Five weeks

Wow, it's true - I really do still have more than three readers! Thank you so much for all your lovely comments and congratulations - they all really meant a lot to me.

Since our BFP, the week has passed in a bit of a blur of pregnancy-related stuff. I had to sort out my prescription for the next two weeks' worth of drugs - I have to stay on all the drugs (gestone, Clexane, prednisolone and oestradiol valerate, as well as prenatal vitamins and calcium tablets) until we reach 12 weeks, but for the moment they've given me enough to last until our early scan at the end of this month.

I've calculated that our due date is 20 April next year, and that as of today, by the weird and wonderful method that the medical profession has of calculating these things, I am officially 5 weeks pregnant. I did another test on Thursday morning, just to make sure, and the line came up instantly and was as dark as the control line.

I'm still absolutely wiped out with exhaustion in the afternoons and evenings, and have had enough nausea and dizziness (sort of a seasick feeling) to reassure me that there's definitely plenty going on in there.

I also find very few foods particularly appealing - though strangely, this baby is obviously a bit of a health freak, as the things that are most unappealing to me are the unhealthy treats that I usually enjoy. Today, all I wanted for lunch was vegetables with chickpeas, and I almost cried when I opened the cupboard to find that we were out of chickpeas. I suppose you could add 'more than usually emotional' to my list of symptoms - tears spring to my eyes at the slightest provocation.

The most irritating symptom I have, which I think is mainly caused by the gestone, is insomnia. Last night went like this:

10:00 - take the last of my daily drugs and settle down with relief to go to sleep. Fall asleep quite quickly, as I normally do at the beginning of the night.

11:30 - DH comes up to bed and wakes me up. Never mind - I have to get up to pee anyway.

12:00 - still awake, and staring at the glowing numbers on my alarm clock.

12:30 - I must have fallen asleep at some stage, because I've just been woken up by a couple of idiots shouting outside the bedroom window. Never mind - I have to get up to pee anyway.

1:30 - I can't get back to sleep, and DH's gentle snoring in my ear is really starting to irritate me. I briefly consider smothering him with a pillow to make the noise stop, but decide this baby really deserves to have a father, so move to the spare room instead. Never mind - I have to get up to pee anyway. I'm also feeling increasingly nauseous, so I munch on a couple of breadsticks before settling down in the spare bed.

2:00- I'm wide awake and surfing the internet on my iPod, desperately trying to get myself sleepy enough to get back off to sleep.

2:30 - My eyelids are finally drooping, and I put down the iPod and manage to get to sleep quite quickly.

4:45 - DH stomps past the spare room on his way to the bathroom, waking me up again. Never mind - I have to get up to pee anyway.

5:30 - I'm finally asleep again.

6:10 - DH's alarm goes off and wakes me up. As the spare room is closer to the bathroom than our bedroom is, I manage to nip into the bathroom before he can get there - I have to pee again.

6:15 - I crawl back into our own bed and take the first lot of drugs of the day.

6:45 - I'm vaguely aware of DH bringing me up a drink before he leaves for work.

7:30 - My alarm goes off. I wake up for long enough to reset it for 8:15, and then I'm sleeping like a baby once more. So why can't that happen in the middle of the night?

8:15 - My alarm goes off again. I'm not ready to wake up, and could quite happily roll over and go back to sleep again for a few more hours - but never mind, I have to get up anyway to go and pee again.

For the moment, I'm quite happy to have whatever inconvenient or uncomfortable symptoms I get - I've waited for this moment long enough, and these are all signs that I may at long last be going to achieve the one thing that I've wanted all my life - to be a mother.

Eeek - our first ever...!

First, thank you so much for the concern and interest that my three remaining readers have continued to show despite my lack of updates. It really does mean a lot to me!

Well, what a couple of weeks it's been. We had our transfer two weeks ago tomorrow. For the first time, we were given a photo of the embryos. I felt very emotional when the embryologist showed it to me just before the transfer and said I'd be able to take it home afterwards. Somehow, it just made the whole thing more real.

The first two embryos that they defrosted survived and were doing well, so they didn't have to defrost any others. These two were expanding blasts, and the embryologist said that after the thaw they had started to reinflate very well. And here they are, looking plump and beautiful - and I've barely been able to stop looking at this photo since.

After the transfer, we were sent away with an HPT and told to test in two weeks (ie, tomorrow). We didn't go home for a couple of days, and then we were pretty busy, but last Tuesday I had every intention of updating you and posting that photo.

Before I could do that, last Tuesday evening I started spotting. It was only a tiny amount, it never turned red and it never increased, but it was there on and off from Tuesday to Saturday, and I was completely freaked out by it and convinced that we had failed yet again - and just too depressed to tell you about it.

Then the spotting stopped altogether, and other things started to happen. I noticed that a few things smelt a lot stronger than usual, and that some odours were making me feel a bit... peculiar. The AF feelings in my stomach didn't subside, but nor did they lead to any bleeding. I started to be hit with crushing waves of exhaustion which would actually leave me feeling dizzy for a couple of minutes. And my nipples were a little bit tender and so prominent that you could practically see them through my duvet.

I started to have a faint little shoot of hope, but I didn't want to jinx it by saying anything to anybody, so I stayed away from my computer and just prayed like mad.

I also had an incident where I pulled back on my gestone syringe, as you're instructed to do to make sure you haven't hit a vein, and it filled with blood - so I had to discard that injection and start again. That meant I was one injection short, and when I called the clinic to tell them, they said it would be OK if I tested a day early. I didn't tell anyone, not even DH, figuring that if I got another BFN this morning, I'd be able to lick my wounds for 24 hours before I had to tell anyone else.

Yesterday evening I was peeing every half hour, and just before I went to bed I felt very peculiar - exhausted, dizzy, slightly nauseous. And I just had a feeling that maybe we might have been lucky this time.

So this morning, while DH was pottering around getting ready for work, I took my official HPT into the bathroom, carefully pipetted (is that a word?) three drops of urine into the sample area, and waited. The control line came up straight away, and I stared at the test area in disbelief as it stayed stubbornly white... for about half a minute. Then something else started to happen, and after another minute, it looked like this (apologies for the crappy photo from my phone):

I've subsequently gone on the bulletin board for this clinic and seen loads of people say that the tests the clinic gives out are unusually insensitive, and that most people get very faint lines on them.

So it would appear that after 3 years and 3 months of trying, 2 years of fertility investigations and treatments, 3 failed IVFs and endless months of not even being able to get started with treatment because my hormones weren't right, I finally have my first ever BFP!

We still have a huge long way to go, and I know a line on a pee stick in no way guarantees that I'll have a live baby in my arms in nine months' time. But that moment when I went downstairs, showed the test to DH and said, "This line means I'm pregnant" and saw the look on his face as he gradually realised what I meant is one that will stay with me for ever as one of the best moments of my life.