IVF Journey: Second IVF day 55

This is my IVF diary. My husband and I have been trying to have a baby for nearly four 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.

Only for a time,
I must not learn
To call you mine.
You never, ever learn
That nothing's yours
On easy terms. (Easy terms, Blood Brothers)

So this is the dreaded two week wait. That's the final two weeks of IVF between fertilisation and pregnancy test. Notorious for being the hardest bit of IVF. For most people. Not me.

My 2ww (as the web forums call it) is shorter than two weeks, as my embryo (blastocyst) was already six days old when they froze it. The 2ww includes any time they keep the embryo outside my body. Six days is the longest they ever keep them out, for some people they whack them straight back in. In a fresh cycle those 1-6 days kinda feel like part of the 2ww because you've just had the eggs removed and fertilised and you're waiting to see how many develop and how long they can keep them in the test tube, but in the case of a frozen cycle you're not really 'waiting' during that part because it was all done months ago. Instead you spend a month taking preparatory drugs, then they tell you what day they are going to put the embryo in - then they put it in.

Theoretically my 2ww was designated to be 9 days long - although mine is 12 days long as a weekend and a work commitment got in the way of when I'm going to have the pregnancy test.

Anyhoo.

We're half way there. Puffling has been in me for 5 days now. This picture shows them putting Puffling in - you're looking at the white spot in the hazy area at the bottom. That's the tube they squirted him through. They give you a print out of the scan, which is nice but really only interesting if you put it next to future scans of a growing baby, like a flick book.

Since Puffling has been in I have felt absolutely exhausted, and my boobs are sore. I am taking this to be a good sign of rampaging hormones. In a fresh cycle you can't attribute this to anything as you are taking a variety of drugs that can have these symptoms - in particular the 'trigger shot' which is an injection you take to make you ovulate. This time is a frozen embryo cycle which doesn't require a trigger shot, plus I had been on a drug combo without these symptoms for five days before the transfer so I don't think it is the drugs. Fingers crossed.

Emotionally, all is going very well. I don't mind the 2ww - well so far anyway - as I'm glad to have the embryo safely in there. It is nice to achieve something infertility-wise. IVF complete, tick. Nothing more I can do. Hope to keep this attitude up for as long as possible.