Toot, Toot. Calling all dirty chicks! Jump aboard the charabanc with Barry & The Berries. Destination BFP" (thread 26)

Welcome Lucie, one question I've always had with treatment abroad - how long do you have to stay in Prague? Presumably they can't predict when ec will be exactly, or when they will do the et, so there has to be a little leeway? I'm assuming even paying for accommodation and flights still makes it cheaper than in the UK?

rp thanks, otd is Monday .

Lucie sorry to that it was painful. Did you have to pay for the endo scratch at CRGW and are these results then forwarded to the clinic in Prague? Also how have you organised your accommodation? I saw on the website they have a deal with the local Holiday Inn for £50 a night. I have already looked into a cheaper alternative though that my brother suggested where you rent someone's whole apartment for around £30-£45 a night. Sorry of I am bombarding you with questions!
Happy My gynae is based at Gwent where I have had one appt but most of my appt. and the op have all been at the Ystrad Mynach hospital.

Where are you with your treatment happy? Are you cycling at CRGW? We were due to have treatment there but struggled with the costs. We have had all our tests, dildo cams etc there though apart from a few blood tests at the doctors and they are so lovely!

Did you have much bleeding after your scratch or did it affect when AF arrived?

I've just come out of CRGW for my scratch. I found it quite painful. The scratching itself was not too bad, very crampy but bearable but I found the clamp on my cervix painful :( Maybe i am a wimp lol. Really hope I don't need that again anytime soon!

Hi barking just checking in to say congrats on being pupo!! When will you know?

Hi happy and pont! Thanks for the welcome. So pleased you are going ahead with the treatment pont they have been really good so far!

Happy, I am also having my treatment in Czech. We just couldn't justify the price in the UK and the success rates seem better. Can't wait for a little holiday too.

The scratch is a simple procedure a bit like a smear where they make a couple of scratches in your womb lining the cycle before you begin ivf. As they are healing they release hormones and chemicals which are meant to help with implantation and therefore increase success rates.

Stimms are the stimulation drugs that you take at the start of your treatment to get the follicles to grow.

Do you have any of your blood test results pont as they are the main things that they need. You could probably just ring your gp and ask for a print out of them. That is what I did and I was able to collect the same afternoon.

Hey Berries, hope everyone has been ok and Barking good luck! keeping everything crossed and it all works out.

Happy - I too am on hols at the moment so you are not alone, just hope the weather improves! Also interesting to read about the NHS not having notes on private treatment, hope that is the case.

I can't remember if I said I had been in contact with the clinic in Prague but I had a positive reply back to my enquiry. The lady, Ditta, suggested I contact my gynae and ask for all notes/records to be sent to me then forwarded to her also to make an appt. to discuss things with gynae. Well, typical NHS Wales, my appt. won't be for another 7 weeks (6 now) and the consultants sec. is off sick and because of Data Protection rules I have to ask in writing for my notes, (email) then they will post everything out. The lady covering said this would take about 15-20 days excluding weekends! Yet another reason to be thoroughly disillusioned by the NHS here.

Lucie - Hi again! I was only thinking about you the other day and that your treatment has got to start soon. How have you found the process so far? I'd love to know as I have been contact with the clinic and would like to have treatment there this summer.
What is an endo scratch and stimms?

Hope everyone else is good xx

Hi there, can I join you please?

I am about to begin my first ICSI treatment abroad! I have a endo scratch booked today and then should be starting stimms just after the weekend with egg collection 13 days later. Feeling nervous and excited all rolled into one!

That's shocking Barking that the FC hasn't given you an update on the embies. I totally understand why you don't want to call them, but they shouldn't keep you hanging no matter what the result. That's very poor in my opinion.

Sorry you're feeling grotty Barking.

Tiger I smiled at your tales of swapping wee habits with your flatmate.
Good work on the water drinking everyone. Keep knocking it back.

I've been taking the Norethisterone for round two of stimms. I finish the tables on Wednesday, so expecting AF at the weekend and then baseline scan.

hope you're not feeling too grotty and that it's actually a good sign...

I have found that the more I drink during the day, the less likely I am to need a night time wee. My london flatmate also tested my theory and voila - drinking more water stopped the night time weeing. We have bonded over our dodgy bladders like a couple of old ladies!!

I would never have thought to put ivf into Pinterest!

happy no news and I'm not inclined to call to ask as I don't want bad news!!
tiger I'm one big bag of mucus. Proper, full on cold. Good work on the three litres of water, it's a struggle for me, usually end up topping up before I go to bed then having to get up to wee!!!

I put 'ivf' into Pinterest and then really wished I hadn't. It's full of tips on how to help it succeed, which of course I'm not doing as I only just read about them, so then you start thinking....
Just best not to go there once you've started!!!!!

Quiet in here

How are we all? Hope our pupo lady barking is doing ok?

Happy holidays happy! I'm not sure why OTD varies so much between clinics. Presumably it is roughly 14 days from EC no matter what, but some clinics must advise later testing to avoid false negatives.

I agree hb it all seems a bit trial and error.

beaky is the house purchase all moving as planned? I bet you are very excited! Have you started buying home magazines? I got a bit addicted to them. Pinterest is a better (and cheaper) way of finding good home ideas.

I'm fine except for a bit of bloating, which tbh I would expect at this point in my cycle. I'm not sure that the DR is going to delay af by much - did others find that it did? I feel like it is on its way and 3 weeks DR seems like ages suddenly. My acu lady reckons I might need more than the 150ml of menopur if I've been switched off for that long. What doses were you all on?

I'm struggling to drink 3 litres of water, I must have had a pee every hour at work today! sure you all wanted to know that

I've said it before and I'll say it again.....I think they make it up as they go along!

Thanks Happy and HB, those stats help put my mind at rest for the moment. I think our 5dt have all been 5-7 days earlier than a natural 5dpo for me, so am clinging to the idea that a natural FET will be the answer for us! I have two frosties happy but one is pretty poor quality (well, was good enough to freeze but was at the bottom end of the scale) and the other is average - so am now hoping that our issue has been timing rather than egg quality!

I agree it's a bit mysterious though about the receptiveness of the uterus - it makes sense that just coz they've pumped me with progesterone and made the lining thick, that doesn't necessarily mean the cells are receptive as such...but at the same time, given all the drugs in a fresh ivf, how would your body know when normal timing is anyway?

Congratulations on bing PUPO Barking going away sounds like a good idea.

Every clinic has a duty to let you know that defrosting has risks, but so does the whole IVF process. Ours try to dissuade you from trying a frozen transfer with only one frostie as a precaution (hence why I'm still having fresh cycles) but they are very good at this whole process and I think that the stats that Happy has mentioned are about right. Interestingly a lot of clinics have better pregnancy rates with frozen cycles than fresh.

smidge don't let me worry you, it depends on the quality of what they freeze - as happy said they have very strict, high standards on what they will freeze and in my case I had one blastocyst that was the definite winner. That means the second place candidate was not as strong, therefore hasn't got the same chances of surviving the freeze/thaw. It doesn't mean yours aren't top quality! I think it was lumen that pointed out only 20% of cycles end up with frosties, so they obviously don't freeze anything that isn't up to standard.

I always used to ov around cd19/22 (probably still do, just haven't tracked for months as I didn't see the point) so after reading that article I was glad I had a 5dt as that will have been closer to the right time for me, although the progesterone should then prevent AF shedding that lovely lining 7 days later as would usually happen.

Woke up way before 6 again, but obviously just after 6 once I'd moved my watch on an hour. I hope my body clock sorts itself out soon!!

Congrats on being PUPO Barking that is brilliant news. Top quality too and another in the freezer! I would imagine your mum is just trying to give you a boost by saying the backup is a genuine possibility, and trying to help ease the pressure you might be putting on yourself for this fresh cycle to work - even though it came out a bit wrong/negative.

But all this talk of frozen ones not surviving the freeze/thaw process is sounding a bit scary to me. I don't remember AliG ever suggesting there might be an issue with that to us... But maybe at the time I wasn't thinking that far ahead and my brain converted any 'irrelevant future' chat into 'blah blah blah'.

Also have been thinking about the article someone (sorry can't remember who) posted on FETs being better for some people because of being able to match the receptive time in their cycle... And hoping that might be the case for me. In fact I'm beginning to convince myself this could be the case given my cycle is normally 33 days suggesting a much later ovulation time than when they do the stimms/trigger with fresh.

Just finished AF so one (or two) more cycle(s) to go I think before we try frozen.

Have been doing a little bit of contracting work recently which is helping pass the time (and fund the bank). Other than that nothing to report from down under.

Great news barking and congrats on your PUPO status. Sending you strength and calm for the 2ww.

Sorry your mum is being unhelpful. Mine is similar, knows about our problems and yet insists on banging on and on about my cousins babies even after I've hinted it is a bit raw. The other day when I tried to tell her about our ivf plans she terminated the conversation with 'good luck with that' then talking about something trivial. .

Still, we have the berry support group which is just amazing!