bayleaf, glad you've got your next cycle sorted. I'm sure going for the natural cycle is a good idea - it sounds so gentle and non-invasive (she says enviously!!) PLus avoiding all those hormonal swings and the risks from superovulation etc etc. Do you have an approx date for transfer - probably won't be that different from mine!!
Sorry you're feeling fed up about it all. Birthdays don't help do they? It is such a game of chance and that uncertainty is hard to live with.
I must admit my way of coping with that uncertainty is to set limits - even before ds I never imagined that I would go on and on with treatment whatever. I hate that feeling of life being in limbo and I need to be able to see a time when I draw a line and move on. (of course I have not yet had to face this in reality, so don't know how long I really would have gone on, but that's the strategy I adopted). This time I feel even more strongly that I cannot do this many times - because now the resources (both financial and time/energy) I am putting in to treatment mean less left for ds. Its one thing bankrupting yourself when you have no children, quite another when you are potentially frittering away their university fees or similar!
The good thing about this is that I can think to myself, well at least by next year all this waiting and uncertainty will be OVER, and I will have a good idea whether I'm having more children. And if ds is going to be an only, I can try and focus on the good things about that, and maybe plan something that wouldn't be possible if I were pregnant/looking after two.
Well, that's theory anyway!! I'll get back to you when I'm on my 5th IVF....and of course I do know of people who have done loads of cycles and eventually got there, and I'm sure they don't regret it.
The other thing I find helps, when I am feeling really sad at the thought of perhaps never being pregnant again, is that I realise that I might always feel like that even if I had reached my desired family size - I'm sure that a lot of women have a sense of sadness when they know they're not going to have another baby (in fact perhaps those feelings are even stronger for the very maternal ones with huge families!!)
Anyway that may not help any. I know we all have our own ways of dealing with this stuff. Just doing some therapeutic offloading really!