First Movement: Betrayed by Science

After hearing a few friends' stories, I decided to pursue IVF in Taiwan rather than Sweden — Taiwan's IVF success rates are said to rank second in the world after the United States, with a level of service that's hard to find in Europe. A few people I knew had already had healthy babies at Stork Fertility Center. Naturally, I prefer to return to Taiwan to undergo the IVF procedure.

I have a genuine fear of needles, so my father helped with my injections every other day, on top of nightly trigger shots. One night at the lab, I watched an embryologist prepare my medication while gently counseling another patient who was distressed and bleeding early in her pregnancy — a moment that deepened my own anxiety about what lay ahead.

That summer, three consecutive egg retrievals yielded 20 eggs in total — 14 mature, and 9 blastocysts by day five.

I went through PGT-A testing and an ERA test. Different doctors had told me different things about how much ERA actually changes outcomes, and I worried about the extra month it would add before I had to be back in Sweden — but I went ahead with it anyway. That meant medication to simulate an implantation cycle, an endometrial biopsy, and testing to confirm the right transfer timing under progesterone exposure.

"As scientific as all of this is," I remember thinking, "in each person's heart, it doesn't feel scientific at all."

I struggled emotionally through this stretch — living back at my parents' place without my cat, not working, watching my savings steadily shrink, and fixating on the outcome. Everyone told me to relax. It wasn't that easy.

My first transfer used one chromosomally normal blastocyst, grade 5BB. My endometrial thickness was excellent, my blood markers were all optimal, and ERA had identified the correct window. My doctor estimated an 80% chance of success for that specific transfer.

At the 14-day mark, my HCG came back below 1 — a complete failure, despite every single metric pointing the right way.

I didn't just feel disappointed — I felt genuinely betrayed. Betrayed by the data, by science, by my own body, and by my own optimism. I'd scored perfectly on every test, only to fail the one that mattered. I stopped trusting my own instincts. My doctor could offer little explanation beyond a short recovery period, a possibly elevated D-dimer, and a possible mild uterine infection.

I spent ten days angry, before I came to recognize that even the most careful physicians and researchers run into this inexplicable 20% failure rate every day. I let go of my resentment — no one owed me a child. I'd hoped to transfer again before Christmas, but my doctors advised against rushing, and I went home disappointed.

First movement — a slow build, a quiet and sudden resolution. It opens in a major key and ends in minor.

Second Movement: Dramatic Swings

I came back to Taiwan in a cold Swedish spring, not long after losing my 19-year-old cat. I wondered whether my first failure meant I hadn't wanted this badly enough. A close friend reframed it for me: "Just admit you want this a lot. You're only afraid of failing. You've already washed half your hair — you might as well finish."

For my second transfer, I had four untested (no PGT-A) grade 5BC embryos, and three of the four were transferred — hoping that, given my age, at least one would turn out to be chromosomally normal.

My D-dimer stayed elevated, so I started daily heparin injections. Learning to inject myself despite my needle phobia was hard, and within a week my entire abdomen was bruised — heparin has a well-earned reputation for that.

I tried to hold on to "no expectation, no disappointment" as my mantra. My HCG came back at 339.5 — showing implantation, but at a level that suggested a possible problem.

"Just tell me every possibility," I asked my doctor.

The instructions were to keep injecting and retest HCG in two days to check whether it was doubling properly. The second reading showed appropriate doubling. The daily heparin injections became, in a strange way, a kind of self-inflicted encouragement — physical pain that reminded me I hadn't given up. A fourth blood draw showed insufficient progression. An ultrasound confirmed the pregnancy was in the uterus, not ectopic, but my doctor advised stopping medication and waiting for my period.

I underwent a D&C under anesthesia after an incomplete miscarriage — my first tears since starting IVF, not purely from the loss itself but from what I can only describe as the sheer whiplash of extreme highs and lows, wearing down whatever resilience I had left.

I couldn't blame anyone; this was a path I'd chosen. I'd lost my cat and lost two pregnancies, and I let myself sit with the accumulated grief rather than run from it. It felt like rock bottom, though I suspected the road ahead had an even deeper pit — that whether I went forward or not, there was only down from here, no way back up.

The medical team again suggested I go home to Sweden to rest, mentally as much as anything.

Second movement — a slow tempo, an uncertain key, ending without real resolution.

Third Movement: Improvisation and Unexpected Harmony

I had three embryos left, and none of them looked promising: one untested grade 5BC, one mosaic, and one that graded decently but was flagged 1PN — an atypical fertilization pattern. I wanted to give up entirely. Three weak cards, I felt, with almost no chance of winning.

Looking back, my emotional arc across the three cycles went from betrayal, to a cautious refusal to hope, to full resignation. I'd braced myself for the worst in advance, believing that was the only way to protect myself.

But my husband — who'd been fairly detached through most of this — unexpectedly insisted I try one more transfer. "It probably won't work," he said, "but there's still some chance." I read both a kind of stubborn defiance and a sense of needing to see it through in his insistence, and realized that despite all the time and money we'd spent, he too had become genuinely invested in becoming a parent. I agreed, while quietly bracing myself against any real hope.

For my third transfer, all three remaining embryos were used. My endometrial thickness barely met the minimum standard, my progesterone was borderline — lower than in previous cycles — and while my D-dimer was elevated, it was lower than in the first two cycles, so heparin was prescribed as a precaution. I also needed intramuscular progesterone-in-oil injections every other day, which required someone else's help to administer.

Unable to give myself the intramuscular shots — which need a perpendicular angle and an awkward twist — I turned to a volunteer at the cat shelter where I spent most of my days, someone experienced giving long-term medication injections to cats, who confirmed the progesterone shots were "far easier than the cat medication." I spent much of my waiting period there among the shelter cats.

Two weeks after transfer, my HCG came back at 1,373 — a confirmed pregnancy, despite every ounce of caution I'd built up. A week later, the clinic called to say they wanted to increase my heparin to a daily dose, out of caution. I deliberately kept my emotions in check, stuck to my medication schedule, and kept spending time with the shelter cats, telling myself simply to do my best and accept whatever came.

At the seven-week ultrasound, I walked into the exam room calmly — and heard two heartbeats. I sent my husband two video clips; he thought at first I was joking. Their heart rate: 176 beats per minute.

I walked out stunned, and it took me several days to believe it was real. By my own estimate, the odds had been worse than winning a lottery.

"The most scientific thing in the world," I remember thinking, "still has to bow, humbly, before the miracle of life."

I've come to see the quiet arrogance in believing you can plan your way to any outcome: the more you plan, the emptier it can leave you; the tighter you try to control your own path, the greater the chance of being thrown off it. Two heartbeats asked me, simply, to let go and accept.

I want to be careful not to present myself as some kind of inspiration — I stayed negative through most of this. I think of it more like buying a lottery ticket: once you've bought it, the chance exists; win or lose, having the courage to buy it in the first place means facing yourself honestly. IVF rarely offers a cinematic plot twist. The real reward isn't only a positive test or a heartbeat on a screen — it's everything you learn about yourself and what actually matters to you along the way.

Third movement — jazz improvisation at 176 beats per minute, unexpected harmonic turns that call for quick adaptation — lucky enough, in the end, to be written in the musical language my husband and I love best.