Waiting for beta results is just plain torture.

That is all.

Am a nervous, anxious, petrified wreck.

Knock me over with a feather, folks. It appears that - as of today - we are pregnant!

12dpo hcg - 28, progesterone 15
17dpo hcg - 286, progesterone 30.4

The test will be in the doubling, of course - so we'll likely go back on Friday for follow up bloodwork. Breathe, just breathe.

To say I am absolutely petrified about tomorrow's beta blood draw is an understatement.

The pee sticks look okay - but then, they did last time too. It's hard to hope, epecially since they started out so faint this time too. I do have some darkening sticks from the last few days, though. The thing is, my morning sticks are always fainter than the afternoons. It seems to go against every bit of pee stick literature that you can find on the internet... but there it is.

I haven't used any pregnancy tests today. I figure that whatever will be, will be. In 24+ hours, we'll have an answer.

I should know better than to get my hopes up, but I can't help it.. they're up. And I know they could all come crashing down by tomorrow's beta results, but I am just trying so keep the faith.

I want this more than I can put into words. To get a chance at carrying another baby, to hope that this one might turn out different. Fifth time lucky, perhaps? Could this be our rainbow, rainbow, rainbow baby?

So yesterday morning, I deemed this cycle a bust. I ripped apart the pregnancy tests, deleted every image from my phone, threw a huge tantrum and rage-cleaned my bathroom. It was a meltdown, and it wasn't pretty. I ended that fit of destruction by lying on G's bed and sobbing my heart out - thankfully, she was at daycare, so I could safely let it all out.

After picking her up later that afternoon, I decided to do ONE more pregnancy test. I wasn't going to, and I was kicking myself as I was doing it, but I did it. And you know, there was a more visible line this time. It's still fairly light for 6dp5dt - or 11dpo - but it was a TONNE better than the morning's ghost.

Maybe that was a sign that this pregnancy isn't all over?

I promised hubby I wouldn't pee on any FRER sticks today, because he thinks I'll drive myself batty overanalysing a line, or panicking if there isn't enough progression. (Yeah, he's right.)

I didn't promise to not use a digital though. Loopholes, you know.

Well, all my optimism has failed me... and I was doing so well. It looks like this FET is also going to be another early loss.

Yesterday (5dp5dt - or 10dpo) was early to start peeing, but I've had squinters in the past - and surprise! We had a squinter this time too! It's hard to see, but it's there - when hubby can see it, you know you're not imagining things.

This morning's however, is even fainter than yesterday - which doesn't bode well for this one. One squinter on its own? Well, okay.. every pregnancy has to start somewhere. Two squinters, with no progression? Yeah, we know where this is headed.

I've decided I'm done with stick peeing. I can't handle the disappointment of another early miscarriage every single time I use a pregnancy test. All these losses have just sucked the joy straight out of this process, and it leaves me with dread instead.

Beta is next Tuesday, the 9th. My gut is telling me that little Olaf will have either a) fizzled out by then, or b) be barely hanging in there. So long as this loss doesn't drag out like the last one did, I guess that's that.

I'm really frustrated, you guys. This brings us over 2 years of TTC #2, 3 full IVF stim cycles, 8 transfers, months of endless waiting around - and still no closer to a baby. What do we have to do to get pregnant with a sticky baby? Are we doomed to sit and watch everyone else move ahead without us? Why does this keep happening?

I'm angry at my clinic. I want them to try new things, to throw some steroids at me, to do some more testing, to try and figure out what is going wrong - obviously my body is trying its hardest to get pregnant, but something has to give. Are the remaining 6 frosties we have even worth using? I can't do 6 more cycles, 6+ more months of endless miscarriages or negatives. We want to do whatever it takes to have another baby, but I'm just feeling so broken.

Anyway... if I'm quiet for the next week, you'll know why. No false hopes anymore, just resigned to wait for the week and get the official result from the bloodwork when we get there. This just sucks. :(

They thawed it last night & it grew from an early blasto into an expanding blastocyst. The embryologist rated it a grade 4AB.

Surprisingly, it looked very different to this picture when we saw it on the live screen before transfer. Even though it was tiny, I could see a really clear Inner Cell Mass - whereas on this image, I don't see it clearly at all. I'm assuming that this image was captured a little earlier in the day and that it had continued growing up until the transfer time, which I hope is a good thing.

It was a nice experience, except for the part where my cervix decided to disappear and play hard to get. We had a different doctor this time around doing the transfer who was lovely, and I think I'll request him for future transfers. It took him six (!) attempts with a speculum to get the ball rolling, but he was very gentle and very thorough.... and most of all, very kind.

Come on Olaf, lucky #8! Please stick. Please, please, please. Let this be a magical start to 2016. :)

The ball is rolling for 2016's first transfer.. and I'm a combination of petrified and excited.

My levels are FINALLY less than 5.

I'm officially no longer pregnant.

I never thought I'd say this, but I'm so bloody glad to hear those words.

This miscarriage was just a total disappointment. From the late appearing pregnancy test lines, to the positive betas, to the almost-but-not-quite doubling, to the hope... and then to the devastation of another early loss.

Since then, it's been wait after wait; waiting for hcg levels to drop, waiting to see what was going on, waiting for ultrasounds to check for retained products, waiting for a bleed. From the hope that we might be able to squeeze in one last FET cycle for 2015, to the disappointment of simply running out of time.

With all that said, it's done. It's over. We start again in January.

It's like déjà vu all over again. If I think back to this time last year, all we hoped for was a fresh start. We wanted to leave the pain and sadness of the previous year behind us and move on, and hope that the new year would bring us a baby.

In 2014 I was pregnant. Then I wasn't pregnant. Then I was pregnant again. Then I wasn't. In 2015 I watched two due dates come and go, with no pregnancy in sight. There was failure after failure, and our luck stayed the same. Then I was pregnant. And now I'm not.

So now, we're leaving the sadness of TWO years behind us... and maybe, just maybe, 2016 will bring us some good news.

My beta levels were 9 on November 10th.
My beta levels were 22 on November 17th.
My beta levels were 25 on November 24th.
My beta levels are currently 17 on December 1st.

Still here. Still no answers. Still nobody making action plans for a d&c or using drugs, because the levels are too low to warrant them... so I have DEMANDED we start Provera and induce another bleed.

There's no time for a December cycle now. In fact, we'll be lucky to get in for a January cycle, since I'd need a baseline cycle after the clinic opens after the break - so in reality, we won't be looking at a transfer until February.

Waiting... my arch nemesis. 

Let me refresh your memory of the miscarriage from hell.

My beta levels were 9 on November 10th.
My beta levels were 22 on November 17th.
My beta levels were 25 on November 24th.

Still. Fucking. Pregnant.

Referral is coming for a scan to see whether/where there is retained products of conception (what a lovely term) and whether or not I'll need to do a D&C again, or if I will just be stuck in this endless monotony of waiting around.

I now officially hate everyone and everything and most especially my body, who is utterly useless.

A shitty end to a shitty year. :(

It's one thing to be impatiently waiting for your hcg levels to get back to baseline, so you can keep going. It's another thing to have them go UP again, and freak you right out.

My beta levels were 9 on November 10th.

The bleeding was tailing off at this point, so we decided to wait a full week to let the miscarriage finish, and re-test again.

My beta levels were 22 on November 17th.

WHAT?

I automatically went into panic mode, assuming the worst - this can't be a good thing? The bleeding has been completely gone for almost the full week. I have no cramps, signs, symptoms. Why would it go up?

My first thought is retained products of conception, because the numbers are too low at 22 to be an ectopic. I asked the clinic for their thoughts and they basically said I should wait it out a week and see what happens.

Of course, that doesn't sit well with me... and I will probably spend the next six days with my stomach in knots. I'm scared, you guys. And I'm so, so frustrated. We were supposed to be baseline by now, we were supposed to be moving ahead with one last IVF cycle before the Christmas clinic closures. Instead, we're stuck here, with potentially very bad news, and an extremely slim chance of being able to try again next month.

Why does this keep happening? One thing after the other... it's just ridiculous.

My beta levels were down to 53 on November 2nd.
They dropped to 19 on November 6th.
They're still 9 today on November 10th.

More bloods in a week. I am a human pincushion right now, and not even for a fun reason.

Bloody fucking hell, the universe must really hate us. It just needs to get < 5 for me to start a new cycle, but no, apparently I can't even miscarry a pregnancy properly!

So here we are... still stuck in this limbo. Fun times! Somebody pour me a wine.

Levels have started dropping, so it's time to stop all meds & wait for the inevitable.

Just when I was starting to hope. Another one gone, just like that. How did we get here?

I am just so utterly sad.

Today is 17dp4dt - or 21dpo - or 5 weeks pregnant.

Obviously my numbers don't match up to ANY of those figures, but here we are. Limbo!

I've managed to wrangle my blood test forward a day, so it's tomorrow now instead of Tuesday. We'll hopefully know with a little more clarity, and it's no good dragging things out any longer than we need to.

I feel pregnant. Queasy, off foods, hot flashes, headaches, exhausted. I'm still on all the meds - oestrogen & progesterone - so yes, it's very likely that it's more to do with them than it is my super low hcg hormones.

I'm still peeing on sticks, because it feels like the one thing I can control at this point... and they are tearing my heart out, because they're telling a story that is likely going to be shattered by tomorrow's blood test results.

These results were from Friday and Saturday, and they appear to be darkening. What a tease, right?

I just keep thinking that if I was anyone else, if I didn't know anything about IVF or blood tests or progesterone levels or doubling betas, I'd be SO excited to see a line like that.. I wish I was blissfully ignorant and able to just accept that 'today I am pregnant'. I'm trying to - but it's sort of ruined by 'today I am pregnant, but tomorrow's blood results will say that it's ending/ended'. Even my nurse at the fertility clinic called this a 'grey area' -- and it's just the worst.

Ah, well. Not much else I can do but wait and continue praying for a miracle, even if the odds are slim.

It's not looking good.

This morning I had bloods drawn for my 18dpo doubling hcg test. To improve upon my number from Tuesday, we were aiming for an hcg increase up to 100.

I had my 16dpo beta today. Ideally, they'd like the number to be at 100 for this point in time.

The quick version: FET #7 seems to have resulted in a chemical pregnancy.
The long version: FET #7 has been a cruel, cruel experience & has left me feeling defeated.

After the transfer of our little morula/early blastocyst, things got busy. We went to a concert the following night, which was amazing but loud; I jokingly commented that the little embryo had probably already vibrated right on out of there!

The next day, Georgia and I hopped into the car with my folks for an impromptu beach getaway. Hubby couldn't take time off due to a new job role starting, so it was just us. A good five hour drive up the coast later, we settled in to our holiday accommodation and spent the next little while relaxing.

I packed a single pregnancy test into my luggage. I thought that would help me from obsessing during the TWW. While I have it in my head that all frozen transfers are going to fail, I was surprisingly hopeful about this embryo. It's the nicest one we have had in a while, the lab scientists were happy, and I was happy too.

I started having symptoms from around 6dp4dt. Incredibly tired, aching back, sore boobs and a WHOPPER pimple that devoured my chin. The last time I had a breakout like that was last October, when I was pregnant. My skin always goes nuts before anything else!

I caved that night and peed. It was negative. Blindingly negative. I was kicking myself for testing too early, and went to the local grocery store to top up on pee sticks. The next morning was 7dp4dt, so I peed again. Once again, blindingly negative.

I've always had a line, albeit a squinty line, by 11dpo, in all of my previous pregnancies. It's basically my cut off, so I figured that was that. I chucked the pee sticks in the bin in a rage and considered this to be yet another failure.

8dp4dt was not a great day. I was snippy and crotchety and absolutely starving. Oh, and mad at the universe. We took Georgia to the beach and kept ourselves busy the entire day. I didn't pee on any sticks that day.

Since it was 9dp4dt, or 13dpo, I figured I would stop my pessaries and throw in the towel. I'm on a fairly hefty dose of progesterone for transfers now because of my previous losses - so it can take a while for a bleed to occur after stopping the pessaries. If there's one thing I hate doing, it's needlessly waiting around. I'd rather just move on, and get going again.

I peed on the stick, and went to shower. After I was done, I looked back at the stick and prepared to throw out the negative result.

Except it wasn't negative.

It wasn't dark, but it wasn't a squinter. It was a faint but visible second line. I then proceeded to have a panic attack on the bathroom floor, wearing nothing but my towel. It says pregnant. But it's faint. Is it TOO faint for 13dpo? It has to be too late now. It's probably a chemical. What if it's actually worked? What do I do now?

I'm sure most people would get a positive result on a pee stick and take for granted that all is fine, and not spend hours examining the strength of the line. Anyone who has lost a pregnancy will understand my terror, I think. This positive was throwing me for a loop.

My IVF friends have a saying: prepare for the worst but hope for the best. I was doing this, yes, but I'll admit, I was hoping for a miracle. We all hear stories of people who had a really late positive, or a really faint pregnancy test, or a really late implanter. Maybe this time, I could be one of those folks?

Unfortunately, I was not.

This morning's was fainter. This afternoon's was even fainter. Like, really faint, almost squint-worthy. Well, shit.

I've been pregnant 3 times in two years. I've lost all 3 of those pregnancies at various times. 3 from 3. Not great odds.

I have a beta blood draw in two days time. Judging by the pee sticks, there won't be much, if anything, to see by then.

I'm so angry. I'd prefer this to have been a flat out negative - not this chemical pregnancy limbo again. Why does this keep happening? Our testing show we have no genetic issues, my recurrent pregnancy loss blood work all came back normal, but man.... I don't even know anymore. The bad luck run continues.

So I'm apparently pregnant. But I won't be for long.

This sucks.

We are PUPO! FET #7... and a transfer that finally brought a smile to my face.

After a cycle on the pill, we're gearing up to try again. This is going to be FET #7, all going well.

Nothing too exciting here: progynova (oestrogen) 3x a day, scan and bloods next week & then we see how everything is going.

If things look okay, we'll program in a transfer of one of the 4-day embryos. I asked if they'd grow them out, and they said no, they will do a morula transfer. I don't even have the energy in me to ask why, I'm just going with the flow this time around.

All of my questions and concerns and worries from previous rounds didn't have any impact on the outcomes, so I'm sort of going into this cycle fairly numb.. and with little to no expectations. Here we go again.

We were pretty giddy with excitement this morning on our way to the new clinic. Nervous, yes, but excited. We hadn't heard anything - and were hoping that would mean we'd have a good embryo to transfer. That wasn't to be.

In all of our IVF cycles, I've never sobbed my way through an embryo transfer before. Today was a first.

All of our embryos died, bar two. Both of those two were behind. They transferred the better looking of the two (still a morula, not even a blastocyst yet) and the other one we found out this afternoon was unsuitable to freeze, so that was binned. Out of 8 embryos, we didn't get a single good one.

This was our pity transfer. It's not even ROUND for pete's sake - I've never seen such a sad looking embryo. I'm supposed to have a blood test on my birthday in 11 days. I can't think of anything worse than getting a BFN, just as I age another year with no baby in my belly.

I don't blame my new clinic. They did everything they could - at the end of the day, these weren't their embryos. They weren't frozen the way they would have done, they weren't grown out at the optimal time, and they were from a cycle that was frozen due to crazy hormones. But I honestly thought we would get at least one nice looking embryo; surely one wasn't too much to ask for?

It's like being kicked in the guts, all over again. And worse, having nothing left over means planning for another stim cycle, emotionally & financially. I just want a baby; I want off this rollercoaster.