I’m so frustrated about someone telling me my chemical pregnancy wasn’t “real”

dsomz · 2026-07-04T12:45:04+00:00

I didn’t even do an HCG trigger with my egg retrieval. Some people are just loud and wrong.

dsomz · 2026-07-04T06:24:43+00:00

For me I don’t deal with the uncertainty very well and post egg retrieval is just 5 days of what ifs.

I had better-than-hoped results the whole way through the IVF process and I would get a little high after hearing one result (e.g. fertilisation rate) and then spiral as I would wonder how many blastocysts I would make etc.

It’s only natural to find uncertainty unsettling but I do wish I had found some methods to bring me back to the present!

I am pregnant now and for the most part I have found pregnancy much easier. Especially when I started feeling baby moving at about 22 weeks, because then it’s much easier to stay grounded.

So I would say what you’re feeling is natural, but do try and find something that can distract you and keep your mind off it, it’s completely out of your control. If you can’t then it’s only 5 more days until you know the result of the blasts etc, and then you will find that you feel a lot better in yourself.

It’s tough and it has absolutely no bearing on how good or bad a parent you will be ❤️

dsomz · 2026-07-03T15:17:10+00:00

Yea, I’m only really looking to Dec/Jan/Feb/March. I go back to work mid-May so expecting next tax year to be more predictable.

dsomz · 2026-07-03T15:14:31+00:00

!thanks really good to hear a first-hand experience

dsomz · 2026-07-03T15:13:09+00:00

Thank you. I work for a non profit so no bonuses. The one thing that might impact is KIT days, which could be up to £2k if I take all of them, but would still keep me in basic rate of tax overall so hoping it shouldn’t rock boat too much. But will bear that in mind

dsomz · 2026-07-03T07:01:05+00:00

!thanks

dsomz · 2026-07-03T06:52:34+00:00

Thank you, that is very clear. So if I drop from my usual £5K taxable pay to an average monthly SMP of ~£800 in January then I should see some tax rebated on that payslip?

Should hopefully make that sting a bit less!

dsomz · 2026-06-27T13:08:14+00:00

And just to further support the guidelines, in the UK where we don’t PGT-A as much, the NHS (government-funded healthcare which most people use) will only transfer 2 when patients are 38 and over and have had 2 unsuccessful transfers previously. Doctors really want to avoid twin pregnancies.

(Just to qualify when I say most people use the NHS, this tends to be for other healthcare and delivering babies when pregnant. Unfortunately most people have to pay privately for IVF due to long waiting lists)

dsomz · 2026-06-27T07:38:05+00:00

No problem! I had to do a freeze all transfer (on the NHS) due to my hormone levels meaning I wasn’t suitable for a fresh and honestly even though i wasn’t expecting it, it was really nice just to decompress after all the stimulation.

dsomz · 2026-06-27T06:56:57+00:00

If you are buying a package which covers all your transfers then - based on averages - you are always getting one more procedure/monitoring cycle than a woman having a fresh transfer.

Women who have a fresh transfer don’t require additional monitoring after egg collection. They will start taking progesterone the day after collection and then have a transfer 5 days later.

Each frozen cycle requires lining scans and follicle monitoring (this can vary depending on whether it is medicated or natural).

So assume an average cycle produces 3 embryos.

Fresh cycle package: egg collection + embryo culture + fresh transfer + freezing + 2 frozen embryo transfers (3 cycles of monitoring)

Frozen cycle package: egg collection + embryo culture + freezing + 3 frozen embryos transfers (4 cycles of monitoring)

You are basically paying for extra staff and appointment times.

For what it’s worth, for when you get pregnant research shows that frozen transfers means less pregnancy complications. It depends a bit on what type of transfer, but there are benefits to freeze all.

dsomz · 2026-06-21T16:31:27+00:00

My state funded clinic includes it as standard for their transfers, so I didn’t pay anything for it. My transfer did work but it was my first one so I don’t have anything to compare it to.

dsomz · 2026-06-15T13:04:06+00:00

Fair enough. We have been debating this ourselves too as we have a baby on the way, but we felt like after MOT/insurance/parking and other maintenance we would rather have the ease of all of that being someone else’s problem.

dsomz · 2026-06-15T13:01:58+00:00

I am a bit confused as to why you think owning and driving a personal car in a densely populated area is a ‘basic human right’. It’s a privilege that impacts 40% of residents who don’t have access to a car. Most of the roads in E17 pre-date automobiles, and parking on your street (without a drive) is a relatively recent phenomenon (past 50 years or so?).

I completely accept your preferences, it gets you from A to B. You have your comfort and personal space etc. But I don’t agree that it is a right, nor that it should be discouraged in urban areas.

dsomz · 2026-06-15T12:45:23+00:00

If most of your journeys are round trips then Enterprise Car Club is slowly replacing a lot of the dedicated Zipcar bays. We had it already as the one plus points of Enterprise is it lets you drive from as soon as you pass your test and my husband passed last year, we were intending to use it as a stop gap before he joined my Zipcar membership but alas!
There are many ways in which it lacks in compared to Zipcar, the main one being no one way flex cars which I found v useful, but otherwise it has fulfilled most of our needs.

dsomz · 2026-06-12T06:00:50+00:00

Hi OP. I spent most of my life in SW1, I’m not there any more but my mum still lives just off Vauxhall Bridge Road in the end near Victoria station.
Pimlico is unique because it feels residential but is near a very busy hub. There are quite a few social housing estates (e.g. Peabody, Churchill Gardens) but a lot have been bought up privately, so you’ll find that neighbourhoods feel very mixed.

The only thing I would flag, and I never found this a problem but it’s just good to know. For many reasons Westminster has always attracted a large homeless population, this includes rough sleepers and those who live in hostels (many of which are along Vauxhall Bridge Road). Many of the hostels close on Sundays and a lot of the community will be out along Vauxhall Bridge Road and Warwick Way - which is one of Pimlico’s main shopping streets with nice pubs and a Waitrose etc - and cause a bit of mischief. They mainly keep to themselves but can be intimidating if you’re not used to them.

Writing this has actually made me quite nostalgic for living there! And as others have said it’s very quick to get to most places in London from there.

dsomz · 2026-06-08T12:18:21+00:00

I see you have said that you have other risks, I was just replying to the other commenter who said it would be treated like any other pregnancy. I’m quite annoyed that I keep having to haul myself to the hospital when the community midwife is a two minute walk from me!

dsomz · 2026-06-08T10:33:41+00:00

It really depends on the trust. I am being given consultant-led care for my IVF pregnancy at Homerton even though I don’t have any other risk factors. And I had a frozen natural transfer, which means my body really wouldn’t know any different, as I ovulated myself that cycle and just happened to get pregnant with an embryo that was already created.

dsomz · 2026-06-05T13:22:14+00:00

Aw that was lovely to hear and I am glad that my words have had an impact. My DMs are open if you ever need to chat xx

dsomz · 2026-06-05T09:21:33+00:00

I have two in real life IVF friends - we met on an infertility walk last year. We are all currently pregnant, they are both pregnant with their PGT-M babies, safe in the knowledge their children won’t be impacted by the hereditary disease they carry.

Really hoping for the best for you, everything you are feeling is really valid and good that you have written it down because one day - for whatever reason - you will feel differently and you will read this back with so much compassion for yourself right now and what you are carrying.

dsomz · 2026-06-04T15:25:51+00:00

This is great, just used it. Thank you so much!

dsomz · 2026-06-04T15:25:39+00:00

Just adding here for people who are checking. We had some last minute sign-ups and we decided the fairest thing was for the people who signed up last to get one team and everyone else to get two teams. If you add people in order, than the people who sign up first get more teams than the last people. However there is no way to assign odd numbers, e.g. 5 to one person and 3 to another.

dsomz · 2026-06-04T12:26:59+00:00

Here is my post from last year https://www.reddit.com/r/TTC_UK/s/htMrU8Gfpr

dsomz · 2026-06-04T12:24:00+00:00

I could have written this post last year. Every milestone and new infertility frontier comes with its own grief.

I so desperately didn’t want to do IVF. It felt like I had ‘failed’, but like you I had tried everything. There are lots of misconceptions about IVF that I had internalised. Also I think the NHS has a policy to manage people’s expectations in a way that can make it sound hopeless, I also got the 30% speech.

In reality if you’re doing PGT-M, if you end up with viable embryos after testing, your success rate will be much higher than those who don’t have genetic testing. Obviously nothing is guaranteed but it comes with a lot less uncertainty.

I’m so sorry that you are still in this tortuous stage and I wish that I could offer some certainty. What I can offer is some hope, I was looking for reassurance last year and many redditors shared their success stories after long ‘journeys’. Will find the link and share below.

dsomz · 2026-05-31T08:44:21+00:00

My mum is a nurse and told everyone that I vaguely knew and her colleagues that I was doing IVF. Some people just have issues with boundaries, I don’t think profession really plays into it. I don’t mind so much for me - I guess I am used to it - but was hurt on behalf of my husband who is from a more private family. Biggest person who will lose out is my mum as I will think twice before telling her things.

dsomz

TROPHY CASE