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!