Way back when we started IVF, before people had electricity*, I was the Early Pregnancy Googlemonster. No longer satisfied with mere lists of signs, I now wanted details and statistics, and I wanted to hear them from people who were undergoing IVF. Gradually, as my signs failed to accumulate, I started focussing on those whose positive pregnancy tests were a complete and utter surprise. What I found out was this: most people who swear they have no signs on the day before beta, are later heard to concede, "Well, actually, I was throwing up hourly/urinating thirteen times a night/awash in fertile cervical mucous, but I guess I just put that down to progesterone/nerves/overuse of personal lubricant." Nowhere did I find a single person who could honestly say they'd had no signs.

And then my cycle buddy, whose beta was one or two days before me and who'd been swearing black and blue she was completely symptom-free, got a positive. So I had to ask if, looking back with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, she could really and truly say there was absolutely, positively, not even so much as a trace of a single sign. And she replied, "I swear to you - on all that is holy - I had no signs of pregnancy at all. Just a gentle pulling sensation in my uterus."

So let me be clear about this. I'm pretty sure I'm not pregnant, or at least not properly pregnant. But in the unlikely event of my being wrong, these are the signs I will be pointing to and describing as early pregnancy symptoms:

1. Big, sore, perky tits. The bigness and perkiness has, unfortunately, disappeared in the last 24 hours.


2. Dizziness. Always, always quite dizzy at this point in my cycle. Since before we started trying naturally, let alone through IVF (and they didn't even have dinasaurs in those days*).


3. Mild nausea. My mild nausea has now subsided right on cue. I have noted mild nausea at a certain point in my cycle on most of the charts where I have paid enough attention to detail - including charts where we weren't actually cycling. Only once did I have anything as severe as actual retching - and that was a chemical pregnancy. And the retching had started by now.


4. Cramps. I feel like I'm being knifed in the uterus. This is no "gentle pulling" - these are "I am your period and I want you to have me NOW damn this progesterone!" cramps**. Which brings me to...


5. Lack of bleeding. This is good news no matter how the cycle turns out. My period is only just due, I think we're a long way from proving the new protocol caused this to happen, and even if it did I don't really want to get my E2 up above ten thousand every time we do an FET, but it does give me hope there's something we can do to provide a more or less normal luteal phase for future cycles and by crikey that can't hurt at all.

On the team arguing for well-placed pessimism is the OPK I peed on over the weekend at 11dpo, which showed up great, huge expanses of snowy, snowy white. I know. I peed. In my defence, it's only my third infraction since we started trying. It was as useful an exercise as I remember it being the first two times.

In any case, I'll be sure to keep you posted, especially if something really gross happens and you're reading this blog over lunch. In the meantime, I have started looking at flights for FET#6, and have booked myself a few days' work to do Ozside during the cycle. Because that's how confident I am about the outcome.

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*I know we haven't been at this game very long in the scheme of things, but my attitude to life has aged about a hundred years in the process.

**Last night I lay about moaning and complaining that I ached. "Where?" asked Mr Bea. "Lots of places," I replied. "My legs, my pelvic area, my breasts, my lower back..." "Can I massage something to make it feel better?" he enquired sweetly. "Your breasts perhaps?"