Infertility is like being on an island, alone.

You desperately want some company on the island, for someone else to be there alongside you... but then, you wouldn't wish being on this island on your worst enemy.

A few special folks have visited you on the island and stayed a little while... but they've since moved on, while you're still stranded.

You're happy for them when other people leave the island... but you're actually a whole lot sadder than you let on.

Sometimes those visitors can forget just how lonely the island can be... but you can't forget.

People can see you on the island, they can wave to you and offer their words of support... but at the end of the day, they go back to their lives while you stay on the island, alone.

You pretend that you're doing just fine on your island, that you're okay with being there alone... but you're not.

The island has some wonderful things on it, things that you are grateful for... but it doesn't have the one thing that you want more than anything else.

You want so badly to get off the island and move on, like seemingly everybody else can do... but you're stuck.

The island makes you bitterly sad... but there's no foreseeable end in sight, so you grin and bear it.

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?

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.

It didn't double. But it didn't go down. We are quite literally stuck in this hell for another few days.

The nurse didn't sound hopeful & told me it looked as though our embryo implanted, but obviously isn't doing well - so by Tuesday, we'll know one way or the other. It's like a cruel joke, isn't it? More waiting, and not the good kind.

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 quiet lately, I know. It's so hard to update when there is absolutely nothing to update about. Waiting, more waiting. I've been drowning in pregnancy announcements these past few weeks, and it hasn't been pretty.

How much longer do we have to be the ones sitting on the sidelines and smiling through blinding tears, watching someone else get to experience everything we've been dreaming about? Why are we being 'greedy' by wanting to give our kid a sibling? Why is the only news we ever seem to get always bad news?

As you can imagine, things have been pretty bumpy over here. I'm so tired, you guys. I'm tired of this whole thing. It's ironic; something that should be one of the easiest things in the world, one of the happiest times of your life, being something that leaves you terrified and so, so angry. You don't know what I'd give to be able to think about getting pregnant, and then.. ya know.. get pregnant.

I refuse to apologise for wanting to give my daughter a sibling. I refuse to apologise for fighting for this with everything I have, because we are not giving up on this dream. I refuse to apologise for feeling the way I do - because you know what? This is a shitty situation to be in, one that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy, and it SUCKS.

When you think about all the worst case scenarios we've had happen to us in the last two years, it's almost laughable. It gets to a point where you've decided to be hopeful and to ignore things that have happened in the past, because 'it can't possibly get any worse!' - and then it does. And you're left there at the end, not quite sure what to make of it all. Is this all a sign? Am I cursed? It just feels like a bad luck streak that's never ending.

Tomorrow we have a scan and blood test, and I have this terrible feeling in my gut that we're going to end up having another cancelled cycle. I can't explain it; I've had twinges that remind me of cysts I've had previously - but yeah... it just feels like a bad omen. I'm crossing everything that I have and I HOPE I'm wrong! Wouldn't it be ironic to round out the year with more crappy news?

Anyway, I'll keep on keeping on, and I'll cope in the way that works the best for me. And if it means staying in hibernation mode, and focusing on my own little family for a little while longer, so be it.

I've been having a bit of a break from social media for the last week or so, and it's actually been quite nice. I'm missing it a lot less than I thought I would, and I think it's been good for my emotional state.

Miss Toddler is now 2.5 years old. Where did the time go? It's bittersweet - this age is fun, but exhausting. I love seeing her grow up, but I miss the years that have already passed. She's growing up, we're getting older, and we've still made no progress on giving her the sibling that we've dreamed about for so long.

It also brings to light another not-so-great milestone; the fact that we've now almost hit the 2-year TTC/infertility mark again. It took us two years last time - but the difference then was that we found out we were pregnant soon after that milestone. This time, we're at 2 years and have nothing to show for it - except for the two miscarriages and a whole lot of wasted $$ on failed IVF cycles and procedures. It really hurts.

I always knew that it would be hard trying for a second child, which is why we jumped back on this merry-go-round as early as we did. But in my heart, I was desperately hoping that we'd paid our dues struggling for #1, and that we'd have a better time going for #2. Or, you know, be one of those couples who is lucky enough to have a miracle, or easily achieved, pregnancy the second time around. Hope is a dangerous thing sometimes. You want to be realistic, but you still always have the hope lurking under the surface.

It's hard having to explain to people where you're at in your cycle right now.
It's hard to be in a forced wait, when all you want to do is throw everything you have at this hurdle in front of you.
It's hard to have to explain why you're not excited anymore, or why you're finding it hard to relate to people around you.
It's hard to find people on similar journeys to you, and it's hard not to compare yours with theirs.
It's hard when you feel like a terrible friend because all you want to do is to protect yourself & get away from it all for a while.

So Facebook, Twitter, Instragram, with your excited TTC-ers, miraculous pregnancy announcements & beautiful babies, I think we need to steer clear of each other for just a little while longer, until I can build up my walls again to face the rest of the world. I'm a bit broken right now, but I'll be back.

You know what sucks even more than a random puking bug in the middle of the night? NOT BEING PREGNANT.

Seriously, I spent hours in the bathroom this morning, sick as a dog (with no idea what caused it) & no, I'm definitely not pregnant from this cycle. Being knocked up is about the only time when I wouldn't mind having my head in the loo for a few hours. Being as infertile as ever & still barfing? That's just plain mean.

All lurgies aside, we're still just plugging away. Tomorrow is my official blood test, so as soon as that's done, I'll be quitting the progesterone & the progynova. Can't wait to have a break from those two things, to be honest. Bring on a bleed!

I've been in touch with my new clinic, who you might recall, we swapped to in May after another disastrous stim cycle at our previous one. With all the time we've spent chatting to them, we've still not had the opportunity to do a full stim with them yet; we were busy moving over & dealing with the frozen embryos. Now that those options have fizzled out, it's time to look ahead and plan what to do next.

Originally, they had designed a protocol for me that looked a bit like this:

*antagonist (short) cycle, starting with jabs day 2
*200iu of Gonal-F
*orgalutran as the antagonist.

That was all well & good at the time - but that's the EXACT same protocol I followed in the last stim cycle, that led to increased progesterone levels pre-egg retrieval, and a freeze all. And if you go even FURTHER back to our previous stim cycle in November (also antagonist), we had the same results again: stupid, too-high too-early progesterone levels and a freeze all. You guys, I haven't had a fresh transfer since Georgia's cycle. And we've been back on this IVF train for 18 months now. That's ridiculous.

I ended up contacting them & vented my concerns about the same issues coming up again. They've decided that we will give the original cycles a go - long, down-reg protocols. I'm not sure of what dosage they will have me on yet, but it'll mean going back on the pill first & then injectables a little later.

Sure, the impatient part of me wants to do another antagonist cycle and stim NOW NOW NOW, but the logical part of me is telling me that it's a good idea to try something new. It might take longer, but hopefully the end results will be worth it. After all, it got me my little girl, you know?

The only downside apart from the longer cycle time, is that I always got less eggs retrieved doing it that way. (5 eggs/ 3 eggs respectively in down-reg vs. 13 eggs/ 10 eggs respectively in antagonist.) I'm trying to remind myself that it's quality over quantity; what good is getting more eggs when NONE of them could make it to blastocysts? But it's still scary. I'm 5 years older than I was when we started IVF.

Anyway... that's where we're at right now. Being patient. Being positive - or at least trying to be.

I mean, we're due for something spectacular soon, right?

I know I said I wasn't going to pee on a stick... but yeah, I figured I'd protect myself and get it over with.

No surprises folks; it's a negative.

You can tell that it's not my usual TWW when I had to stop and actually count backwards to figure out how many days past transfer today was. That is SO not me. What day is it again? Right. 4dp5dt.

Normally I'd be peeing on sticks by now. Not this time. I honestly don't want to waste any more money than I already have on this entire crapshoot of a cycle - the stim itself, the $$ in moving the embryos, the cost of the frozen cycle. All this to rest on one dodgy embryo.. yeah, not worth it.

I'm still undecided about when to go for my blood test. Do I do it on my birthday, like I'm supposed to? Or do I do it the day before, since I don't particularly care for a BFN on that day. Do I pee on a stick that morning, just to prepare myself for the worst that I know is coming? I've never waited out for a blood test before. I don't know what to do.

I wish you got your money back when you had a failed cycle. It would make things just that little less crappy.

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 morning's appointment totally floored me. You might recall that we've been researching and trying to decide between sticking with our current clinic, or trialling a new clinic for our next fresh stim cycle. We've had appointments with both, and were waiting on their protocol information before we made a decision. Turns out that both specialists have recommended the exact same protocol... a short antagonist cycle, exactly the same dose of Puregon (187.5-200 with plenty of monitoring of progesterone levels) and additional progesterone support post-transfer.

My official test day is today - and unsurprisingly, it's still a BFN. Another failed cycle, no miracles here.

A friend of mine, who is one of the loveliest & strongest people that I have the pleasure to know, put this up as a profile picture this week. I loved it so much that I saved it straight away. 

I feel like it sums up our journey right now too - and for now, it's all I've got - at least until we get a new plan in place.

I thought I was pretty well versed in the emotional aspect of infertility. When gearing up to start TTC again, I'd hoped it would be smoother sailing. We would be more prepared this time, we knew our doctor and our IVF clinic & were prepared to go in guns blazing, and hopefully walk away with a little less money in our pockets, but another beautiful baby at the end.

Life tends to throw you curveballs though, and these are some of the things I've learned along the way.

You don't seem to fit in anywhere in infertility land.

You're not a first timer, and you now have a kid - so you don't fit in with the primary infertiles who are still coming to terms with not yet conceiving a baby without assistance. You have a child already, so how could you possibly understand the struggle? {Sidenote: I have been there, with our own case of primary infertility, so I DO know... but they don't know that.} You're also not one of those lucky folks who struggled the first time, but conceived naturally/easily the second time around - so people don't always get how hard it can be to be doing this all over again. Sure, they can empathise about the overall suck factor of infertility... but there's no first hand experience of having to re-live the worst time of your life all over again & with no end in sight. Add in the extra joy of the miscarriages & it just makes the whole thing a big mess. Thankfully, people don't have to walk exactly in your steps to be able to offer sympathy & a shoulder to cry on - that's something I'm always grateful for.

You feel like you're not allowed to complain.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I am so grateful for Georgia. Every day of my existence, I'll be grateful for our sweet, cheeky girl. She is my everything. But there is nothing fun about secondary infertility. It sucks. It really sucks. The idea of our family finishing here is so hard to deal with, when your heart is screaming at you that you just aren't ready to be done. Comments like 'at least you have one child' hurt - because we know that. We know we're lucky to have her. But damn it, we're allowed to be upset that we can't give her a sibling right now, and that our choices have once again been taken away from us.

You feel guilty all the time.

We're spending so much time, money, emotional effort into expanding our family - at what point do we stop and give it all to our existing child, instead of essentially throwing it away on a what-if? I don't ever want my daughter to feel that we're not satisfied because of her, that she wasn't enough for us to stop trying & focus on being a single child family. Is that what people think about us... will she think that of us one day? Or will she know that we want another baby not only for ourselves & our joy of parenting, but for her - because we both grew up with siblings, and because we don't want her to be alone when we're gone. I love my daughter with my whole heart, but I have so much more to give - does that make me a bad parent?

You spend your days pretending everything's fine, so your little one doesn't see the stress.

The one thing I refuse to do is ruin my toddler's childhood by pining away over the stress of infertility - which is easy enough, when she's little. We started back at the IVF game on her first birthday, when she was happily oblivious. Now, it's getting harder. When we found out that we had lost the baby at 11 weeks, after expecting all to be in the safe zone, it was absolutely devastating - and when all I wanted to do was cry and scream and wail, I had to pull it together, because I didn't want my little girl seeing her mama crumble. When we got the news that another pregnancy was ending, that a miscarriage was imminent, all I could do was count the seconds to her nap-time so that I could lose my shit without her witnessing it. When IVF cycle after IVF cycle got cancelled, or ended with me on the bathroom floor sobbing over another negative pregnancy test... it doesn't matter, because she will never know those things. But man, I've gotta tell you - keeping up appearances is exhausting.

You realise how hard it can be to figure out fertility appointments.

If you thought infertility and IVF was hard first time around, it's even harder with a temperamental two year old in tow. I don't like taking Georgia into our clinic, because I feel like it's a little insensitive to the women still trying for their first - but sometimes, it's a necessary evil. If I can't get a babysitter, or if my appointments are at crazy times, she has to come with me. Our clinic is a 30 minute drive away, so lugging her into the car and keeping her busy is work in itself.. and don't even get me started on how you manage her while you've got an appointment with dildo cam, or the million & one blood draws.

You're constantly comparing things.

We got lucky on a fresh cycle with Georgia. We got lucky after two years. Maybe we need to wait that long again this time around. Or maybe I need to wear the same underwear, or lucky socks, or jewellery, or have the same doctor doing the transfer, for it to work? You find yourself obsessively googling stories of successful pregnancies, of BFN's turning into BFP's after 12dpo... it goes on and on and on. And don't even get me started on how easy it is to start comparing yourself to others, because that's a whole other story altogether.

You expected it to be hard, but you didn't expect it to be THIS hard.

I'm not silly - I knew that we wouldn't be one of those miracle couples who got a surprise pregnancy second time around. Hopeful maybe, but I'm a realist: we knew it'd be hard going. But in all honesty, I thought we would have a second baby in a shorter time frame than it took with Georgia. Why? Well, because we were cutting straight to the point this time around. No faffing about with trying naturally, we'd jump straight back into the IVF and get this show on the road. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that we'd have back to back miscarriages, or cancelled cycles, or multiple BFN transfers - or be sitting here, all this time later, with nothing to show for our efforts. It has been a very harsh reality check, that's for sure.

You need support. Like, a LOT of support.

I can't stress this enough. Infertility is an emotional rollercoaster, and secondary infertility is like getting back on the same rollercoaster, but without a safety harness. You just don't know what to expect. Having family & friends, and outside support if you feel you need it, is essential. It's part of the reason why I love the blogging community so much - you connect to so many people who make you feel less alone, even in the darkest times. To everyone who's helped, and is still helping - thank you. xx

What things have surprised you about your own journey?