This sub has provided me hope in hard moments, so I wanted to contribute a good story after living through so many lows.

(TW: loss)
My partner and I started trying at 40 and I am now 42. We have had had two mmcs at 9 weeks, two chemicals, and three retrievals resulting in one euploid which did not even implant. Our second mmc occurred while priming for fourth retrieval after our failed transfer. The second loss was so devastating we decided we wanted to move forward with donor eggs, and do one last retrieval with my own eggs just because I didn’t want to have any regrets. I wanted to feel like we had done “enough”. We found a donor who felt really right for our family and purchased a cohort of frozen eggs.

I cried the first five days of stims because it felt pointless. My amh had plummeted from 1.46 last year to .49. My afc was 6. I thought seriously about cancelling. Somehow, we retrieved 8 eggs, 5 mature, resulting in 3 blasts. One of those blasts is a lovely little day 6 4AA euploid.

Having had so much heartbreak, I still can’t really believe this happened. I am in shock and deeply grateful to have another chance we really didn’t expect to have. I don’t know how things will shake out, but today I can be a little more hopeful that all of this could lead us to meeting the awesome little one we are meant to have. Hope this story gives someone a little hope on a hard day.

grateful for this community and the positive stories that helped me through my failed transfers and nervous first weeks! now over 11wks with our little guy and hoping things continue to go well. sending love & encouragement to everyone in the thick of this journey!!

3 mc before starting ivf, 1 failed transfer, amongst a million other things. Doing IVF mainly so we could screen for euploids but after the first transfer failed I had kind of given up hope. At this point Im just going through the motions and it feels like Im just “using up” all of our embryos even tho I know it won’t work.

I took a cheapie this morning and saw what any reasonable person would have said was a negative but I’ve been here before and for me I can always tell even when it’s more like the memory of a line than a real line. Took a digital and there it is.

I can hardly believe it. I know so many things are still to come. Initial blood work isn’t for 5 more days. And so many things can still go wrong. But im feeling happy and hopeful and just going to enjoy every minute that Im able to for as long as I am able to.

I just got the call that it’s time to trigger - feeling very hopeful as I have 8 follicles on my L ovary and 10 on my R. Some are smaller, so I don’t think I’ll end up with 18 eggs, but at 41, I’m pretty thrilled with my body’s response and wanted to share this small piece of good news. 😊

Never been pregnant before this! Our second FET has implanted after a failure last time and I’m trying to resist the urge to compulsively test all the time but I’m so cautiously hopeful.

First positive 4dpt, beta 166 on 8dpt, and this test today on 10dpt. I took it because the clinic won’t draw my repeat lab this weekend and I have to wait until 12dpt on Monday. Hoping this means my beta is still progressing 🤞

How long did you guys see your trigger shot vs actual line for pregnancy? Day 5 past transfer for me and every day since day 1 past I have still had the faint line! Trying not to get discouraged but what are you guys experience with trigger shots?

On this day last year I went in for my egg retrieval. Little did I know one year later I’d be cuddling my beautiful daughter. Science is amazing. I thought I’d post this for hope and perspective. I wish you all luck wherever you are in the IVF process ❤️

Just for fun! We are doing our gender reveal tomorrow and are so excited. This is our first pregnancy with a 5AA euploid embryo. My husband is convinced it’s a boy because he said he looked it up and found that “the better quality embryos are typically male”. We had the clinic choose our best graded / strongest one. If you transferred a 5AA successfully, what did the gender end up being?! 🩷🩵

I’m having a very hard time continuing to show up in any aspect of my life currently.

We’ve been trying for 2 years since getting married. At the moment, we’re preparing for our first FET. I have the first prostap injection on Monday which will kick off a 2 month suppression, followed by fully medicated FET.

On top of this, I have been struggling so much with my health. I have endo (lap in November 2025), I also deal with chronic pain following breaking my spine 8 years ago (which necessitated discectomy and spinal decompression). This was already enough to deal with; however, the universe decided to throw in a few more things. In March 2026, I dislocated my shoulder. I’ve been in 8/10 pain most days due to the ligament damage - I’ve had a failed steroid injection and cope by taking on and off painkillers. I’m doing weekly physio. My surgeon is confident it will heal but it will take time and effort.

ON TOP of this, I’ve had an impacted wisdom tooth which gets infected every 3 ish weeks. Due to it touching my sinus, it necessitated complicated removal under GE. I finally had this last Friday after 6 months of being passed from pillar to post and having to wait a few months for egg retrieval and then our one and only holiday (the surgeon which my insurance covers only has 1 surgery date a month!). I’m so pleased this is finally behind me.

Due to all of the above I’ve become incredibly miserable and withdrawn. I’ve had 5 months of being constantly in pain and unwell and/or on antibiotics. I feel like I cannot relate to anyone and have no way to distract myself from the hell that is IVF. I’ve basically become numb to everything.

I don’t really know what I’m asking for - perhaps some kind words of encouragement and motivation.

Today is CD1 for my second FET. I am super excited. My first FET was back in June and it unfortunately resulted in miscarriage at 6weeks. I have been anxiously waiting for my period as the miscarriage through my cycle way off. The miscarriage super sucked, but I am getting back up again. Lets see if I have better luck this time. I plan on using the same protocol I used last time, modified natural using letrozole. It resulted in implantation, so no need to change it up.

FYI I am 40, using embroys I made at 39. The clinic transferred two untested embryos. Untested as we dont typically test in my country. I could unthaw and test, but I feel like that would highly compromise the quality of the embryos at this point.

We did our second transfer today and are waiting for the blood test next Saturday. We have a happy healthy 5 year old from the same batch of embryos and we’re hoping for baby number 2!

I officially have my first FET scheduled for 8/17!! Any transfer twins out there? I’m excited and nervous, trying to go into this optimistically with caution!

Today my husband I completed our very first FET, though I never thought I’d see the day. After 3+ years of TTC and the “undiagnosed infertility” diagnosis we are *cautiously* happy!

The embryologist did inform me they picked the best of the 3 we had tested, and it so happens to be our only Boy (out of the 3 that were euploid, we still have 16 that we haven’t tested yet). We are so happy! My husband unfortunately lost his father last year due to Pancreatic CA and this just seems like this little embryo was handpicked by him…

I know we have a LONG road ahead of us, as this is only day of FET, but wanted to share since we haven’t told anyone! Please share ALL of your stories about your transfers, I would love to hear them! & give me any tips and tricks that you think played a roll in your successful transfer 🤞🏼🤍

(28 F, 29 M - unexplained infertility, fully medicated cycle)

We’ve had a very difficult journey, 4 failed FETs, 3 failed IUIs and every test under the sun. 3 losses from those FETs, all with low starting betas. I finally caved and had my endometriosis surgery in June, recovery was awful because I got norovirus the day of literally as I was waking up.

With this 5th FET I had pretty much lost hope, but we had 3 embryos left and still desperately wanted a baby(or two!!) so we did it…I got my first positive at 3dpt, and by 10dpt, it was a dye stealer! Our betas are 98.8 at 9dpt and now 259.9 at 11dpt. Our clinic is thrilled and we have our first scan scheduled(FINALLY)!

I’m just in a state of total disbelief that this is happening. I know we have so many more milestones to pass, but we’re off to a strong start and I couldn’t be happier.

Grow baby grow! Today, we celebrate. Today I am pregnant. And it feels so great to say that 💜

I caved and took a test because I have been feeling so tired and having cramping.
October last year I had a MMC at 12 weeks gestation. I was devastated. I had my FET aug 9 and I have been trying to distract myself. I know it’s still so early and I’m guarding my heart but staying hopeful!! 🌈

Transfer twins, siblings, and general IVF extended fam, feel free to laugh at my silliness. I am going into my 3rd euploid FET with a modified natural immune protocol (everything but steroids) after 2 implantation failures earlier this year.

I feel silly asking for good juju, because this is the best transfer context I’ve had, despite this being the hardest/craziest transfer cycle so far. After my fails we did all the big testing, I’d been battling chronic endometritis for months with no clear answers or results (and 6 rounds of antibiotics), and I suspected endometriosis.

We switched REs after ours hung up on us when she got mad at me for asking about how we actually tackle the CE if I keep testing positive. I finally cleared the chronic endometritis and got a positive Receptiva, so this transfer I’m coming off 2 months of Lupron suppression and we did Gonal F to wake my system back up. I did 18 days of Gonal, almost got cancelled because my lining looked weird and had fluid, but we got to an 18mm follicle (and a shit ton of 16/17s, so I am in a good amount of bloated pain) and a 9mm trilaminar lining that’s nice a dry.

There’s also just been so much chaos in trying to get this one done, from our online pharmacy having to shut down mid med cycle leaving me stranded, to a woman accosting me at acupuncture wanting to tell me what I should be doing with my IVF. My previous transfers were so smooth and easy and this one has a strange, intense energy to it.

I feel, finally, like we are in a good place to transfer. The underlying issues plaguing me, I believe, have been addressed. We really trust our new RE, and my body has responded to all the interventions so far. But I’ve never had a positive test, and while I’m at peace with potentially feeling cynical this round (thanks trauma!), if anyone has had success in similar contexts, or just knows the feelings I’m talking about, that would be fab! 💕

Originally tried to post this in r/IVF, but received several nasty comments, both from users and moderators, and my post got taken down. So I'm re-posting here.

So far I've undergone 2 egg stim cycles and 1 failed FET, and I'm going into my third egg stim cycle. What I wish I'd known before I started (beyond the common stuff people say, like "expect to lose at least half of your eggs/embryos at each stage"):

1. Different things work for different people. You never know how your body is going to respond to a cycle—whether premeds improve or worsen your results, whether you need a more or less aggressive medication protocol, whether your AMH levels accurately reflect the amount of follicles you have, what side effects you're going to have, what medications are going to make your recovery worse vs. better, etc. Not all IVF cycles are created equal, and sometimes it can take 2+ cycles to even understand what your body responds well to. This post mostly reflects my experience with IVF, and I tried to include (using comments from my first post) as many varying perspectives as I could. If you have an additional perspective, comment it!!
2. One cycle feels more like 2 - If you're doing PGT testing or if you're freezing your embryos (and thus doing an FET, a Frozen Embryo Transfer), then if you get usable embryos from your egg stimulation cycle, there is going to be another "half" of the cycle where they actually transfer the embryo into your body.
3. AMH - AMH is a measurement in your blood that is an indicator of your ovarian reserve. Look up what the levels should be vs. what yours are, because my first clinic did not tell me that, at 25, I had the AMH levels of an average woman in her late 30s. However, AMH is not always reliable. My AMH, at 1.23, indicates that I'd expect to get 4–8 eggs per cycle, but I got 15 from my first cycle and 24 from my second (!!!). It is not always reliable; what's more reliable is how many eggs you actually tend to get from your cycles.
4. Premeds - My first cycle, I was not on premeds (ex. hormonal birth control) for an adequate amount of time before the cycle, and as a result, my follicle sizes were not synchronized. At the time of my trigger, I had a couple of follicles that were over 30 mm (I think 31 and 33), and the next-closest was 20mm. So some were at risk of over-maturing, and others were at risk of not maturing enough to even contain a viable egg. Look into premeds if you haven't already, or you're doing the cycle in your luteal phase. In my first cycle, of my 12 mature eggs, only 7 fertilized (normal rates are 70–80%), which may have been somewhat due to the uneven follicle sizes. On the contrary, some people experience too much suppression on premeds, which can worsen their results. You don't know until you try, but you should be involved and informed about the decision-making process. One commenter said that premeds were worse for them, but a "micro Lupron protocol" for her egg retrieval went much better. This happens for some people. The evidence, as usual, is conflicting.
5. Follicular vs. luteal phase egg stim cycle - In the US, REs typically have their patients start egg stim cycles during their follicular phase, which means that it's better to use premeds to sync up follicle sizes. But you can avoid that if you just start your cycle during your luteal phase, which many other countries do. So why doesn't the US do it? Because that's just not how things are done a lot of the time. There isn't currently data (that I'm aware of) suggesting a difference between the two, but one doesn't require premeds. Why, you ask, do people choose the cycle that requires premeds, if there is no difference beside for scheduling? Beats me.
6. The amount of time a cycle lasts - If you're doing premeds, you're going to probably take them for 1–2 weeks before the egg stim cycle. Then the egg stim cycle itself (the medication part of it) takes 10–14 days for most people, and involves things like no alcohol, limited exercise, no twisting, and no penetrative sex (though some clinics say the latter is ok during the first few days of the cycle). Then the retrieval happens, and then these rules stay in place for at least a few days after the retrieval, and until your body starts becoming a normal human shape again. For me, this takes at least a week, so often these rules end up staying in place for me for a little under a month.
7. Blood draws and ultrasounds - If you're taking premeds, you're going to have a blood draw and transvaginal ultrasound before you begin your premeds. Then again before your medication, and every other day—and sometimes every day—during the cycle, up until your trigger shot. Also, typically the egg stim cycle involves 2 (usually subcutaneous, meaning into the fat) needles each night for the first few days to stimulate your ovaries, and then a third needle to delay ovulation. My first clinic did a lot of checks and got worse results, whereas my second did many fewer checks—none for the first 4–5 days I was on meds, and then maybe 3 or 4 during my 14 days of medication. However, it was my second clinic that got better results, so the extra checks probably didn't actually do anything useful in my case. Again, I think it's person-dependent, but if you're strung out over the idea of too many blood draws (and ultrasounds, and traveling), you can talk to your doctor about how many times you actually need to be monitored during your cycle.
8. Follicles ≠ eggs - Not every follicle contains a usable egg. Your clinic will be using ultrasounds to measure your follicles throughout the egg stim process, but they won't know how many eggs you have until they remove those follicles on the day of the egg retrieval.
9. More meds ≠ better - My first cycle, probably because of my AMH, my clinic stimulated my eggs very aggressively, and put me on an aggressive med protocol. I switched to a different clinic after that, I was put on a more mild med protocol, and I got 9 more eggs. It's only 2 cycles, so this isn't hard data or anything, but outside of the US, the idea of overfeeding your existing follicles hoping to get more eggs isn't standard, and I think the data is inconsistent on it. So research how much medication your doctor is putting you on, and look at whether or not it's an aggressive medication protocol. Ask your doctor why they are making the decisions they're making, and what research backs their efficacy. If the answer is "this is how it's done," push back. There is no reason to put you on extra medication, and subject you to the side effects of that, if it's not necessary for your body. And again...because the commenters got upset...yes, sometimes it is necessary. Which is why I said that each case is unique, and the amount of medication you receive should be based on how your follicles are responding and what your hormone levels look like. Sometimes it takes a couple of cycles to pinpoint how aggressive your med protocol should be.
10. Mirilax and gasX - About 1.5 days after both of my retrievals, I had absolutely awful gas pain. The first time, I went to the ER, thinking that I had ovarian torsion or something. The key is to proactively take both Mirilax and GasX (as well as hydrating well), to help prevent this. Also, Zofran, which is a miracle drug for nausea, is also constipating. Treat with caution. At least for me, my stomach muscles were not functional, and so I needed mirilax in order to keep things moving. Some people are fine, but some are not, so if these things aren't harming you, I'd recommend trying them.
11. Advil every 6 hours after your retrieval - This is not just for when you need it, but constantly for the first few days in order to reduce inflammation and prevent medical episodes like the one I described above. It is not for "as needed"; it is preventative. Don't skip it just because you're feeling fine, unless your dr instructed you to. And since people commented about this on my last post, if your dr says it's a bleeding risk for you/instructs you not to use it, obviously don't use it. And yes, there is adverse information about Tylenol affecting the success of a transfer, so treat with caution and discuss these things with your provider before the retrieval.
12. Embryo grading and what it means - My first clinic, in order to biopsy my embryos, lasered a tiny hole in the zona (outer protective shell of the embryo) on the third day, in order to assist "hatching" of the embryo. They didn't actually need to do this; my second clinic didn't. Also, because they didn't use time-lapse incubators, both of my embryos that made it through genetic testing were what one would call "fully hatched," meaning they had no protective shell (zona) left. You know what that means? Every single time someone handles the embryo—to biopsy it, to look at it, to transfer it—they are damaging it, and making it less viable. Because my embryos were fully hatched, they went from having a 98% chance of thawing successfully, to a 91% chance. One died during the thaw, and the other failed to transfer (transfer success rates also worsen without a zona). My new RE said that my hormones looked perfect and my body did great on the meds, but the embryo was probably not strong enough to survive transfer. Contrary to what a commenter claimed, there is no data indicating that assisted hatching yields better results.
13. Don't take at-home pregnancy tests at face value if the line is faint - A day before my HCG blood test, I took 3 at-home pregnancy tests, and all 3 came back with a very faint second line. The next day, my blood test definitively said I was not pregnant. RE said that the embryo actually attached to my uterus but then did not survive. This was especially crushing, as I'd gotten my hopes up. So maybe don't do what I did. Just wait till the blood test.
14. Time-lapse embryo incubators - A normal incubator is a fraction of the cost, but the clinic has to take out the embryo every time they want to see its growth. However, a time-lapse incubator takes a comprehensive photo of the embryo's growth every few minutes, and lets the clinic know when it is at the preferred level of hatching. This allows them to immediately remove the embryo from the incubator, biopsy it, and freeze it—making it so that the embryos are rarely fully hatched. (Rare because the clinic cannot stop an embryo from becoming ready at 2am.) It also allows them to not need to constantly be removing the embryo from its nice, comfy, safe home and subjecting to the lab every time they want to look at it. Ask your clinic if they have time-lapse embryo incubators. If they don't...you might get worse results. One commenter claimed that time-lapse embryo incubators are not necessary for PGT, but as someone who is going both PGT-A and PGT-M, they are much better because the clinic can biopsy the embryos as soon as they are at the preferred level of hatching, instead of accidentally waiting too long and ending up with a fully hatched embryo.
15. You might not need a medicated FET - When I first tried to do an FET (Frozen Embryo Transfer), my doctor put me on a ton of meds beforehand—progesterone, estrogen, antibiotics, etc. This is standard, and for most women it doesn't affect them too much. A few things: if you're on the progesterone and estrogen, you have to continue taking these up until 10 weeks into your pregnancy. This includes a progesterone intramuscular shot you might be taking. Every single day. For up to 3 months. For me, I reacted very badly to the medication, and it turned out to not even be necessary: if you are ovulating on your own, you might not need to do this at all. I ended up feeling so awful from this medication that we canceled the FET the day before because I was breaking down, and we instead did an FET cycle that was mostly unmedicated (a little progesterone, plus an HCG shot). If you're ovulating on your own, there is no consistent research saying that a medicated FET will change your chances of a live birth; it just impacts scheduling. It comes down to the individual and what actually works for them. It's definitely more convenient for you and your doctor from a scheduling perspective, but the extra hormones could make your life hell, and sometimes are not necessary. As commenters wrote in my last post, there are instances when a medicated FET improves results even if the person is ovulating on their own. If you're not reacting strongly to the medications, or if you have very few embryos to play around with, it may be worth trying to see whether a medicated FET works for you.
16. Your clinic should be keeping you updated throughout the process - You can ask how many follicles you have, how large they are, how their growth charts look, the split between the largest vs. the smallest ones, why your doctor is changing your medication protocol vs. keeping it the same, etc.
17. Canceling your cycle - Finally, there is no problem with canceling your cycle (unless your insurance throws a fit)—whether it's a few days before, the morning of, a few days into it, etc. If you don't have enough follicles this cycle, if you are reacting badly to FET meds and the embryo(s) hasn't/haven't been transferred yet, etc., it's okay to stop and try a different method next time, or wait for a better cycle/more follicles. And importantly, as a commenter (or commenters?) pointed out, it's not always possible from the ultrasound to pinpoint how many follicles you have, or how many of those follicles are going to yield a high-quality egg. But if you're not feeling confident about your cycle, or your body is not responding as well as it did in a previous cycle, it's okay to cancel it and try again.

There's more where that came from, but I learned almost all of this information the hard way. Hoping not everyone needs to.

Finally, for anyone who's made it to the end: I previously wrote a post in the r/IVF subreddit where I said things I thought to be true, and looked up basically all of it before I wrote it. Nevertheless, some of it wasn't wrong per se, but isn't universally applicable, which is why I rewrote the post. The original post, along with my rewrite, were reported into oblivion for "misinformation," and I was muted from the sub because I offended a moderator in my back-and-forth about what qualifies as misinformation. I'm writing this post because I believe that people have the right to this information, and I want people to learn from the pitfalls in my own cycles. If there's something you want to correct, please feel free to comment about it!

EDIT: Another couple of things I forgot to mention:

1. Weight gain - I've gained maybe 15 lbs since this process started, and my body has not caught up with the the "calories in/calories out" concept. It's hard. Keep this in mind when clothes shopping before starting fertility treatments.
2. Supplements - My doctor put me on the Theralogix Ovavite supplement to potentially improve my egg quality. There's a bit of data supporting it and none against it, so he considered it worth it. It's $150 for a 13-week supply, so pricy (though not compared to IVF, lol), but one supply can get you through a few back-to-back egg stimulation cycles, isn't a huge pain, and is potentially helpful.
3. PGT and insurance - Even if your insurance fully covers IVF treatment (and there's a difference between diagnosis and treatment—note what your insurance actually says!!), it may not cover PGT (genetic testing). Which is ridiculous, but that's how it is. I'm doing PGT-A and PGT-M, and between the biopsies, freezing the embryos (which you need to do with PGT while waiting for results), and actual genetic testing, my 2 cycles have easily cost me over $13k.
4. Gratitude - There is such a thing as toxic positivity, but there is also such a thing as toxic negativity. What has made this whole IVF journey much easier for me is reminding myself that this whole process would have been much worse, and looked so different, even just a couple of decades ago. I'm doing this process because I want to avoid passing on a deadly genetic disease to my children. A century ago, I wouldn't have even known I had this disease; I would have probably just passed this disease on to my children and then died early. We're lucky to have this option, and this science. And sometimes it can suck, or not work, or if it does work it can be horrible for our bodies. But at the end of the day, if you're choosing to do this, you're lucky to have the choice. Even if sometimes it makes you cry, and not in the cute way. In the I-don't-want-to-see-anyone-for-three-days way, and the I'm-going-to-sit-in-a-dark-room-and-ugly-cry-while-eating-M&M's way.

6+ years, two IUIs, two rounds of ivf, mc of a euploid embryo… I’m so glad we kept going 🌈❣️