I'm a new member of Minti and this support group, so I thought this would be a good time to introduce myself.

I am a 36-year-old mother of a six-year-old son, the result of an FET. I have PCOS, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and hypothyroidism, so not only was getting pregnant difficult, but I had a high-risk pregnancy as well. Of course, that wasn't just because of my health problems but because of what happened in previous IVF attempts.

Our first attempt, after Clomid, low-dose FSH injections and ovarian drilling had failed, was in October 2000. Amazingly, I fell pregnant (and had 2 embryos stored for the future) and couldn't believe my luck. Everything seemed to be going well until I got to 19 weeks in February 2001, when I went into labour. I had no idea what was going on, and I was alone as my husband was in Singapore on business. I rang my clinic and they told me to go straight there. I drove myself - yes, while in labour, remember, I didn't know that's what it was - and they examined and scanned me. They didn't tell me what was going on, but sent me in a taxi to hospital. I gave birth to my baby son in the emergency room and he died in my arms about 15 minutes later. It was later determined that he was healthy and normal, and the problem was that I have an incompetent cervix.

We were forced to wait 4 months before trying again. Our second attempt failed. Our third attempt was cancelled due to poor response to the drugs - only 2 follicles were growing. They wanted to cancel the fourth attempt as well as this time only 1 follicle was growing. I managed to convince them to give me more drugs and we "sacrificed" that follicle to see what else would develop. That worked out really well, as they ended up having 19 follicles to harvest from, and got 15 eggs from those.

We had 12 good embryos, so they recommended that we freeze 4 and keep 8 to see if we get a blastocyst to transfer. That worked, with 7 embryos dying, but 1 did make it to blastocyst and was transferred. My HCG levels were rising, but very slowly, and it was discovered when I was about 9 weeks pregnant that I had an ectopic pregnancy, and had to lose my left fallopian tube.

Surprisingly, they didn't make me wait very long, and I had my first FET in February 2002. This used the two embryos left over from our first attempt, and failed.

I had my next FET in April 2002 and was given the wonderful news that I was pregnant again in May. The HCG levels looked a little dodgy at first, so I was given extra hormonal support. At 13 weeks, I had a cervical stitch put in to prevent another miscarriage, and was given steroid injections at 24 weeks in case I went into labour early - to help the baby's lungs develop quickly.

In spite of the stitch and all the restrictions on my lifestyle, I went into labour at 36 weeks. I think the baby must have heard the doctor say "Thank God you've made it this far. Now it doesn't matter if you go into labour early." It was that very night that my waters broke! Not that I realised straight away as it was sort of a slow trickle, but by the next morning, there was no doubt. It was decided way back in 1999 that I would need a caesarean delivery (andro-pelvis, thanks to the PCOS), so my son, Michael, was born by caesarean. He will be 6 next month.

We had hoped to have a second child, and waited until Michael started kindy so I could live the restricted lifestyle I'd need to if I managed to get pregnant again. After being messed around by doctors, I was finally able to have an FET with our last 2 embryos around the middle of last year. It failed, and I had to have another fresh collection. As I expected, I got ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome - which I'd had with all my previous collections - but I found it more painful than ever before, and I felt really really sick. So we decided that we would only keep trying until we ran out of embryos.

That transfer failed as well. So it was back to FETs. Now we were using only 1 embryo at a time as it was considered to risky to let me possibly fall pregnant with twins. We needn't have worried. In May/June of this year, I had our last embryo transferred - unexpectedly the last, since the first embryo they'd thawed for that attempt had died, so it was the very last one that got transferred.

Once again, the transfer failed, and we agreed that it was the right decision to move on with our lives and "our little family" as Michael likes to call it.

So now I'm looking for a part-time job that I can do while Michael is at school.

I joined this group in the hope that I could offer support and encouragement to those of you going through treatment. I probably won't know much about newer forms of treatment, but I certainly understand the emotional rollercoaster.

Good luck to you all!

Gilli