Fertility Appointments and Beyond: Electric Boogaloo

@JeanieJ yeah, that's what @Beyondshit did I think, found a cheaper option, so we might use the same guy. I can't afford to give Ramsay 6k, we did all the tests and consultations with him and that was enough. 6k is a whole IVF round :/

I heard that about young eggs. It upsets me, I don't want to use other eggs yet, maybe I will in future after more attempts, but I just feel sad we can't do this together. You're probably fine at 35, mine are OAPs now, unfortunately.

@JeanieJ Trying naturally is hard when you have hope. I have no hope and it's still hard because I can't understand how ZERO motile sperm have made it to where they need to be in 3 years. How much did ramsay charge? I know it'll be pricey with him and he didn't think DH needed it which is....annoying, since ICSI hasn't worked for us now and we're confused.

@Tinkerbell098 that transfer is so near to Christmas! Are you expecting people to ask why you aren't drinking?

It's infuriating how with men they just say "do ICSI" and then it doesn't work and the nhs doesn't fund it equally for everyone. No one bothers to care about why the sperm isn't doing what healthy sperm does, they just ignore it and move on.

I do think there's been a decrease in fertility, and it can't be only age, especially where men are concerned and they don't have that same deadline we do, even if age still impacts them. I'm tempted to send DH for some acupuncture before the next cycle too. With the varicocele I feel like we have to try removing it in case it does help.

That's the thing, it takes YEARS to get to the point we're all at and people who just have kids without thinking about it do not get it, that's before the money side of thing is taken into consideration. I'd have loved to have spent all this money on nice things for a kid, but I can't. And yeah, we're in the same boat. Can't move, can't change jobs, and frankly I don't know if I even want to considering how much time I've had off lately and how chill my boss is about it. I don't know if another employer will be as understanding. And we're not out of the woods yet, there's probably another year? 18 months or more? of this for me before we throw the towel in. Depends if we get any embryos, I guess.

@Beyondshit thank you! I hope you're opk. I can't remember if you had the varicocele surgery or not?

And another thing... @99pctpractice do you remember who it was here that recommended a clinic where varicocele surgery was not too expensive? Possibly it was @Beyondshit? But she changes her name so I can't remember if this is the right @.

Oh and another thing I want to vent about. I told my friend after we'd done the cycle that it didn't go well, I hadn't really mentioned it before. I said it had gone really badly, but didn't say a lot more than that. She didn't ask about it and just said "oh what a nightmare" and that was it. It really hit me hard, reminded me that everyone is busy with their kids and doesn't get how hard this all is. I didn't reply because I just felt so alone with this, the only one who gets it is DH and even he has a different experience as the male partner.

@beckyCarlos thanks! how's things going?

@99pctpractice I agree. All my friends had kinds in their late 30s/40s, why is it just us that has the issue? Obviously something else going on IMO since natural shouldn't be an issue even with low egg reserve etc, we ovulate each month still.

As you said, it's a lot of guesswork. I'm so tired of how expensive it all is too, when they don't seem to know much. I just wish I understood why this cycle had half the number of mature eggs. We went from 12 to 6 which is just terrible odds with his sperm. I've also convinced myself they're picking the bad sperm in ICSI and wondering if there's any chance of them letting us do half IVF/half ICSI if we get enough eggs next time.

@Kay00 fingers crossed you'll get more than zero and they can improve things. Did they ever give you an explanation as to why they think that it happened? We've started all the supplements again, so fed up of them, but it seems like we need to after the first cycle was much more productive than this one.

They changed it to be the same? why? We're going to have to save in the new year while we prep for the next one. Round 3 is already paid for, which is good. I want to discuss things with them like the IVF/ICSI mentioned above, and if we can cut our losses and cancel the cycle if only a few eggs are growing and try another month. If this round doesn't work I'm tempted to try mild IVF with Create. I'm just going round in circles and spiralling about how I'm running out of time to do this, fuck being 40 in a few months :/

@Kay00 glad to hear you’ve started again. Let me know how you get on with meriofert. I’m thinking of asking to try it next time.

The age thing has really thrown me. I thought we’d be ok, we started this when I was 36. It doesn’t make sense to me that I’ve had zero good eggs in over 3 years. Egg quality might be my issue too, but the motility issue is the initial cause imo. And whatever immune shit I might have ongoing. I just feel like the unluckiest fucker at the moment.

I’ve had a real hard time this cycle. Devastated and can’t stop crying tbh. Not even by the outcome, I just knew it would not work. Those sperm were a bad batch and my eggs were few. I’m upset by the constant failure, the 2 rounds and 5 embryos in and nothing but a chemical to show for it. Being told at the start we had a great chance because supposedly high AMH. The no chance of conceiving naturally like other people do. My stupid decision to jump straight into another cycle and not consider dh had just had a wisdom tooth infection and fever. I feel like an idiot who needs to get over wanting a family. I don’t have one of my own really, we’re all very distant, or they’re dead. I wanted one with dh and now that prospect feels like it’s slipping away and it’s so isolating. Not sure how I’ll get through the next few months really, where we go back to depressing natural conception while we try to improve our odds with diet, exercise, supplements. Again.

@beckyCarlos she just said it’s quite a wait because lots of people want to see him. Hmmmm. We’ve got another one on the go with the GP, going to ask for another hospital and see which is quicker.

Male factor is infuriating because there’s not much they’ll do. But to say to me the main cause is age annoys me. All my friends conceived age 35 to 40 with no issue! So it’s not only age, is it?!

@Kay00 thanks, I hope so, but trying to keep expectations low. How are you getting on with everything?

@beckyCarlos @Tinkerbell098 ikr? I’ve come home a little on the bemused side slash annoyed. I’ve just done some relaxing visualisation to try to chill because this wound me up. I said to her in response sex is pretty depressing at this stage, which it is. And how do I relax exactly? The problem hasn’t gone away.

I get she’s saying the sperm were fine for ICSI but we don’t understand why we can’t get to the bottom of why they’re not swimming, we would like a chance to conceive naturally if there’s any chance it could be improved, but maybe that’s not even possible. It makes me so annoyed no one looks into the why with sperm issues.

Breathing issues have died down now, same as last time, lasted about a week. A bit of a cough off and on but mostly back to normal.

@Tinkerbell098 thanks. I just really wanted to get a few embryos to feel like we had a chance. We’ll make more effort in the build up to the next cycle.

We had a weird follow up appointment at Guys today. We decided not to tell them we’d already done another cycle privately because we didn’t want them to say they couldn’t refer us on somewhere. We withheld that information, and discussed it as if it was the end of cycle 1 not 2.

It was soooo frustrating because she said to me I’m focusing on the wrong thing (the sperm) and we did really well on the first cycle to get 4, great fertilisation rate etc. Said we should transfer two each time in future because of my age. I asked for the sedation report and she said it was probably anxiety (it wasn’t!!!). Essentially we’ve done everything they would have suggested (just like the other clinic did) and ended up with this bad result. It was surreal because everything she’s saying is nonsense since we now know I didn’t respond well a second time on higher meds, we know the fertilisation rate and blast rate were poor this time, we know my asthma/breathing issue wasn’t just anxiety since it happened again. She also said have lots of sex!!!! (????) and I need to find ways to relax which I would love to do but I’m anxious af in life generally and after over 3 years of infertility I’m in a right state so relaxing doesn’t come easily. Sigh. On the plus side she referred us to an andrologist and we’ll get a second opinion on all that in the new year.