After three cycles and two years — it actually worked

I have written and deleted the beginning of this post eleven times. I keep trying to find the right way to start, and there isn't one. So I'll just say it: it worked. After three cycles, two years, two losses, and more moments than I can count where I genuinely wasn't sure I could keep going — it worked.

I'm writing this at twenty-two weeks. I still don't entirely believe it.

How it started

We began the IVF process after two years of trying naturally. Our diagnosis was unexplained infertility, which sounds almost polite — like a shrug. We couldn't find anything wrong. Which also meant we couldn't fix anything. We were just waiting for something that wasn't coming.

Our first consultation felt like being handed a manual for a machine I didn't understand, in a language I didn't speak. I wrote down words like AMH and AFC and antral follicle count and looked them all up in the car park afterwards.

"Nobody tells you that the information itself is a kind of grief — learning the language of the thing you hoped you'd never need to know."

Cycles one and two

Cycle one ended in a positive test and a loss at six weeks. The clinic called it a chemical pregnancy, which is a clinical term I have complicated feelings about. We were devastated in the specific way you can only be when you've allowed yourself to hope.

Cycle two gave us three blasts. We transferred one. It didn't implant. We transferred the second. It did, briefly, and then didn't. We had one left. I went home and sat on the bathroom floor for a long time.

Deciding whether to continue

The decision to try a third time wasn't straightforward. We talked about it for weeks — what it would cost us financially, physically, emotionally. Whether we had any more of ourselves left to give to it. My husband said, quietly, that he would follow whatever I decided. That kindness almost broke me.

I decided yes. Not because I was certain it would work. But because I knew I would always wonder if I didn't try.

Cycle three

We changed our protocol. New medication, different timing, more monitoring. I tried not to read anything into any of it. We got two blasts from this cycle. We transferred one.

The two-week wait was the longest of my life. I tested on day ten. There was a line. A faint, unmistakeable line. I sat on the bathroom floor again — same floor, completely different reason.

What I want you to know

I can't promise this will work for you. I know that's the thing you most want someone to say, and I can't say it honestly. What I can tell you is that I'm here, twenty-two weeks in, proof that the road isn't always endless. Sometimes it does lead somewhere.

And if you're in the middle of it right now — in the waiting, in the grief, in the not knowing — I see you. I was you, not very long ago. You're not alone on this road.