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.

Sorry for going quiet folks.. I've spent the last few days playing phone tag with my clinic to try and find out some more information about our new bunch of frosties.

So.. we had 8 embryos frozen at day 4. 4 were compacting morulas, 4 were early blastocysts.

No actual grading, they just had to make a fairly strict criteria for day 4, and all passed. There were no embryos left that they were watching - apparently there was a big divide between what was good/not good. The remaining discarded embryos were all significantly behind (2x 7-cell, 2x 6-cell, 8-cell, 9-cell, 15-cell with severe fragmentation) and wouldn't have caught up, so they were very happy with the 8 they did freeze.

The scientist I spoke to today was also the one who grew out our day 1's last time (who saw me sob hysterically through the transfer of our crappy last one left) and said compared to the embryos he had to work with last time, these looked way better. I'm trying to be positive that maybe future FET's won't have such poor results in the future as they have in the past. New clinic, new embryos, new chances.

Now I just have to wait for a period.. I'm still waiting, 10 days post egg retrieval -- and after that we can start our pill rest cycle.

It's one day past egg retrieval. I feel good.. scratch that - GREAT. This is quite possibly the best recovery I've had since starting IVF back in 2012. I went to bed sore, and woke up pumped. If I walk away with nothing from this new clinic, at least I've had a good run with healing.

I spoke to a doctor today from my new clinic, who understands my frustration with yet another freeze all - they get it, they understand, but they're standing by their decision. Their cut off is 20 follicles, and since I had 19 mature & still some left untouched during the retrieval, the risk is still too high.

So.. what now?

I wait for a period. Then go back on the pill. Then another period. And then another HRT FET cycle. More waiting! This whole thing feels never-ending sometimes. :(

On the bright side? Out of my 19 eggs, we had 15 fertilise overnight.

As most of us know, day 1 doesn't tell us much - and our history has shown we lose a lot between days 1-5. The test will be what survives to Friday to become morulas.. but hopefully we'll have some positive news and a few to freeze then.

Written as part of Microblog Mondays @ Stirrup Queens

So after all the excitement and positivity, we had the shock of our lives at egg retrieval today. We were expecting 6-8 eggs, based on the scan & the blood test results from last week. In the end, we got 19. I honestly don't know how that happened, or where they were hiding, but 19. It was a pretty long egg retrieval.

The bad news? The high egg numbers combined with the size/swelling of my ovaries (and the sheer amount of fluid they retrieved) puts me at risk of OHSS. They also had several follicles that they couldn't aspirate because of the enlarged ovaries, so they had to leave them untouched. As such, they've ordered a freeze all again for this cycle.

Just when we thought we were clear sailing for a fresh transfer... nope. Once again, I spent my recovery time in tears - why do we keep doing this over & over, why do things keep going wrong? This whole thing is so frustrating.

Even through the disappointment, I'm trying to be positive - and focusing on those 19 eggs. Word this afternoon was that they looked okay - so let's hope hubby's swimmers do their part of the bargain, and we have some good fertilisation results tomorrow.

I feel pretty rotten tonight, very sore and bloated, so they may indeed have made the right call on no transfer... but I'm still sad. It means more months of waiting around, more $$ on a frozen cycle, more time spent watching seemingly everyone around me get pregnant while we're stuck in limbo yet again.

I just wish we had a crystal ball that could tell us that there was a positive end in sight.

You guys, we're a-go for egg retrieval!

Tomorrow we have bloods & a follicle scan to see how this cycle is going. To say I am petrified is an understatement.

IVF #3 was an antagonist cycle, which was converted to a freeze all because my progesterone hit 5.3 after 11 days of stims.
IVF #4 was also an antagonist cycle, which was converted to a freeze all because my progesterone hit 6.3 after 11 days of stims.

This cycle is NOT an antagonist cycle - it's a long down-reg cycle. I'm really hoping that it can keep my progesterone under control {please work, Lucrin} but I'm scared that my body is broken.

My first two IVF cycles (also down-reg) produced smaller egg numbers, but lower progesterone. I'm hoping this is the case again for us this cycle. I'd take quality over quantity ANY day - especially because all we're aiming for is a fresh transfer.

I'm starting to feel a bit uncomfortable already, which makes me happy/worried at the same time. Happy because the Puregon might be working, but petrified that the movement from the follicles will also trigger a progesterone surge, and that might lead to us being cancelled again. :(

To some folks, a freeze all isn't the end of the world - but we've been told by two different fertility specialists that frozen cycles aren't great for us. Add in the extra waiting around between cycles, as well as the additional costs of a frozen cycle in a few months time, and really.. it's the worst case scenario in our eyes. Surely we can't be that unlucky three times running!

Please universe, just let us have a beautiful embryo and a smooth, fresh transfer this time around.

First things first though... we'll see what tomorrow's scan shows us.

This cycle feels like it's taking FOREVER.

I forgot how drawn out the down-reg protocol is. First the pill; and this time, my script was for a different brand of BCP. I basically spotted every day of my pill, and it was awful - I won't be using that one again.

Then comes the Lucrin, which is where I'm at now. It still blows my mind that this tiny little bottle which is only a quarter full of liquid, has enough in it to last an entire cycle. I have no real side effects from Lucrin {luckily} so this part of the injection process just feels like any other day. It gets more real when we add the Puregon stims on top of it, but we're still a good few days away from that yet.

It blows my mind that as a kid I was terrified of needles - and now here I am, willingly paying thousands of dollars a pop to stab myself on a daily basis & have enough blood drawn to last a lifetime. The things we do for family, huh?

When will this crazy merry-go-round ever stop spinning? I would so very dearly love to NOT still be here. I'll be back on the pill for a few weeks, so there won't be a lot of exciting things happening.

I just turned 31 and while I'm never keen for another year to go by, I'm especially happy to leave my 30th year behind.

It started with such promise; I was 9 weeks pregnant, had seen our baby a few times & was so excited and thrilled to be able to have a second baby in my 30th year. That was my dream come true, made even sweeter since those babies were hard fought infertility ones. I had a great birthday, celebrated with friends and family, and Georgia was a delight - she had just turned 16 months old, was preparing to finally walk, and life was good.

That all ended 11 days later, when our 11 week ultrasound shocked us all... and the year just went pear-shaped from then on. Dealing with the loss of the pregnancy, finding out we were expecting a boy with Down Syndrome, gearing up to use our last embryo - only to have the joy of another pregnancy shattered with another miscarriage; it was a tough few months. Follow that by cycle after cycle of disappointments and negatives, as well as job craziness for hubby & the death of my Nan, well, I can't say I'm not glad to leave that all in the past.

Thank goodness for Georgia, and for family & friends. We're trying to move forward now, and try not to look back so much - easier said than done, but I'm trying. And that's all we can do right now - try.

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'd think I wouldn't be that disappointed, since I was feeling so let down after the experience at transfer day on Monday.. but this one still hurt. Deep down, I think we all still hope for the best, for for the chance to be the 'miracle' BFP that we're always told about. It wasn't to be.

I need to get my head back in the game for yet another stim cycle, which terrifies me. All these hurdles, and then all these negatives and failures - I'm starting to doubt that we'll ever get to be parents again.

That scares me more than I can say. We love being parents, even on the hardest of days - and we have so much more to give. I want Georgia to have a sibling, someone to grow up with. I don't want her to be alone.

I just wish we had a crystal ball and could know how much more is ahead of us - to have an end in sight.

Onwards & upwards, I guess.

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 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.

No news is good news, no news is good news, no news is good news. If I say it enough, hopefully I'll start believing it!

It's Saturday, which means my embryos are now thawed & hopefully at Day 3 stage. I don't know how many are still going; I don't know if any will be alive on Monday at Day 5 - let alone be up to par. I don't know much - I just know I'm hopeful. We just need one. One strong, healthy, blastocyst. One shot at this, to make the embryo move, the clinic switch, all worthwhile.

The last few days I've been full of anxiety. Is my lining going to be too thick? Are the embryos going to make it? Will we ever get pregnant again? So many questions & so much uncertainty, and my body started paying the price. I came down with a horrible case of heartburn and indigestion - both things I've never had before, even while pregnant - it was so bad, I honestly didn't know what to do with myself. It was nothing I ate, and there was no other reason for it to happen, apart from stress.

So... it's time to destress. Today I bought some warm, fuzzy socks to wear for transfer.. a fresh pair for a fresh start. I have my creative colouring book full of inspirations to keep me going. I'm going to sleep with zen music on my iPhone, with an eye mask on - trying to be calm. I'm drinking loads of water, flushing out as much anxiety as I can.

And even though my heart is already protecting itself from disappointment and assuming the worst for these embryos, a little piece of me is sending them positive growing vibes every day & cheering them on from afar. Come on embies... you've got this.

We're almost there.