IVF journey - Part VI, successful frozen cycle I

One of the advantages to know people who also go through IVF process (we call the ivfers) is to be able to compare notes.  During my ivf journey, I was not able to find anyone in my age group in person so I went online to find them.  In order for the ones who are on this journey to compare your progress and mine, I wish to show you my process of our first successful frozen cycle in which we concieved Mia/Zhuzhu, our first IVF baby, here.

As you probably know by now, frozen cycles are much simpler than whole ivf cycles, because frozen cycles have no egg growing and collecting procedures.  Here is what generally happens during such cycles.

1) BCP: for 21 days, starting from the 2nd or 3rd day of the period to make sure that my ovaries do not wake up any eggs. 

2) Lupron: for 14 days, 20U/day, starts at the 17th day of BCP which overlaps with the last 5 days of BCP to further suppress ovaries to make sure no egg growth. 

3) E2 dots (Patches, 0.1 mg/dot), starting on the 10th day of Lupron which overlaps with the last 5 days of Lupron to stimulate endometrium growth. 

The dose of E2 is increased progressively so that your body can be fooled to think there is an egg growing in the ovary.  I started with 1 dot for 4 days (change to new dot every 2 days), 3 dots for 4 days (change to new ones every 2 days), then 4 dots for the rest of journey (change to new ones every 3 days).  Keep at this level until your blood E2 level reaches above 200 and lining reaches 8 mm (for me, it took 15 days after the start of E2, but my E2 level was boosted by the use of estrace pills for 2 days prior to embryo transfer since my level was not high enough).  Continue this until pg test. If positive, continue until 10th week pg. 

4) Progesterone: starts at 20th day of the E2.  Every Morning, 50 mg/ml, injection (PIO), before bed: 100 mg/suppository.  Keep at this level until pg test, if positive, continue until 11th week. 

5) Transfer day: for me is the 24th day after the start of E2 - depending on how ready your E2 level and lining thickness. 

6) After transfer, continue E2 dots and progesterone until pg test. 

PIO is a hell to go through but you will survive.  Good luck!

Life as a single parent

As I said before, Fabrice travels more frequent than I do.  Strangely though, I always can get more work done while he is not home.  Kids are usually fed well and tucked in bed on time, dishes are mostly washed and put back to shelves, toys are often put away, even floors are sometimes cleaned.  I usually even can sit in front of the computer either working or reading blogs for at least few hours a day after putting the kids to bed… I completely enjoy the times that I, myself, as a single parent with the two toddler kids.  See, I am now enjoying my alone time talking to myself here.

Last time when I noticed my better productivities when left alone with the kids, I told Fabrice, right after he was walking into the house to kiss each of us.  And then I closed my "exciting observations" by, “I wish you did not come back so soon!”  I know, I am just that smart, most of the times!!!

"You cheat!"  he knows me well and usually ignores my saying things without understanding the implications.

Fabrice meant that I always have Ling, my best friend and acting nanny, here in the house to play with the kids when he is out of town.  The truth is though, Ling spoils the kids to rotten, which means that I feel like having 2 kids and 1 grandma in the house whenever she is around!

Okay, back to the "single parenting" subject.  I cannot explain why it always seems easier when I am alone dealing with the little ones.  The kids seem to be smart enough to sense the dangers of being with a crouching tiger if they don't behave.  Maybe because Fabrice is the preferred one and the "go to" parent, whereas I am the one who often sets the "rules".  One day when he was enjoying his kids' salivary kisses, I complained about the obvious, “The kids love you more because you are the fun parent, whereas I am the one who cooks, feeds, and disciplines them.”  “Oh, yea, why don’t you try to  squeeze them less but play with them more.” he disagreed, as predicted.  He knew all the answers to solve problems, you see.  He would give me pointers whenever he sees me at loss for tricks to get them to kiss or hug me, "Follow their lead, play their games, not yours.  You will get the kisses and hugs at the end."  "You abuse them all the time with your rough beard hurting their little cheeks!"  I cannot see his point at all and continue to kiss them and hug them whenever I get a chance.  

Maybe that is exactly why I enjoy his out-of-town trips, because only then the kids are closer and listening to me.  They have behaved like angels in the last couple of days. 

Zhuzhu and Niuniu have enjoyed being picked up early on Friday visiting the Dr's office, a field day at the Chinese School on Saturday cerebrating mid-fall Festival (moon Festival/中秋节), Chinese restaurant following the Chinese school for lunch, and then swimming pool following the lunch - A very busy weekend, so far. 

Sure, Ling has been helping out by taking Niuniu to a park to feed the ducks after dropping off Zhuzhu to her Chinese school on Saturday morning.  But I could have done the same except I chose to spend my Saturday morning in my office.  I did feel a little guilty when I found out that I had missed Zhuzhu's first competitive game on Saturday though - I had not known that her Chinese School had this special event planned!  Zhuzhu had her first "rope pulling contest" at which her team won.  Ling only found out when she picked her up after her class.  Fortunately, she took Niuniu there thus the three of them had a good time.  She was so excited that she could not shut up when I greeted her at the Chinese restaurant.  "Mommy, Mommy, we won, we won!..."  Zhuzhu and Niuniu both were talking in the same time, waving some a colorful plastic inflatable toys, which confused me quite a bit.  I did not remember that they had those toys.  Finally, when I asked them to take turns to give me their detailed reports, I understood that Zhuzhu's red cheeks and hurting hands were the result of the rope pulling on their field day, at which her team won.  The yellow tiger was her first trophy, she finally had a chance to declare her first victory!  Niuniu did not want to be left out, "And I got a trophy too!"  He waved his blue elephant in front of my yes in circles.  Niuniu was being her good “cheer leader”, I was told.

Given what I had missed yesterday, I ditched the original plan this morning after getting up - I was going to get to work while Ling was watching the kids in the morning for me again.  Instead of working, I parked the car at the Dragon Park close to my office.  I decided to enjoy sometime with the kids.  We had so much funs, both of them were running circles to get up and down the slides or chasing each others' tails like crazy.  Then Ling surprised us with home-made Baozi and Mantou so we had our family picnic at the park!  Best of all, Ling took over the babysit duties in the afternoon so that I could at least catch up with the loss of my "working" hours.  But I napped instead!  Indeed cheated!

Ling brought the kids home at 4 pm.  Each of them was awarded with 1 pillow pet.  Then Ling said, "I think they will give you some hard time tonight!  Her reason was because they have not had their naps today, "They only slept on their car ride home, which would be about 20 minutes."  She reported in details as usual.

Then the kids waved goodbye to Ling happily and then played by themselves for the rest of the evening joyously.  I had also quite a peaceful house to cook dinner and then to watch them eating properly at the dinner table.  They both finished the food that I put in their plates without making any fuss.  My angelic kids even willingly helped the Mommy pick up their toys before bed.  A great day did not end there.  When I was putting the kids to the bathtub, I heard this little lovely voice, “Mommy, you are the best Mommy in the whole world and I love you!”.  This, my friend, was coming out of our Zhuzhu's mouth naturally and spontaneously.  Niuniu who never wants to be left out pirated his sister immediately.  I was them completely immersed in their showers of wet kisses and tight hugs!

A single parent can be rewarding sometimes!

Stressd kids

Separation anxiety comes in different forms.  Little kids have also a stressful life, as much as our adults do, I believe.

Mia/ZhuZhu has always been difficult at drop off for school, especially when she is transitioned to a new classroom.  However, this past transition was painless, meaning, no crying involved.  In fact, she'd been looking forward to the move into the "Shooting Star" room ever since few of her classmates had done so in the early summer.  She wanted to be big girls like them but she and the rest of the gang in her preschooler room had been scheduled few months later.  Shooting star classroom is the only preK classroom in her daycare and everyone in preschooler roomthe whole daycare eventually gets in and then graduates from it to "big kids" schools.  Either she could move into the same room with everyone she knew together or her teachers prepared her very well this time, we have not had difficulty to drop her in the morning.

Not only she does not cry anymore at drop offs, we could even play "threatening card" for a while.  If she happens to cry for whatever reasons before and during the dinner, which is the time she usually releases her frustration of the day, all we need to do is to tell her if she does not stop, she will go back to "the explorer" room. 

However, nothing is perfect.  She wets herself now.  It has happened 4-5 times at school and 2-3 times at home already ever since she changed her classroom.  We know that our girl likes to hold her pee to the last minute because she does not like to stop whatever she was doing.  One evening when I was taking her down from booster chair after dinner, I found her soaking in her own pee.  The worst was that she did not even realize or she chose to ignore the fact.  This surprised me enough to link the other events in the school lately.  She had her first accident second/or third week at school after she moved up.  Well, that must just be the new classroom was so exciting that she was too involved in the new stuff she learned.

"You know, Mama, we have 5 senses, brain to think, eyes to see, nose to smell, hands to touch, and ears to hear."  One day, she announced at the dinner table, where the family is usually gathered. "You know, brain is the most important organ of the body, and it does different things with different parts.  We use the front part to think and to learn new things, the back part to see, the side part to remember things, hearing things, and speech." She told us again during her dinner. "Wow, did you learn that today at school?"  I was totally impressed.  She has also brought home the most colorful and beautiful paintings ever since she moved to the shooting star room.  And we now often hear her humming new songs almost every single day.  "Puff the magic dragon"  "This old man, he played one..."  She could even finish the whole song with correct lyrics, alright, I admit, I do not know the lyrics of the song, but she sounded correctly to me...

Well, at about a week after the first accident, she had another one.  She had to come home with boy's t-shirt and panties, because we had not even had the chance to filled her cubby with new set of extra clothes.  We then went to request the teachers to remind her to go potty.  The shooting star room teachers are not used to doing so.  So, the head teacher was a bit surprised when she got that request from me.

Anyway, that worked only a week or two.  Then yesterday at pickup, I found her wet herself again.  She became sneaky because the teachers did not even know.  Oddly enough, Zhuzhu did not seem to notice either!  It was then that I realized that this girl needed a serious talk.  I sat her down after dinner, turned the TV off, and asked her to look into my eyes.  I stressed how important it was for not holding her pee to the last minute.  However, she could not care less and moved her eyes away before I could even finish my first sentence.  After that, we went to have a shower.  Suddenly, she was screaming.  "Mommy, you used soap, that hurts! You knew it.  I want Daddy, Daddy does not hurt me.  He uses baby shower gel."  The Daddy, who has gone to San Diego for a conference yesterday.  "Mommy, you are a mean Mommy.  I will never ever let you kiss me again."  She protested.  The effect of her scream was so profound that even woke me up in the middle of the night, twice!

So, I called her doctor first thing in the morning.  I wanted her to hear the important life lesson from an authority.  I suspected that her urinary track was not infected, but it's better to have her checked just in case.  When we arrived at 10:45 am, the check in machine did not allow us to proceed because the appointment time was 2:45 pm! The receptionist however was smarter than the machine and she made few moves and let us in to see another doctor who happened to have a slot at that time. However, since I was so overwhelmed by her peeing without knowing, I made her pee while we wait for her names to be called. When the nurse came to get us, she handed me a cup. Crap. I just made her pee, now what could we do? I asked the nurse and she gave us a bottle of water. Alright, we had to go back to the waiting room. ZhuZhu knew the mommy did not have a whole day, few minutes or so later she agreed to give it another try and she succeeded to squeeze 5 mls out. When we finally met the doctor, he talked to ZhuZhu, attentively. Then he said, "Now I need to check your private part, your mommy is right here, and not to worry, ok?" Our dear daughter screemed a babyzis out of her when I had the same request, but when I came from a handsome young man, she was willingly opened wide for him. Can you imagine how you feel in situations like that? While he was examing her gently, slowly, and carefully, I was making a mental note to make sure next time when she would be suspected urinary infection, ask for femal. "Her private part is not even reddish and her pee is clear and free of bacteria. No sign of urinary track infection. She may have a bit of irratation at the private part." The lucky young doctor said to me. "We'll do the "hygiene talk" with her in a little bit." He read my mind! I thanked him excessively for the life lesson that he was willing to give her. He even demonstrated when he said, "When you sit on the toilet, open your legs wide so that you won't wet yourself." ZhuZhu pratically was staring at him while he was talking, "Drink plenty water; go to pee when you feel just a little bit in need; pat-dry your 'queque' each time after pee pee, because if you don't dry, your queque will be wet and it will get itchy..." "What did the doctor say?" I asked her while we were left alone. She repeated every word of it! The $20 copay and my few hours away from my work was well worth it!

However, right after dinner, I found ZhuZhu's panties again was a bit wet. I had basically never stopped  asking her to go to pee ever since she got home from school. Our little girl is still stressed upon classroom transition, except she handles it differently this time.

I am guessing it will be another 4 months to get over this. Talk about stress!

Another face of parenting

Today, I have not been myself at all. First, I could not get out of the bed until 10 am, but I had not slept in all that well either, I had kept waking up by my own snores a whole night long and then by the exciting kids when morning arrived! When I finally gave up the idea of sleeping in and got out the bed, I found myself suffered from a mild but annoying headache. As if that was not bad enough, Fabrice told me that it would be good if we could feed the kids earlier so that they could go to the swimming pool and not for him to miss his beloved Sunday football later in the afternoon. In this case, my breakfast was just a cup of milk and then I started to prepare the lunch, which was great lunch, by the way, giving how little time I was given. It is Sunday and it usually is the only day of the week that I cook properly. I had fried some Tofu and mixed it with stir-fried chicken breast, which was delicately marinated a day ago. The kids must have loved it greatly because I did not see the color of the Tofu after I put it on then table. After that, I was wondering how could that be possible, it never happened before! Suddenly, I found this lo, I thought to myself, when I finally sat down to eat. However, after lunch while I was cleaning the counter top, I found a half of the Tofu curd sitting beside the stove, I simply forgot to fry the second half of it. Then, I had planed to get some work, such as writing the dreaded research grant, done during the time when the kids were swimming, but when I was sitting in front of the computer in the office, all I wanted to do was to take a long nap...

When they got home from the pool, Fabrice said to me, the kids were exhausted and should be napping quickly. Yes, when I saw ZhuZhu was not willing to keep her head from the Daddy's shoulder, I thought, "Good, I would have the remaining afternoon all by myself!" Unfortunately, ZhuZhu discovered her newly arrived tap shoes and bellet shoes, that was the end of the nap. After Fabrice left for his football, the kids took my iPad and played with it. One game after another, they did not have any intention to stop anytime soon.

I am usually a great mother, the kind that kids hate, because I don't have any flexibility when it comes to parenting. When it is bed time, the kids go to bed, period! However, today is not the day. All I wanted to do was to take a nap myself. So, instead getting them to their respective rooms, I told them, "Could you two take the iPad upstairs, staying in Remy's bed, okay!" "Okay!" ZhuZhu cheerfully answered, surprised, but happy. Off they went. I was hoping that NiuNiu fell in asleep as soon as he hit the bed, as he usually does. That would leave ZhuZhu alone with the boring iPad, so she would follow her little brother's lead and fall into sleep. Good deal, all of us would wake up happy two hours later when the daddy came home! The bedroom was quiet down and my dream came true, I thought and fell in hibernated state immediately.
Well, I guess I just forgot what a "overtired" state was in little kids. They have their ways fighting for sleepiness now, at 2.5 and 4.5 years old. They simply never stopped playing, as far as I knew. I was half way sleeping since I needed to keep my other half of the brain to make sure they would not hurt themselves or escape from the house to hit the cars on the streets.

At around 4 pm, a little voice was calling me while I was dreaming, "Mommy, Remy pooped all over the toilet seat and himself. I've just cleaned it all up." "What exactly happened?" I opened my eyes and jumped out of the bad. ZhuZhu repeated what she said and before she could finish, I was almost fainted by the smell over the house! I then woke up completely and started to investigate the seriousness of the situation. Nothing on the toilet, good. But where the smell came from, I puzzled. "Where is the poop?" I asked ZhuZhu, "In the toilet and on the seat, but I cleaned it all up." ZhuZhu told me, proudly. "With what?" "The wet paper" She said, "I put them in the trash." She then described in details what exactly she did. I was almost in tears after her story. Taking naps on Sunday noons is not uncommon for me, but I usually wait until the kids went to their beds first. Today was the first time that I napped while they were still awake playing, look what just happened! According to ZhuZhu, she helped NiuNiu to come downstairs to use the toilet when he said that he needed to go. But they were not fast enough so he pooped all over the places.

Based on the overwhelming smell, I did not believe she cleaned "all up". Somewhere must still have some poops uncovered and unflushed. However, I could not find any poop anywhere. I opened the lid of the trash can and found full of the soiled wipers. Alright, the smell must have come from these wipers. I thought. When I closed the lid back, I noticed a pair of pants hiding behind, there it was, the soiled pair of pants of NiuNiu. It was unbearably smelly. Our little boy had diarrhea, no wonder. Yet after I dealt it cleanly, the smell still existed. Finally, I decided to track the smell down. What I found was a perfect drop of poop in the middle of NiiNiu's room. What the hell? How come this one was perfectly dry and smooth, did not seem to be "diarrhea-ry"? Alright, that must have been it. I picked it up and flushed it down to the toilet upstairs (Yes, we do have toilet upstairs, but the kids only like to use the one downstairs!) In the mean time, I found NiuNiu's bed was wet and I cleaned that too, thinking the smell would take a while to go away.

Then I came down and checked NiuNiu and the poor little sweetie's legs were covered by his disgusting waste. Just so you know, the worst thing associating with babies to me is poop and that was why both of them are diaper-trained early. Today, I am just out of luck. NiuNiu chose today to poop all over himself and the house, when I was napping and the daddy was out playing!

While I was cleaning NiuNiu in the shower, Fabrice came back from his football and was totally amused by what he found out. ZhuZhu updated him everything in details and I briefed him the nap part and he did not even have time to give me lessons about safety as he usually does. The it was NiuNiu's turn to talk, "I pooped on myself and Mommy is cleanning me up!" He reported. He likes to report the obvious, similar to someone I know very well in this household.
The story did not end here. After dinner, I was thinking to get the kids to bed early since they skipped the nap, so I went upstairs to put the bedding on NiuNiu's bed. While I was walking upstairs, I was surprised that the smell did not go away and it was stronger than I remembered. The diffusion just did not work?! I then began to open the windows in every room. Strangely, when I got closer to ZhuZhu's room, the smell became too strong to endure, I guessed there must have been more poops which I had failed to find earlier. I looked, looked, and looked, all over the stairs, corridor, a small room between NiuNiu and ZhuZhu's room, no poops. ZhuZhu's room was the last place that I searched since I knew they did not play in her room. Plus, the poop I found earlier was in NiuNiu's room, it was meters away from it!

Well, my nose said something was not right, I began to search ZhuZhu's room. I checked everywhere, the bed, every stuffed animal, her closet...nothing. I became even more suspicious, what was going on? I was about to give up to get back down, our little sweet pie NiuNiu was coming up the flight of stairs. While he was climbing, his pressed down his nose with his little fingers. The smell was not that strong there, what did he knew, I thought. Then turned back to ZhuZhu's room, to my dismay, two big poop poop were perfectly lied inside the long silver trash bin that we put in ZhuZhu's room, more as a decoration than as a trash container, and it does not have a lid.
There you have it, what a poopy day that I had!

IVF journey - Part V, coping with ivf failure

I used to believe ivf was the ultimate solution for all the infertile couple to have kids.  I believed that once I agreed to invest the money and time, kids would be on their way to our happy lives.  I never prepared for multiple cycles.  Needless to say, I had not done my own research on the subject prior to our pursue.  While ONE ivf cycle probably is all that some small fraction of lucky women need, multiple and seemingly countless ones are for the majority of the others to bring a life to the world.  Plus, the outcome of ivf is so unpredictable, very often, I felt like playing futile lottery until my transformation from a ivf seeker to a philosopher.  It was not until one day I found myself was at peace with the loss of money, time, and energy in the end of ivf.  The bottom line is that we ivfers are often so focused on the outcome at each ivf cycle that we forget the bigger picture!  We need to surrender, to give up the eagerness, longing, and hope for kids!  We need to accept and understand any outcome is a good outcome: when it does not work, we decide what the next step is.  That is all we can do.  These words are very simple, but it is a state of mind that we need to reach, which takes time.  For me, it took three failed cycles and a lot of reading.  Specifically, here are some of things that worked for me:

1. Join ivf message boards.

Go online, look for your age group, look for friends who share similar experience with you.  Look for those ivfers.  No matter how miserable you feel, I bet you can find someone who feel worse.  Message boards open your eyes to the whole world.  You suddenly can make countless friends who can help you feel better.  In the mean time, you also can comfort them back.  You can provide a shoulder for them to cry on. 

What do they say again?  Misery loves company?

I used and contributed to many ivf message boards and made many friends that I know only their screen names, Tammy, Bev, Rhonda, Anna, Sonia, Naula, Lisa, Catharine, Caroline, Kat, LuAnne, Chriss, Kim, Jen, Tracy, Gracie, ... We became a big ivf family, we were all over 40 years old!  And I am happy to tell you that more than 60% of us in that group brought home babies and several of us became pregnant in the same time.  Others even got pregnant naturally in between their ivf cycles. Together, we can beat the odds! 

If you want to read some of my posts, here is the link to them. Read the ones that I wrote between years 2007 to 2009, they are quite "insightful". 

2. Understand ivf protocols.

Knowledge is power! What did knowledge help me, exactly? It allowed me to ask the RE and embryologist concise, specific, and relevant questions. Consultation time is limited, and we have to pay for that. We can only afford asking good questions. Understand ivf protocols helped me to handle my own reproductive organs and their responses to various drugs that I was taking. Most importantly, it empowered me to truly, fully, 100% trust and understand my RE, embryologist, nurses, and ultrasound technicians. Yes, knowledge made me surrender to ivf, completely.

Try to understand the use of every single hormone that you are taking.  Try to understand your own body: communicate with your ovaries, follicles, endometrium, where do all those hormones come from, and which hormone makes you feel happy and hopeful, which makes you feel miserable.  It's shame, shame, and shame for me to admit that I, as someone who does ivf in my job to my experimental subjects myself with my own hands, had not understood half of what I had been doing during the first few ivf cycles.  In my defense, I thought as long as I paid the money, the rest should not be my job anymore.  It had not occurred to me that I should know what I was doing to my body.  Well, after having failed three times, in a row, I began to realize almost everyone had down some research on ivf cycles.  What changed me was the post cycle consultations.  In order to speak with my RE and embryologist, I needed to prepare myself.  I'd visited every possible websites to understand different protocols to try to understand what are the differences between them, why the one that I used was the best for my age group, why different people uses slightly different protocols, why the drug doses need to be adjusted in the middle of the cycles, and why the nurse told me it was okay when I missed a dose of drugs... 

In addition to reading online, I also purchased tons of books, such as this, this, and that to get myself inspired also.

3. Practice yoga.

There is nothing better than yoga that helped me to calm my nerves during my battle with ivf cycles.  In one of my posts to my thread friends, I wrote: yoga helped me to get over my depression.  I did not even practice that frequently, only once a week, 1 hour each time.  It relaxed me, brought back my energy and hope.  This DVD helped me as much as the ivf facility!  Speaking of which, I need to really resume yoga in my current stressful life now. 

4. Clear blockages (Qi, in Chinese) with massage.

I would have gone for this one if I had not had a day job to attend.  I created my own massage techniques based on reading websites and then I asked local deep tissue massage therapists to focus on my lower part of my belly.  I did not tell them why and they were confused by my strange request since none of their patients had lower belly adjustment to do.  After testing two of them out, I stayed with one masseuse who was a retired Russian Olympic champion.  I was visualizing that his hands moving on the top of my belly transmitted the signals to inside, which cleared the "Qi" that had blocked my reproductive passages.  In scientific terms, massage probably increased blood circulation in ovaries, stimulated endometrial growth, and permitted the competence of uterus to accept embryos.  Who knows.  But at least, it helped one way or the other. 

5. Read ivf blog sites.

Stumbling into Julie's website was one of the best thing happened in my ivf life.  If you are going through ivf process, you must attend her blog site, at least read the ones that she wrote earlier when she was going through ivf cycles.  Read her posts chronically, starting from the one she wrote in 2003.  From her site, I also found two other wonderful writers, Julia and Tertia.  These three women have remained to be my favorite blog writers to this date.

__________

Yes, coping mechanisms are needed.  Not only for ivfers, for every pursue in life.  What did these coping techniques do specifically to me, eventually?  They help me to surrender to my infertility and true acceptance to the adoption route.  They helped me to understand that it would be fine if we did not have any babies in the end of our ivf journey.  Life goes on.  We would have found alternatives.  We would have had our new style of living. 

Once I got everything figured out, I posted this to my ivf friends: 

"Hi, I want to share with the over 40 ladies here who are feeling old each day.  You in fact can almost predict which cycle will work for you.  If you feel calm, confident, accepting, understanding ivf isn't the only way to becoming a mother, you will have your chances even you are getting older... when the moment comes, you can feel it, because it comes when the outcome of THAT PARTICULAR cycle won't put you in desperation, because you are already ready for the next step mentally, whatever the next step would be, such as another cycle, using donor eggs, or adoption... then this is the bfp one! 

I mean everything in life works the same way, getting a job, getting a boyfriend, getting a husband, keeping a friendship..."

The truth is at that time, I was struggling with getting my first big research grant funded.  This felt a lot like ivf.  One can write a perfect grant but it is not at all predictable whether the reviewers will like to and agree to fund it!  Part of me was willing to drop it since the chance of getting it funded was so slim - much like going through ivf cycles.  Another part of me came to a state of acceptance and started to tell myself, "as long as I did my best, the rest would not be anymore of my concern." - just so you know, that million dollar grant was funded!

Good luck!