IVF Pregnancy Club- spring/summer 2026

[pastelheart]

Wanted to start a thread for anyone expecting after IVF and due next spring/summer

I am finding it quite daunting after infertility for 4 years and then a round of IVF to now be FINALLY expecting in June 2026, can hopefully chat with anyone else in the same boat

@backtotheicsi🩷

Round ligament pain here also… coughing, sneezing, stretching… generally moving like a normal person 😂

I have been in bed since 3pm, I can’t move without being sick and I have ate 6 twister icelollies and not much else. Please help me 😭😂

Sorry I’ve missed so much I didn’t get any notifications I just thought I’d check the thread incase. Happy to see all only good news since I’ve been gone, we’re keeping on keeping on ladies so excited for us all!
my next scan is the 18th which is my nhs scan and I’ll be 13 weeks I’m so nervous to be honest but I’m trying to avoid private scans until my gender one which I will book in for the 30th if my nhs one goes well. Ever the pessimist lol.

Hi everyone, just catching up on last few weeks.. welcome to all this who’ve joined and really good to hear all the positive scan news. Nice to see you on here @CloudyIvy55 :) What’s your due date? I stopped the progesterone on the dot of 12 weeks and was so pleased to give up the pessaries! I have had a few headaches since too
I just had my 13 week scan on Friday and all looking well. I haven’t got that far before so I was really blown away by the level of detail, seeing all the different organs etc. I had no idea their heartbeats were that fast! Our hospital was looking for volunteers for some midwife/scan training next week so we’re going back again for extra scans where they’ll give us a video to take home as well.
We saw a few friends over the weekend and it was so nice to finally share positive news in person. And I told a couple of senior folk at work so it’s all feeling more real..
still have fairly constant nausea, though no vomiting. so sorry to hear how bad your sickness is @pastelheart
I was really hoping it would miraculously disappear at 12/13 weeks but no signs of that yet!
good to hear about the heartbeat and scan @Nosejug, it’s such a rollercoaster

@Backtotheicsi hey! Exciting for your scan soon! How are you feeling now? How’s your sickness?

@MintOwl hey!!! Nice to hear from you 🩷🩷 glad everything is going well and your scan was good and amazing about the extra scan… maybe I can go and offer myself up for some training 😂 lovely that you have started telling friends too, I bet they are so pleased for you.
I don’t want to tempt fate… but the last couple of days it has been better… so I am really hoping it could be starting to improve as it really was a rough couple of weeks.

I told my team at work today, as I really have been flakey come the afternoon and it’s really not a good look when you are trying to manage a big team and you are doing it from your phone either in bed or chucking up in the toilet lol

I also told other senior leaders too so that felt nice as I feel like I don’t have to make up excuse after excuse for moving/cancelling meetings last minute to my peers now!

I did have a man that I manage turn around and congratulate me in one sentence and then in the next sentence tell me now it makes sense why I have been grumpy and my personality has changed……. Errrrmmm excuse me??? 😂😂😂🙃🙃🙃 I haven’t even replied as I can’t even summon up the energy to entertain him

hope everyone else is okay! X

Same here! ICSI/IVF due in July x

Welcome @MugOfMildDoom:)

@pastelheart fingers crossed on the sickness front, sounds promising, but OMG re the team member response!!

Maternity cover is quite tricky at my work as we don’t tend to hire in so have to work out jigsaw of how different people can cover different parts of my job. Hoping to come up with a clear plan with senior folk before others realise I’m pregnant and start campaigning to rule themselves out of doing any cover! Good to get the conversation started at least..

@MugOfMildDoomwelcome! How many weeks are you? And congratulations 🩷

@MintOwl I really actually think it may be getting better. This week has been 100% better so I am feeling hopeful

god I know, they are a very difficult person 🙃 I hope your work get a plan together so you don’t have to worry about it. I told the director on Monday and I didn’t even get a congrats… just a ‘who would be able to step up into your role while you are off?’ I was like dunno figure it out yourself 😂 xx

@pastelheart and @MintOwl thanks ❤️ this is my first time ever on here and am hoping this is replying to you in the correct place! 😂 I’m 4 and a half weeks ish I think? Found out on Saturday. Think it’s just starting to sink in now! Feeling so tired I was almost in tears earlier! How about you? (Sorry I’m sure it says elsewhere but I’m just figuring this out). X

@pastelheart fingers crossed your relief is for keeps! I feel dreadful and feel like it’s really making me so tired and my new symptom is peeing all the time! I have to assume it’s hormonal? I’m not a bit pee’r normally 3 times a day does me grand. 5 times I woke up last night feel fit to burst it’s so bizarre. Having to use the work loos is a new experience for me as I usually manage to go when I get in at 3.30 ish lol
so hopefully this will all pass soon as things settle. I have 4 more days of pessaries and I am so close to second trimester so fingers crossed!

@MugOfMildDoom congratulations!! Welcome to the group!

Congratulations @MugOfMildDoom ! I like the username heh

oh @pastelheart so good to hear your nausea has lightened! Long may it be lifted. Also…wtf with your colleague’s comments…! Glad you held your own with the director.

and @Backtotheicsi 4 more days of pessaries, amazing! Almost as equally exciting as graduating to 2nd trimester!

@MugOfMildDoom Congrats and welcome to the club 👋🏻

@pastelheart So happy for you and hope it continues. I really thought it would never get better so felt so much relief when it did! Crazy comments from your colleagues though… people can be so odd… best to just ignore the duds really I guess but easier said than done. Sounds like you have the right attitude.

@Backtotheicsi Coming off the pessaries is a great milestone! I hated those. I had headaches for a few days but then all was fine and it was so nice not to have that faff and grossness anymore.

@CloudyIvy55 and @Nosejug How are you getting on?

Not much to update on from me apart from that I am sleeping terribly - mainly due to pelvic pain. I am a rotisserie chicken all night long already and barely have a bump (am 16 weeks tomorrow)! So I am extremely tired.

I have also just found out that one of my friends is pregnant - from her first try. Just me who still feels that sting despite finally being pregnant too? I think really though happy for her (especially as I know she wants a big family so it did need to happen quickly for her) I am envious that she did not have to try nearly as hard as me. She has also not acknowledged this at all and I wish she had but hey ho. She is due at exactly the same time as me and people are already making a big thing of that like how exciting you guys are due together etc! But I just really do not feel ready to have our pregnancies etc compared when the journeys to get there were so diffferent. Hoping I will feel better about it in time but my experience so far is that once people know I am pregnant it is like all the struggle beforehand has been forgotten and I just got pregnant easily like everybody else. I have been finding that hard.

@magpie234 this is honestly so difficult and something other people just won’t understand that what we have been through is not forgotten the minute we get pregnant, there’s real trauma behind our pregnancies that we will carry forward. I’m sorry your friend was not understanding. My best friend got pregnant first try he’s 1.5 now and that was hard. Just yesterday she said she was thinking of another but as it would probably happen in the next 1/2 months she was nervous, tough so tough 😂 honestly they think we are fine now we have what ‘we want’. Baffling lol

@MugOfMildDoom congrats! I’m a bit behind in posting as I had tried to catch up tired last night but seem to have missed so much lol

@pastelheart im sorry about the comments from work absolute fool! But pleased some of the pressure might be relieved from you about your timetable etc it’s so hard trying to balance everything. They gave in to the girl who I was covering in the end, so I’m now a floater. Feel like one too lol feel for my team in the aln hub they are just suffering with a staff member down. I can’t question it though as the head is abrupt at the best of times. People are so strange.

i have woken up absolutely bloody huge! Seriously I was tiny with my first no one knew until approaching 30 weeks and some were genuinely shocked when I was pushing a pram because I’d done the baggy top thing. Honestly feel I’m gonna get comments today and I feel like it’s just bloat and weight gain from all the junk I’ve been eating now for 12 weeks so a bit gutted. Pregnancy after weight loss is so complicated for my brain to get my head around. I lost 6 stone before this pregnancy and now here I am busting out of my jeans it’s really upsetting.

@magpie234 that rotisserie chicken description is great heh. Sorry the sleep is so poor, I’ve been waking up consistently at 4am for a good few weeks so just go to bed very early, boring as that is. And goodness yes I totally get what you’re feeling. I don’t get feel safe enough to count my pregnancy as anything but extended ivf yet, but if/when I get to 12 weeks, i know it won’t undo the 4 years getting there. I think I’ll be irked by my family’s relief, which isn’t exactly fair.

I’ve continued having spotting, but as I’m also having nausea (actually sick this morning which was a first) I’m taking that as reassurance. I’m considering changing up my pessary input location… on the packet though it recommends vaginal for ivf pregnancies though, but I just wonder if my cervix needs a break. Has anyone done this?

also, I have really strong phantosmia yesterday and today, I’ve had it on and off throughout ivf tbh, like stale cigarette smoke in a flat the morning after a party (a reference from my 20s lol, no recent such parties). It’s disgusting! And stronger than ever. I’ve scoured the internet and found only a couple of folks with the same, has anyone else suffered phantom smells? It made me worry my hormones were falling but then I puked so who knows!

@Nosejug Not had the phantom smells but have had a heightened sense of smell. For the pessaries I mixed in a bit of bum (lol) and it was fine - much less messy tbh! I was on Cyclogest and it said the same as yours on the leaflet but I checked with my clinic and they said alternating would be fine.

Thanks @magpie234 , I’ll give it a try. The bleeding is getting me and my partner down, just in terms of worry.

@MugOfMildDoom I am just over 11 weeks now. Ah yes the tiredness is not the one. Are you on progesterone too? I think that made my tiredness 100x worse!

@Backtotheicsi still not feeling sick… which is a relief. But please tell me why I am now worrying there is something wrong as I suddenly don’t feel sick. I said to my partner last night that I want to feel sick again ☹️ I am trying to be rational and think it’s normal for it to ease around this time. Omg I wee all the time too, but I have always been like this… it’s just worse now lol! Yay for almost finishing pessaries! I finish next Thursday, cannot wait. Also, yay for the bump! Don’t hide it! When will you be telling your daughter? It must be soon?

@Nosejug still feeling better! But I am worried something is wrong now… why are we like this 🫠 sorry you are still having some bleeding. I have done my pessaries vaginal the whole time but I have heard people have done bum too hopefully that will help

hope everyone else is okay 🩷

@magpie234 how many weeks were you when you started to feel better? I am worrying something is wrong now… obviously lol omg yes people are soooo weird! I’m not a very peoplely person but somehow found myself in a very peoplely job managing lots of people 😂 didn’t think this through really lol rotisserie chicken killed me off lol. I hope you have got a bit more sleep the last couple of nights. I completely get those feelings and thoughts, I read posts on here sometimes (I have to avoid the conception board to be honest) there is also an ‘influencer’ I follow (have now unfollowed) as she is claiming infertility as it took her 6 months to conceive her second but only took 1 month to conceive her first. Like honestly… stfu 😂 hopefully, once we have our baby in our arms, it will relieve some of the trauma

@pastelheart i have my scan tomorrow so I’m going to tell her if that goes ok and then take her to my gender scan the following week.

im so happy for you that the sickness has eased mine did last time too so im sure its just the placenta having taken over. I seem to be on a delayed sickness this time I hope it stops soon. I’ve read that a majority stops by 14 weeks so I’ve still got a week to slip into that majority fingers crossed.

have you bought anything yet? I’ve told myself I can pick something small after every scan, so far I have a little pack of baby grows and some cute bits of Sainsbury’s sale like a Harry Potter set and room on the broom set lol

scan tomorrow and then maybe if all is ok ill pick something too.

@pastelheart I woke up bang on 13 weeks and felt a lot better (not amazing but compared it was noticeable). That has continued but I am still on my Xonvea meds twice daily for now as I tried coming off them and felt sicker again. I am generally enjoying food again though which is amazing! I now have pelvic pain that is affecting my sleep and bad acid reflex I may have to get more meds for but am overall much happier than I was in tri one! Still anxious of course but not symptom-free and a bump is slowly growing so am hopeful all is OK. Got my next scan on Thursday - a private one when we will also hopefully find out the sex! I am 16.5 now.

@Backtotheicsi I hope your scan goes well tomorrow! Update us 🩷 sickness is still better… (I say tentatively) I hope your sickness eases soon too. I was going to say I feel like I have more energy too… but I just woke up from a 3 hour nap lol
we haven’t bought anything yet (it’s been very hard) we are waiting until we know the gender and going straight out to buy something then. That’s a lovely idea of buying something after each scan, I really like that xx

@magpie234 is xonvea anti sickness meds? I am glad you are generally feeling a bit better and yay for the bump! My bump is massive for 11 weeks 😂 oh exciting to find out the gender too 🩷🩷🩷

I hope everyone else is doing good! Xx

@pastelheart They are yeah and they have helped for me! My bump is really small but am trying not to compare as I know it can vary wildly! But I am still just about fitting into my normal clothes at 16 weeks…

I bought a few clothes after my 12 week scan but didn’t buy anything big until after my 21 week scan.

Good luck with your scan tomorrow @Backtotheicsi 💛

Thanks ladies!
personal question, any advice for horrific bloating and gas? Honestly it’s not helping me feeling ill either lol 😂

I have to reply because I'm also experiencing trapped gas right now! It was a pretty sharp, stabbing like pain which had me very worried until I did the biggest fart 🤦‍♀️😂 What helped was laying on my side with one knee up towards my chest.