Day 6 post transfer

We are now over half way through this final two week wait. Six sleeps down, and five to go. I think what happens in the TWW is that the first and last few days are really hard and in the middle bit I just get used to it.

My mindset at the moment is that we are most probably not going to be successful this cycle and IVF will finally be all over for us. I really do hope I'm wrong but I feel that a reality check is the best for me at the moment.

I haven't been able to work out what our chances of success are for this cycle but the other night I found a clinical paper published by our clinic that gave some indication. Our clinic's published rates of success are around 10-20% for 40-44 year olds per stimulated cycle but that doesn't indicate the chances with a frozen transfer.

This paper showed the success per frozen transfer was about 25% for 40-44 year olds so I guess that's what our chances are this cycle. They did only have 16 transfers and 4 successful pregnancies so that's not many to go by.

A 25% chance is really pretty good in this IVF world and as much as you can hope for. If we could only keep trying at that level of chance, we'd be fine but the problem is our chance of success for me now at the age of 43 is around 5-10% per cycle. We could easily do 10 more cycles and not succeed.

This TWW is all the more harder for knowing that its not just a matter of keep trying. That's what got me through each wait last time around, knowing if it failed we would just try again but that's not the case this time.

As for pregnancy symptoms, well now that I know from experience that there really aren't any in the TWW, its easier not to think about them but I still find myself doing it anyway. The only possible ones I've had are a lot of cervical mucous on Day 7 post-transfer and slight stinging in my right arm pit but I could easily be imagining it.

LH goes to Chicago tomorrow for 8 days and so will be away when I have the pregnancy test on Thursday. Its not an ideal situation but nothing we can do about it. He will also find it hard to get a negative result being away from home. My plan is to do a pregnancy test early on Thursday morning, assuming I don't get AF before then. That way I will already know the result and I'll be able to get on with things and concentrate at work, instead of waiting all morning for the phone to ring. Roll on Thursday...