How many days should I rest after IVF?

As I always say to my patients, if the outcome is positive, you’re going to be pregnant, not ill. That means that you should not significantly change the style of life after the embryo transfer. In regard to rest, there are a lot of studies that confirm that resting after the embryo transfer does not improve the outcome. In fact, I remember some studies that advice against excessive resting after the embryo transfer because if you keep your mind busy with your usual problems, you are going to focus less on this situation. It has been proved that patients who stay at home, patients who completely change their style of life can get even more stressed because they will start focusing on small things that you may not pay attention to when you are leading a normal life, like if you breast are more tender or less tender, etc.

There was a big study done in one of the clinics in which patients remained in the hospital for several days after the embryo transfer. They had to cancel it from ethical issues because the group that stayed at the hospital has significantly lowered pregnancy rates than those that went home and kept living a normal life.

In my opinion, you must avoid focusing on this kind of things, I know it is very easy to say, but very difficult to do, but try to lead a normal life. Resting makes sense for a couple of hours after the embryo transfer, just to try to relax the uterus, sometimes when we place the catheter inside the uterus, this may lead to some contractions that may interfere with the implantation, but that’s it. After these 2 hours, you can start leading a normal life.

It’s the same thing. We have plenty of evidence that resting on, staying at home won’t help or or decrease our success rate. So, nowadays there is not an indication of how many days. I usually set my patience with whatever makes you comfortable. If it makes you feel better to stay at home for a couple of days, let’s go with that because they may feel later that if they didn’t get pregnant, it’s because they didn’t do some sort of rest or something like that. I like to explain it but we agreed on whatever makes them feel the best. ​

Activity regime and everyday physical activity will partly define your behavior after an embryo transfer. And actually, we recommend you do rest on the day of the embryo transfer and decrease your exercises. If you used to do these exercises, you can work, you can do your everyday activities excluding lifting weights, and you can also work at your office and so on. Regarding the medical points of having a rest after an IVF, we need to talk about fresh embryo transfers and frozen embryo transfers separately. So if we’re talking about fresh embryo transfer of the control ovarian stimulation where the ovaries are enlarged, we recommend patients to decrease physical activity and sometimes we recommend them to avoid sexual intercourse in order to avoid complications. When we perform a frozen embryo transfer, and there are no enlarged ovaries, we aren’t afraid of such complications like ovarian torsion, ovarian apoplexy so after frozen embryo transfer, there are not many limitations in your everyday physical activity but in my opinion, an important point of living your lifestyle after an embryo transfer is your psychological comfort. So, if you can enjoy your life, if you can do what you want to do and not think only about pregnancy tests, it will be the best way after an embryo transfer.

After embryo transfer, there is no clear evidence that says that more than 15-30 minutes of rest plays a very important role. By any means, the implantation happens or does not happen in the next 3-4 days.

What we suggest to the woman is not to exaggerate. On the same day of embryo transfer, we usually suggest is resting as much as possible, which doesn’t mean that she cannot walk or should stay in bed all day, of course. We usually advise, especially for the couples coming from abroad, if possible, not to travel on the same day. Ideally, relax for 1-2 days before travelling back, carry luggage as all those things apart from weight lifting can also increase stress and stress can play an important role in IVF, as well.