Bec, it's a tough place to be in, and I don't think anyone has a magic answer for you. Just a few thoughts and comments from me...

As egg collections are done via ultrasound, they aren't going to pick up any problems that a regular internal scan won't find. There are some things (like endo) where they would need to actually see into the abdomen, so it may be worth requesting that they do one. I've heard of several women having no symptoms of endo at all, but when they have finally done a lap, they've been found to be riddled with quite severe endo.

Have you had further blood testing? There are a few different conditions (usually autoimmune or blood clotting) that can impact on whether IVF will actually work or not. There's a range of tests that they do in cases of recurrent implantation failures that can pick up stuff - but my clinic tells me it is standard procedure to not run these until you've had 6. I'm not sure if that's standard across all clinics, a sign of just how many transfers it can need sometimes, or just a hidden sadistic streak in my FS.

It is, ultimately, a numbers game. For some it works quickly, others... it takes much longer. In those moments where I felt like giving up, I'd think of Sushee - it was only on her 8th (I think!) transfer that she managed to get Charlie, which was a little beacon of hope to me that it may be taking a while, but it CAN work anyway, it just takes perseverance and the ability to save the money for the next cycle ASAP.

Finally - when it comes to avoiding OHSS, you may remember my history with it. First cycle I toughed it out at home, second cycle when I was in less pain I ended up spending a week in hospital and a month off work. Third cycle we finally managed to avoid it. My FS had me taking half a nizoral tablet on each day of puregon injections (apparently it helps reduce the amount of VEGF in the body, which is what makes the ovaries leaky and causes all the problems, I was put on it after each egg collection with OHSS), and before and during the cycle I was following a VERY strict low-carb, low-GI, high-protein diet. We started that about a week before I began lucrin, although my FS would have preferred to have me do it for about 4-6 weeks before beginning lucrin, but it seemed to be enough - just! I only had one slip up on the diet, it was towards the end of my puregon injections and the resulting jump in E2 was pretty obvious as I was on daily blood tests at that stage.

Has your FS suggested anything to improve DH's sperm? Our last cycle was done in the days before menevit was readily available, but he did have him on folate and massive amounts of vitamin C. I think they suggest 3 months at least to see if this has any improvement. He was also on a regime of daily ejaculations while I was on puregon to continually flush the sperm through and make sure we had the freshest available. As we had to do ICSI anyway, any possible drop in numbers wouldn't have been a significant issue.

Finally - it was our 5th transfer that gave us Munchkin (with another 3 cancelled transfers on top of that), and I was so convinced that it wasn't going to work, that neither of the two frozen embryos we had would work that I spent my TWW planning out how long a break we would take from IVF and how much money we needed to save before we could go again and how quickly we could do it... The rest, as they say, is history. Hopefully that's a little encouragement for you.

I'm sorry if it's not outside the box enough, but adoption, fostering, donor eggs/sperm/embryos weren't an option for us so our thoughts never went that way.

BW