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...

See-saws - Day 1 post-transfer

Today I'm feeling a bit low after yesterday's transfer. It seems from reading back over old posts that my feelings during the two week wait see-saw back and forth between negative and positive. Today's a negative day.

LH is here because its a public holiday so we went shopping this morning, which helped to take my mind off this cycle. The only way I can really cope with this wait is to keep pushing thoughts of the pregnancy test and aftermath out of my head.

I woke up at 3am last night, I guess because of stress. Hopefully that won't happen every night for the next 10 days. Its very rare that any event, no matter how stressful, affects my sleep. I can't help but wondering if everything is ok in my uterus. I keep telling myself that the endometrial biopsy during the last cycle came back normal, and there wasn't any odd stuff on the ultrasound but still I feel uneasy.

Its the difficult embryo transfer that did it. I can't work out why it was so hard for the catheter to pass through my cervix, when its been fine very other time. I did start to wonder if it had anything to do with the pap smear I had two weeks ago. Maybe there was some dried blood or something that made it hard to push through. My worst fear is that I've got some sort of scarring around my cervix and that caused my period to stop as well. But that would mean something had to happen between my last period and now and I can't think what that could be other than the pap smear.

Anyway, useless to speculate. The doctor, when she finally did get the catheter in, said the placement was 'perfect'. She told me to watch out for the flash of light on the screen that would be the embryo going in, and I could see it spraying into my uterus. Let's hope it landed in a nice spot.

At the moment, I feel that its unlikely this cycle will work and then its all over for us. Maybe I'll be more positive as the days go by.

The last time

This morning I had my embryo transfer, my sixth, and almost certainly my last. When I got to the clinic, the embryologist came in for a chat. The news was good and bad.

The bad news was that they thawed our second last embryo last night but this morning found that it was dead. So they then thawed our last remaining embryo this morning, which by the time it was transferred was doing really nicely. In the words of the embryologist, it was 'perfect'. One hundred percent of its cells had survived the thaw and the 'cavity' was starting to expand. That's really as positive a comment we've had from the embryologist, so it's good news.

The transfer itself wasn't altogether straightforward. The doctor, not my usual one, who is on holidays, struggled to get the catheter past my cervix and into the uterus. We thought it was weird because I've had so much surgery that my cervix should be pretty loose by now. It took so long to get the catheter in that the embryologist had to put the embryo back in the incubator while she waited.

But finally the doctor did get the catheter into my uterus, and the embryo with it. Once again I had no cramping, no pain and no bleeding so it all seems good. I had before and after acupuncture sessions, which as ever helped me to relax.

So here we are again in the final two week wait. I feel slightly optimistic because the embryo looked so nice, but also a bit sad that we are nearly at the end of the road with IVF and baby number two. I still feel there's no future in doing another stimulated cycle if this one fails, but never say never. Maybe we will feel differently if that happens.

I also hope all is ok with my endometrial lining but really there's nothing more we can do on that front. I'm going to make a big effort to maintain a sense of 'zen' during the next 11 days if I can. But the stakes are much more loaded this time because its our last chance.

All set for transfer

This morning I had my final blood test to check my hormone levels are all set for transfer tomorrow. I'm to keep going with one progesterone pessary a day, so they are all fine. I was pretty confident it would be, after the pain in my ovaries went away on Thursday.

So embryo transfer is set for 11am tomorrow. I'll be going on my own so LH can stay home and look after Zoe. I'm really hoping we do get an embryo that survives the thaw, but it would be pretty unlikely for both of them to fail, so hopefully we will be ok.

But its possible tomorrow will be my last embryo transfer. I'm trying to mentally prepare for that possibility so I'm not disappointed if it does come to that. Then we start what will probably be our second last two week wait. Can't say I'm sorry that process is nearly at an end.

As for how hopeful I feel about getting a BFP, it really depends on how the embryo looks in the morning. If they are quite positive about it, I will be too.

More optimism

I woke up this morning to find that the aching in my ovaries had disappeared and it hasn't come back. So I'm much more hopeful now that I did actually ovulate. With any luck, the follicle is starting to involute and pump out progesterone.

Tonight I start on the progesterone pessaries. They won't be too much of a hassle because I'm only taking them at night so the lying down for an hour bit isn't a problem.

I've been thinking a lot about what my uterus looked like on the ultrasound. There's fuzzy bits around the edges of it but the endometrium had clearly thickened normally, where in March there was a hole where the surgery had been done. So my reckoning is that if the endometrium has thickened up normally then it must be functioning ok, and is hopefully going to be a nice house for the embryo if it decides it wants to stick.

Thanks to everyone who has posted words of encouragement. I sincerely hope this cycle is going to be our time at last but if its not, we'll survive and carry on.

More pessimism

I'm trying really hard to be positive about this unexpected imminent embryo transfer but we've had so many things go wrong over the last year that my mindset is stuck in failure.

The first hurdle we have to overcome is evidence on the Saturday blood test that I have in fact ovulated. Even though all the hormones are absolutely spot on, I can't help but wondering if everything is ok. I can still feel a slight pressure around my right ovary as if there is a cyst growing, even though the ultrasound showed the follicle was a normal size. I haven't felt this kind of discomfort before so its hard to know what's going on.

Today the nurse called to ask how many embryos we want to transfer. I told her one, and she asked did we want them to keep thawing until they get a good one. There's no other option for us so that is what they will do. I am trying to mentally prepare for neither of the two remaining embryos to survive the thaw so that it doesn't hit me too hard if that actually happens.

Its very unlikely that they will both fail to thaw - the clinic quotes a rate of about 10% failing to survive thawing. Let's hope these two little embies are in the 90% that are fine.

A totally unexpected outcome

Today I had an ultrasound and blood test to work out what was happening with my cycle. The ultrasound showed I had one dominant follicle on the left side measuring about 17 mm. The endometrial lining was 6.2mm and there was some fuzziness around the edges of the endometrial stripe. The sonographer said this would be calcification from all my surgery. The 'hole' we saw last time wasn't there though, so that was good news.

When the nurse called, she said my bloods showed I have ovulated today. Oestrogen was over 1000, progesterone was starting to go up at 3.5 (it was 0.6 yesterday) and LH was through the roof at 22. So the inevitable conclusion from all of this was that I've ovulated.

This was good news and means the ovarian cyst has finally ovulated itself and will now go away. The nurse said that since we had fortuitously pinpointed ovulation, there was no reason why we shouldn't go ahead and do an embryo transfer in 5 days.

I really didn't see that one coming and its good news I think. I asked did it matter that I hadn't had a period for about 6 weeks and she said no, once the lining was laid down, it didn't 'age'. If I'd gone 3 months without a period, they would have let me go on to have one before doing a transfer but this length of time is apparently fine.

That only leaves the lining. At 6.2mm, it scrapes in to the lower limit of 6mm and is about what I've had in the past anyway. The fuzzy stuff around the bottom does worry me a bit, but both the doctor monitoring this cycle and the doctors who had a good look at it on ultrasound in March don't seem to think its a problem.

I can't believe that after all this hassle, it looks like we are about to have lift-off - finally!! As long as LH agrees to it of course - he flew back to Melb this morning and was in-transit when I called to talk to him about it. Hopefully he will agree we should go ahead. And we will now probably manage to do our final two cycles before we go away in August - happy days!

And I'm pretty stoked that this will be a natural cycle, as we had when Zoe was conceived. I wasn't so keen on the medicated frozen cycle, if only because it wasn't what we did last time. So to have pinpointed my day of ovulation completely by accident seems to be a real stroke of good luck. If I had called the clinic a day later, or they had got me back for a blood test tomorrow instead of day, we might have missed it. And last but not least, the transfer would be on Sunday, so not interfering with work or when LH is away.

Hopefully this completely unexpected stroke of good luck will be a good omen for us.