone (LH). This will help your medical team determine the best timing for intercourse or IUI. When this occurs, your nurse will tell you exactly when to take your “trigger medication” or a “trigger shot” to time ovulation.
If your doctor has prescribed timed intercourse for you and your partner, your medical team will give you instructions for the best timing for IC depending on the timing of the trigger and LH surge.
After your timed intercourse or your IUI, you will begin taking progesterone, which is used to support the luteal phase. You will start this medication the day after your second timed intercourse, or immediately after your IUI.
Approximately two weeks later, we will book an appointment for you to return to the clinic for a pregnancy test.