IVF Journey: Embryo transfer plus 3

This is my IVF diary. My husband and I have been trying to have a baby for three and a half years now, and have a diagnosis of 'unexplained infertility'. We have finally reached the top of the waiting list for IVF - a form of assisted conception. I'm blogging about what happens as it happens, as a kind of therapy for me and as an awareness raising exercise of what IVF is all about.

This is the progesterone drug I'm on now, instead of the one I blipped the other day. As the other one made me feel rough, the nurse kindly gave me something else when I went in for my embryo transfer.

So this one is taken twice a day, and it is a pessary. I can decide where I insert the pessary. Would it be too much information if I told you the route I had chosen?

I feel alright on this one, pretty much normal. Although I am getting a bit travel sick, which is new.

Well the chosen one is within me (I hope) and this is just a waiting game now to see if the chosen one decides to stay. I keep forgetting, then when I remember it makes me smile. I hope it isn't hostile in there.

Anyway, I'm not going to have much to report for a while, but I do have other things to say about IVF so I might blip every few days to regale you with my spraff.

Today's spraff is about IVF success rates.

So I mentioned way back that the success rate for IVF at my clinic is 43% (which is considered high). That means that 43% of cycles at my clinic for women under 35 end in a live birth.

That's the best guess we have for now of how likely this is to work. It may be that my predicted success rate is higher. I'm pretty healthy, I'm not stressed, I'm doing alright on the drugs, they collected and fertilised a lot of eggs. On the other hand, they have no idea at this point why we have not been able to conceive naturally. A diagnosis of 'unexplained infertility' does not mean there is no underlying cause. If there is an underlying cause it might impact on our chances of success.

It is also important for us to be realistic about how a pregnancy might play out. The 43% is 'live births' remember. Many more couples will have a blood test and/or a scan and a diagnosed pregnancy which will not go to full term. So even if we go get a positive in the next couple of weeks we will be subject to the usual whims of pregnancy and 25% of pregnancies end in miscarriage. Some of these miscarriages happen in the first couple of weeks, so that would be before our tests. In a natural pregnancy a woman would bleed and assume it was her period. I would have a bleed and we'd know that the pregnancy had not been viable and that the IVF hadn't worked. Many other miscarriages happen at the 4 to 12 week stage. That is why people don't go on about having a baby until the twelve week scan, after which it is probable that the pregnancy will go full term.

But the things is with IVF, as the doctors are watching you so closely you do have pregnancy tests much earlier than you would with a natural conception. This means you might have a confirmed pregnancy at four weeks and a miscarriage within the few weeks after, where with a natural conception you'd probably not have got so far as confirming things officially. I'm saying the IVF almost draws miscarriages to your attention more than doing it the natural way.

My current concern is whether we'll get good news from our tests, that is the next hurdle to cross and maybe we'll get no further this time. Maybe it will all be over next week. Or maybe I will be able to come on here and tell you that I'm pregnant, but my husband and I (and you too!) need to be realistic and understand that it might not result in a baby.