Strapping on our lady balls and going menkul because we HATE THIS SHIT!! The Berries: a lovely bunch of 30 something Ladybros TTC #1

hooray sesame! come on embie!

Fx crossed for you sesame hope you have a lovely little embryo tomorrow.

Yes Sesame!! Fx for you lady. Barry White and the spice girls on full blast at the beaky household for you! Shame about the other one, but IOTO

Excellent news smidge. IOTO!!!

My scratch this morning was hideous. My uterus is apparently C shaped and they couldn't get the catheter round. Took three of them including the consultant who they called in to have a go. I cried lots.
Would my uterus change shape? Why has no-one ever mentioned this before? EC and et has always been horribly painful, maybe this is why?

Thank you so much berries! I got one egg. I was quite upset beforehand as one of the follies had already disappeared before I even got to theatre - and the time this happened to me before I ended up with nothing. Went home and had a snooze and got woken up in a pool of my own drool by the embryologist who called to let me know the egg's mature and has been injected. Will know the results tomorrow. Fingers crossed ladybros!

And let's hope it really does only take one!

Sneaky checking in from work to see if Sesame has news? Everything crossed still.

Good luck sesame!

Nolly I think you've got it spot on there. I also liked the car analogy. I must admit though, my concern is slightly more superficial at the moment - need to sort out the body work for the wedding in April!

Hiya grin! Sorry about the baby bombardment, the fertility of the rest of the world feels relentless sometimes. I saw on the news the other day that even horses are having babies through ivf!

clem I've got many a to ignore list of my own. a big one at work too It makes sense to do your tests on a natural cycle, though I think it might be possible the amh one could still be ok. I think continuous clomid's meant to impact on your womble lining anyway, so perhaps a break would help things.

barking hope your mysterious parcel didn't raise too many eyebrows then I'm always very interested in folk's Internet shopping Good luck for your scratch today.

tiger getting your health kick underway sounds good, and glad that things at the fc seem to be moving along.

lucie thanks. I'm sure that there's a great deal of luck involved in this game, despite all the things we try to influence.

nolly you are wiser than your berry years. Loved the car analogy. I have been tinkering with my headlights a lot, but at least I can take pride in my sort of shiny old banger.

grin hope you get the all clear on your blood test so you can get this show on the road. Sorry about the baby bombardment. I've gained a lot of weight too in the past year thanks to fertility treatment, which at least is a good excuse to go shopping.

Well after 5 hours sleep, I'm on a shockingly early commuter train to my fc and it's dark and stormy outside. Not a lot else to report for now. I really hope they can pull eggs out of me today and I won't have to turn round and get train home empty handed again.

Morning all

I need a break from studying so you lot can help me procrastinate.

It has been a busy few weeks on the berry board I see.

Smidge I am sorry to hear about the result. On a positive note it gives the FS something to work with.

Tiger Copenhagen is lovely. I could quite happily live there. Well only if they un ban vegemite. Princess Mary is Australian, it shouldn't be banned.

SesameHappy I hope the scans and EC went well.

I know I have missed people and Ill keep reading the thread to see what has happened to everyone over the past few weeks.

I am off to have another blood test tomorrow to check my syphilis. A chest infection can give a false positive and I had one during the test so that explains a lot. If the test is ok then I can start the drugs next week.

My DB and SIL had a baby last week. Little boy named William Hans Michael. I am very happy for them but this is two 'accidents' in two years. A colleague had a baby last week too as did a friend in New Zealand (10lbs 6oz OW!). Two more colleagues are due in the next three months too.
Ive packed on the weight since starting on the infertility fun fair. 16kg of fat (ok 5kg can be attributed to tim tams) and DH has lost 20kg so I feel like a fat heifer next to svelte DH.

barking i guess I'd probably want to know myself but only because I'm an eternal pessimist. Also as a trained social scientist you do quickly come to realise that no statistics apply to the individual - only to the population. For example I smoke 200 a day and live only on eclairs.

but seriously it's meaningless. Think about any other disease and the infinite variety which e.g. cell division takes in any cancer shows you how the tools available (nuclear war against cancer cells) cannot really predict anything for the individual. There are very few occasions on which individual risk / success can genuinely be predicted because you are so different from other women of your age, weight, height, ethnicity, diagnosis, income group, education, fitness level - and yet all of those would be used as ways to group the statistics for the population. They're a guide for the clinicians - not for the patient. And a good clinician will take that into account, but really look at you, your choices, your preferences, your particular responses and test results and make their recommendation on those grounds.

I'm not an endocrinologist or a fertility expert (outside my berry life obviously) but I am trained in decoding science papers so I can hopefully be helpful on that front. They did show a declining relatioship between high dosage and live births but that's for a bunch of reasons.

I think it's possible, tiger that there is a relationship between egg qual and dosage of IVF drugs. However, there is no evidence presented in this paper of that kind of mechanism.

The way I think of it, is that the complex intra (within) and inter (between) cellular processes which control (a) egg production (b) egg maturation (c) egg release (d) conception (e) implantation and (f) every other freaking thing are so complicated it's a miracle that they can be controlled to the extent that they are. Every IVF baby is a miracle in my book. The tools they have to try and intervene in a system of such huge variety and compelxity are astoundingly blunt. Imagine someone who can't fill up their oil tank in a car, and instead they pour oil into the bonnet. Sometimes it'll work, but sometimes it'll blow the engine sky high. IVF is a bit better than that but not much. And all cars are bascialyl the same! Women are not. In that context, doing yoga once or four times a week is equivalent to buffing the headlights. feel free but for goodness sake don't feel responsible.

That sounds good barking and similar to what I will be doing. When I have transfer I will be on prednisone, 2 lots of intralipids, clexane, utrogestan and gestone! May as well throw the lot at it just incase. I'm going to be doing Gonal with only a small amount of menopur on my next round. Bcp first and then around 7 days of suprecur before af arrives. What doses of stimms are you doing? Sorry if you've already said.

tiger hope Friday is useful and you're not waiting as long as you fear.

lucie I'm taking metafolin, having a scratch, then intralipids in a drip, suprecur to downreg and both menopur and gonal f for stims with another intralipids drip that week. After ec I'll be on heparin, prednisalone, calcium tablets and progesterone. Added the embryo glue and caremaps (their own algorithm using the embryo scope) to maximise chances. I'm using the hypnotherapy tracks from last time and having weekly acupuncture. Exercise stops now and I'm doing nothing more than dog walks and a very short cycle to work from now on.
I've probably forgotten something...
Oh, and chocolate brownies (eggs) with double cream and ice cream (protein) on a daily basis .

Wow barking I didn't think the success rates were that high for a blasto? Brilliant if they are though. I was thinking more around the 40-50% mark. What does your long down reg with kitchen sink involve if you don't mind me asking?

Tiger I was on 300iu menopur from day 7 on my last treatment and although we only had 2 eggs collected, one of the two made it to blasto and was grade 1 which they said was excellent quality. It was the first time that we managed to get a grade 1 our others have always been grade 2 on lower stimms so I'm thinking maybe it just depends on the getting a good egg to start with and not so much the stimms or just luck I don't know.

Sesame, good luck for tomorrow, hope it all goes well.

hello you lovely lot.

happy glad you're all underway now. How did the scan go today?

sesame good luck for your EC tomorrow. Everything crossed for you.

I found it interesting to read the information about the high stims nolly. I had no response issues but a high right ovary which they were worried that they may not be able to reach - as a result they upped my stims to 300 of menopur - I really wasn't keen on this and I'm certain it impacted on my egg quality based on a non-scientific hunch

Hope your drugs arrived ok barking. I'm envious of you starting now - I'm so desperate to kick off and I wish I could get a cycle in before Christmas.

clem I don't know whether you can get AMH tested on a clomid month but I would say that ANC would have to be on a natural cycle. Best to check with the FC. Do you know where you will go yet? Coventry and Warwick do an immunes biopsy to check for NK cells - I was going to do it but my new FC told me I wasn't allowed to do that privately without compromising my NHS entitlement. I don't think that's true but I don't want to risk it now. Health kick is going ok - ish. Doing yoga a fair bit, will add the running back in over the weekend. Still need to work on the diet and ideally want to lose half a stone or so pre wedding!

beaky lovely how are you doing?

ungoog did you speak to the GP in the end? Hope you're feeling ok.

Not much to report here - have a group session on Friday and got a letter saying that it would replace my nurse led appointment and mean the commencement of my treatment - I don't really know what that means! I still haven't had my 3D sis or dummy transfer - booked for 3rd Nov - so I doubt I will start before Christmas. Starting now would be ideal timing-wise though....

clem Level 1 looks at thrombophilia panel, karyotypes for both of you, hormone levels etc. Mostly it's what you'd have done by the recurrent miscarriage clinic. Some of it will already have been done by the fertility clinic.
Yes, always have any tests done when you don't have drugs in your system.
Royal visitors have been and gone. Quite glad really. They'd already visited all their friends and other relatives and DH's siblings before they came to us and they were just desperate to get back home. And kept telling us. Which was nice.

Lucie I'm on long protocol with the kitchen sink approach . DH didn't pay the invoice as he was supposed to when he went to the clinic to sign his forms today, he brought it back for me to check it really should be for that amount

sesame good luck for tomorrow. Shit load of drugs delivered safely. I opened one box to put a smaller box inside and then parcel taped it up like a lunatic in case anyone peeped inside as I just left it in the stock room!!

Nolly thanks for that, it's great having a resident scientist! I'm trying not to look at chances etc. I was presented with a chart of success rates on day 2/3, day 4 or day 5 transfers, with 1 or 2 embryos, for women in my age group. It was to persuade me to go for a single embryo transfer essentially but I almost just don't want to know. They reckon they have a 60% success rate if transferring a blastocyst. But that just puts the pressure on getting to blastocyst, and then makes you feel like even more of a failure if you fall in the 40%. Anyway, over thinking stuff again.

sorry, 1 more thing (full of bloody questions today)...

I've been recommended by a friend of a friend, who has had trouble conceiving (now has a little boy), that I should get my level 1 immunes tested. has anyone else had this? what does this suite of blood tests actually tell me? thanks.

seasame sorry I missed you off my post walks slowly to corner of the room, to think about what I've done hope EC goes well for you tomorrow.

hi everyone, really not sure where my time is going at the moment, but stuggling to find the time to post here...have finally got 15 mins free, so here goes (only a weeks worth to catch up on)...

tiger glad you had a fab holiday in copenhagen, I've never been there, but would love to go (off to nag dh). How is the health kick going? I am doing okay, in as much as I just don't drink anymore, but cutting out crappy food, and going running/doing yoga I just never quite seem to get round to. should re-name my to do list, to a ignore list...

smidge how are you, been thinking about you a lot...was good to sound you were a little brighter, last time you posted

antonia distraction is a funny thing isn't it...I do get what you mean, about not being able to concentrate at yoga (I don't yet do yoga, but I meditate when I can, and the whole thing about clearing my mind, means I just sit there thinking about everything I'm trying not too. it's kind of why I stopped trying to symptom spot last month, cause I knew I'd do it regardless.

ungoogle are you okay now, after the scare of the heavy bleed...hate stuff like that, just one more thing for you to worry about, that you just don't need. and well done for surviving the MIL...sounds like hard work.

beaky month off clomid is going well, am now wondering if I need to take Nov off too (see below for reasons why)...crappy timing on my part really.

barking I love the dedication of repainting the dining room for your "royal visit", hope it all goes well, when they arrive...remember to curtsy

nolly hope you are well, still think you are a closet archers listener tho

hi to everyone else.

can't remember whether I said, but I did cave, and purchase some ovulation tests off the internet (one step ones), and started using this month (did start testing late, on day 14. no sign of a positive result, and then just for fun (because I found some other tesco ovulation strips I'd forgot I had bought), I thought I'd test using that at the same time....so I did, and the one step gave me a negative, and the tesco gave me a positive a few days ago...anyone else come across that with the ovulation test strips (also, tesco one showed positive for ovulating 2 days running, which seemed a bit odd ...I assumed it just happened for 1 day...probably just my lack of knowledge tho.

also (and this is what I mentioned above), because I want to get my AMH plus antral follicle count checked), some of the fc that I've been getting quotes from, have mentioned I should do this on a natural cycle, not a clomid one (makes sense, and I was already reaching that conclusion on my own. do does that sound right to you guys, that the AMH plus antral follicle count should be done, when I don't have clomid in my system?

phew...going for a lie down, after all that

Yes damn you hate this shit daily fail!

nolly thank you for being our berry scientist in residence. So after all that build up this research is a retrospective load of shite that tells us it’s tough to get pregnant if you’re old and don’t have many eggs…? Interesting that any evidence in this paper for older women is that high stims make no difference, rather than high stims causing harm. I seem to recall that the few papers I’ve seen that look at dose, it’s been more along the lines of showing that low stims can work as well as high, rather than one being better than the other. Interestingly, my fc max dose is 300iu, with this dose reserved only for very overweight patients – their theory is that the excess fsh just ends up literally going down the toilet. Also in the essential fertility guide, RW says he thinks there might be something in the idea of low stims meaning better quality (without citing much in the way of evidence to back this up), based on his experience of treating a women with low dose, who produced only 4 embryos but then went on to deliver quads! – it was in the days before the multiple birth policy

happy really glad you’ve got the green light, hope your dildocam went ok, you’ve finally got meds and can start stabbing now.

beaky thanks, really hope I get a result tomorrow. I’m a bit paranoid about lack of symptoms right now and very worried I could still ovulate early again. Not much I can do about it now though so I just need to distract myself. How are you feeling about things today?

smidge, how are you coping at the mo? When are you back at your fc?

barking hope all your drugs arrived safely? I’m glad I got mine delivered at home as some arrived in an absolutely massive cold chain box I couldn’t imagine trying to struggle home with. Good luck for the scratch tomorrow. Do remember to take your painkillers beforehand – I arrived one time, having completely forgotten , but luckily they gave me some of their own pills and delayed the procedure until they kicked in.

oh beaky. Massive hug for you. Doesn't say why or for whom or under what circumstances it matters. Damn you the Mail!

fucksake! ok basically it shows that the numbers of eggs retrived is lowest for unexplained and those with ovulation disorder