Painful Transvaginal Scan

[RenRemSasse]

Hello.

I am new here.

I had to do my first AFC scan but it was painful to do Transvaginal scan, no matter how I do deep breathing, it’s just too painful. I feel so sad about it because I really want to try to have a baby with my wife and I feel like I let her down that I could not go through it.

Is there any other scans that is alternative for AFC to be clear?

We did try even with full bladder at first as I have traumatic internal scan 3 years ago to check my ovarian cyst, but still they could not see the follicles and that is why we tried the internal scan but just couldn’t do it. It was too painful, even I tried to do it myself but I just couldn’t.

Any other experienced my experience?

I hope anyone can give some ideas.

I would really appreciate it.

[MrsOrangejuice]

Have you had your condition investigated? There are treatments and therapies available and many women find them effective. There are also support groups. It may be worth getting started on this side of things as I found the more painful investigations I had, the more sensitised and tense I got, so it spiralled. The pain condition I have (and that I've had all my life) makes any sort of internal scan extremely painful. Sometimes it's just about bearable with deep breathing and basic pain killers, and other times it's agony and not physically possible. It's not common and I'll be honest if you're going down the IVF route there will be quite a lot of scans and although the nurses and doctors can be sympathetic, I didn't find much by way of alternatives or ways to help me manage the pain. However, I would recommend letting your clinic know in advance, having a discussion with the consultant responsible for your treatment and asking if they can give you anything to help (strong pain meds, gas and air, sedation...). I know they can also do abdominal scans (and these have often been more successful then transvaginal for me) but I had to argue each time to try them as the nurses usually aren't trained to do them that way and often the response is no. So again, worth asking your consultant if they can arrange this and seeing if they have any sonographers who are trained to do these and making sure they do your scans.

Otherwise, deep breathing helps and you may also benefit from hypnotherapy. At the most simple I took paracetamol and ibuprofen before scans which sometimes took the edge off. Ask the nurses to go very slowly, and give your muscles time to rleax and stop spasming, and pause as often as you need. If you proceed with IVF, ensure from the early stages that they will do egg collection under sedation - I think most clinics do full sedation and when I had that at a private clinic I was out like a light and it was absolutely fine, just wish I had understood this before going such a long way with an NHS clinic that didn't (only light sedation, which did nothing for me) and having no choice but to proceed.

I've had 3 full rounds of IVF and one cancelled round, so it is possible to do it even with a pain condition, but it's not well understood or provided for so you will likely need to advocate for yourself early on and find ways to manage that work for you - there's no one size fits all solution. But you aren't letting anyone down so please try not to think like that - this process is hard enough and you need ti be gentle on yourself.