Preparing for your first fertility clinic visit

You've finally found the right fertility clinic, and you are ready to get started. Your first fertility clinic visit will be an important milestone: it's often a long appointment, and it will set the tone for your interactions with the doctors, nurses, and clinic staff. 

Make sure to bring your partner, your questions, and your medical records to your first fertility clinic visit. Beyond those three, here's what you can expect:

Topics for your first visit

Prepare for the visit to be a lengthy one—there's a lot of ground to cover! First, you’ll likely meet with your doctor to discuss your family building goals and medical history. Based on how aggressively you want to pursue interventions and your medical history, you will then discuss which diagnostic tests are appropriate for you and your partner. Your doctor needs to learn more about your signs of infertility as well as the possibility of male infertility issues, before proposing a course of treatment.

During your first clinic visit, you will also likely meet with your infertility nurse and a number of others on your treatment team: embryologists, genetic counselors, psychologists, financial counselors, etc.

How to prepare for your first visit

You'll get a lot of questions from your doctor and nurses during the first fertility clinic visit, and it can be helpful to map out your answers beforehand. Expect to be asked about:

• Medical background and history (for both you and your partner).

• Details of your attempts to get pregnant to date. How long have you been trying? How often you have intercourse? When do your period and ovulation occur? If you've been using the Glow app to track your fertility, you can export a PDF of all of your fertility data from the Me page and send it to your doctor directly!

• Medications, vitamins, and/or supplements that you take regularly.

What to ask your doctor

Once the doctor and nurses have asked their questions, it's your turn! Be ready with a list of questions to ask your doctor before you go in—you don’t want to be too overwhelmed to remember to voice the many things on your mind. Here are some possible questions to get you started:

• What kind of diagnostic tests do we need?

• What are possible reasons we haven’t conceived naturally?

• What treatment do you recommend trying first and why?

• What do you think our treatment plan will be?

• What do you see as our likelihood of success?

• What are possible side effects with the recommended treatment?

Your relationship with your fertility clinic will be a major part of your life for the next few months, so don’t be afraid to over-prepare for the first visit.