After the IVF transfer you have to wait about 10 days before you come back for the first pregnancy test.  There are very few more cruel things that you can do to wannabe pregnant parents than this.

With IVF, you know the exact minute when you potentially became pregnant.  The transfer was done and then you just have to sit around for over a week wondering if the little gal or fella or multiples is/are going to hang on.  Every sudden move, you wonder if you shook the maybe baby (I stool that term from Demented Delusions because I love the phrase).

Then on the day you get the pregnancy test, you give some blood and get sent home to wait all day to find out the results.

It’s brutal.

And to make matters worse, you often have to go through several months of it before you get pregnant.  Several months of that 4pm call saying, “Sorry.”  Maybe one or two, “The hCG levels are elevated.  Come back in two days for another test” only to find out during the second test that it didn’t work.   As each month passes, you notice your frozen embryo pile in storage getting smaller and smaller.

We went through several months of transfers this time, had the one call back for a second blood test that turned out negative, and when our baby was put in this last time, we were fully aware there was only one more embryo in storage and they don’t always make it through the thawing process.

The whole experience is painfully stressful even if you have been through it before like we have.

My advice is to do your best to stay positive.  Never even think about blaming each other for any of it.  Follow the fertility doctors advice to the letter that way you never wonder if you messed something up by not doing the such and such but realize that if you forget to take the multi vitamin one morning, that isn’t going to mess anything up.

IVF is wonderful when it finally works, but it is not a magic bullet that changes your life overnight.  There are often a lot of rough emotional months before the fertility doctor congratulates himself and sends you off to your normal obstetrician.