The Hamster Wheel

Tomorrow is my beta.

It's hard to imagine it being positive. And I say that with full ownership of the fact that I've felt symptoms that could be pregnancy symptoms all week: twinges, exhausted in the afternoons, queasy this morning...

It's hard to imagine that after 4.5 years of TTC, we could be close to getting off this hamster wheel.

You know what that's like. Rinse, repeat. You do your shots, go in for your monitoring appointments, do the bloodwork, go through retrieval (or IUI), go through transfer, deal with suppositories. And then have to start all over again, due to bad luck (cancelled cycle), bad luck (BFN), or bad luck (miscarriage). Back at square one.

The first time we got pregnant, we thought we were there. I was a little cautious, because I'd joined twitter and the blog world when I started IVF1, and I'd heard a lot of sad stories in my brief time in the online TTC community. But then we had a good ultrasound at 6.5 weeks and saw a heartbeat. And then at 9 weeks there was no heartbeat and our world (and our optimism) came crashing down.

Pregnancy #2, we were much more guarded. Pleased, certainly, to have made that milestone, but we were oh so aware that it was just a milestone and not the goal. And then at our 6.5 week ultrasound the heartbeat was just a little slow. And at our 7.5 week ultrasound it had slowed to 50, and at 8 weeks it was gone.

IVF4, knowing our two miscarriages were due chromosomal abnormalities, we transferred a (FISH-normal) embryo, and got a BFN. We managed to make it all the way through the various hurdles, and then the embryo didn't take. (Of course now we know it had a 40-50% chance of still being abnormal...)

IVF5, we switched doctors so we could try a new protocol. Dismal failure - no embryos made it to testing.

After so much bad news, it's hard to be hopeful that this time is going to be THE time. It's hard to imagine  that we might be able to step off the hamster wheel.

Logically, we have made changes that make a difference - mostly using a donor so we could get a genetically and physically perfect embryo to transfer. But is it enough? It's still rolling the dice.

I will be disappointed if it's a BFN tomorrow, but I won't be surprised.