Are the progesterone pessaries giving me fake pregnancy symptoms? Day 6 and they've all just VANISHED

First ever cycle, medicated frozen transfer last Saturday, and I am apparently not the calm scientific person I told everyone I would be.

Days 3 to 5 I had everything. Sore chest, queasy in the mornings, bloated, asleep on the sofa by nine. I didn't say it out loud in case I jinxed it but privately I was SURE. Then this morning, day 6, I woke up and it's all gone. Chest completely fine. Wide awake at seven. Not even bloated. I have spent the day prodding myself like a suspicious fruit and tonight I've been googling "symptoms disappeared day 6" which I already know was a mistake.

Two questions for people who've actually done this, because the clinic is closed and my head is loud. Can the pessaries genuinely manufacture ALL of that by themselves? And does it all switching off overnight mean the progesterone has stopped doing its job, or that it's failed? Test is next Friday and I cannot do eight more days of marking my own body out of ten every hour.

Oh, day 6. Day 6 should be named and shamed, it did this to me every single time.

Four waits here, and I kept symptom diaries for all of them, which I now regard as four volumes of expensive fiction. The single most educational thing in them: on my second cycle I switched from the gel to pessaries partway through, and my "symptoms" changed within about two days, same body, same wait, different packaging. That was the moment I finally believed the symptoms were tracking the medication and not the embryo. That cycle also gave me the most convincing pregnancy-feeling fortnight of my life, nausea, metallic taste, the lot, and ended in a stark negative.

And the vanishing act, I had that every time too, usually somewhere in the middle week. First time it sent me exactly where you are tonight. By the fourth I'd noticed it came back and went again like weather, whatever was happening underneath. The site's guide to the two-week wait says it straight: symptoms in this window are a poor guide in both directions, and I'd add from experience, so is their disappearance. Be kind to yourself, day 6 you is not receiving reliable data.

Data point from the other direction: my wait back in May, I felt NOTHING the entire fortnight. Not one twinge. I'd mentally drafted the sad phone call by day 9, told the bees it hadn't worked (you have to tell the bees things, it's the rules). It had worked. Twelve weeks on Friday. The bees found out before my symptoms did, is what I'm saying. Sitting with you til next Friday.

Adding the strangest one, because nobody warned me and I frightened myself badly. My first cycle I got breathless, actually puffing on the stairs, and 1am googling had me at heart failure. Rang the clinic in a fright and the nurse was completely unbothered: the progesterone does that too, apparently it acts on your breathing, and pregnant women get the same thing for the same reason. So even the weird ones are usually the medication. Congratulations Jo, quietly and enormously.

Niamh, let me answer both questions directly, because this is one of the kindest pieces of knowledge anyone can hand you in a two-week wait.

Yes, the pessaries alone can produce every symptom you listed. Progesterone is not incidentally similar to early pregnancy, it is the hormone of early pregnancy: the sore breasts, nausea, bloating, fatigue, and mood swings people scan for are largely progesterone effects, and your tissues cannot tell whether the molecule came from your own ovary or a pessary. In a medicated frozen transfer this goes one step further: the protocol usually means there is no corpus luteum, the ovarian gland that would normally make progesterone, so essentially all of it is the medication. Which means your "symptoms" were guaranteed before your embryo was even thawed, while the thing you are actually waiting on, implantation, signals through a different hormone, hCG, which is what the test measures and which symptoms do not reliably track at this stage. Mrs Okafor's nurse was right too: progesterone stimulates the brain's breathing drive, so mild breathlessness is a recognised effect, in treatment and in pregnancy alike.

And no, symptoms switching off does not mean the progesterone has stopped working. With a steady daily dose the body habituates within days, so side effects commonly soften mid-wait, and how much you absorb and notice genuinely varies day to day. What you feel is a poor meter of what is in your blood. So keep taking your support exactly as prescribed until your clinic says otherwise, whatever your body reports; if Friday brings good news it will usually continue for some weeks on their schedule. The different forms this support comes in, and what each is like to use, are covered in the guide to IVF medications. Two boundaries: any bleeding, severe pain, or anything that frightens you is a reason to call your clinic before test day, they expect those calls; and your own protocol questions belong with them, since they know which one you are on. For the next eight days, let the scoring go. The answer is already being written, and it is not being written in your breasts.

Checking back in before the big day. Since I posted, the symptoms have returned, vanished, and returned again, so "like weather" is exactly right and I've officially stopped grading them. When the sore chest came back on Tuesday I just said "hello, pessaries" out loud, which is either growth or madness.

Test is tomorrow morning. Whatever it says, I know now it won't be because my body went quiet on day 6, and I cannot tell you what that one piece of information has been worth this week. Thank you all, and Jo, I told absolutely everyone about the bees.