Getting Pregnant

One of the more embarrassing moments of the fertility testing round – and none of it is particularly free from embarrassment, although you can get remarkably matter-of-fact about it when you have to – was the PCT.

Everybody at the clinic calls it the PCT, never in full, because then it does sound too personal: the post-coital test. At the right moment of the cycle, according to the blood tests and the ultrasound results, a nurse calls you to say “Please do the deed with your partner between 9pm and midnight tonight.”

That’s clinical! And it’s really not very romantic when you’re doing it just because a nurse told you too – especially when you know they’re going to find out the next day whether you actually did it or not!

The next morning, back at the clinic, a nurse took a sample from me in a similar way to a Pap smear. The lab then analysed this sample – the important thing they’re checking for is whether my body is “cooperative” with sperm – because some people have a kind of antibody against them. In fact, everybody does except around the time of ovulation, which is why the timing of the PCT is so important.

I was getting used to the afternoon calls from the nurses by then – after checking results with doctors in a midday meeting, they usually called me between one and three in the afternoon to let me know the results – so I was pleased to get this one to discover our PCT was “normal”. Because that’s not a test I’d particularly like to repeat in a hurry.