Can I ask for your TCC 5+ years success stories?

[uselessuterus]

I'm really, really fed up. I have unexplained infertility. I have pcos but still ovulate. We've been trying for 5 years. My dh has absolutely no issues with sperm. We've tried fertility treatments, next step is ivf.
I've done everything from temping, opk's, Chinese medicine, special lube, eating pineapple, cough medicine, you name it I've done it.
I've had one miscarriage in that time. I weigh 53kg, could do with losing 5kg (I'm petite) - I'm trying desperately to lose weight.

I'm so sick of seeing everyone get pregnant at the drop of a hat. Why won't my body do it?! I've got friends having their third baby in the time we've been trying.

So please, if you were trying for a long time and then got pregnant I'd love to hear about it. I need to hear positive stories.

We were ttc for 5 years, zero joy. Tried everything, and nothing worked. Our supposed reasons were low sperm count, and I had some cysts on my ovaries, but nothing really definite as to why it wasn’t happening, and we were recommended to go for ivf, which we had to do privately.

Finally bit the bullet, followed a pcos diet for me, and a high sperm count diet for dh (cut out peas and lots of walnuts) and when we came to be tested for ivf he had super sperm and my cysts had gone, but by that time I had low ovarian reserve and only one ovary responded. I was devastated, and convinced the cycle would fail.

I got 6 eggs out, 4 fertilised, and I had 2 implanted, hoping against hope that 1 would stick but expecting absolutely nothing. My DTs are now 9 months old!

I’m sorry for your loss, and I wish you all the best 💐

Thank you @Iwantaunicorn

I plan to go down the ivf route, but I'm not optimistic I must say.

What's the pcos diet you followed? I'm doing 5:2

I’d researched foods good for managing pcos and ate loads of veg, salads, a few pieces of the good fruit on the list, and cut out potatoes, pasta, rice and bread as much sugar as I could, calorie counted and exercised, and took q10 vitamin supplements in addition to the pre natal vitamin.

I was never diagnosed with pcos, but had cysts, and there’s no concrete evidence that the q10 helps with ivf, but was told it couldn’t hurt so I went with it for 90 days before starting.

We ended up going for ivf in Poland, have you started researching clinics yet?

I had a cysts on my ovaries too and had one large one removed. Had successful icsi as then dh had a low sperm count. 5 years of trying further ivf failed and I was looking into adoption when I fell pregnant naturally. My ds’s are now 16 and 11.
It’s a hard journey but I hope you get what you dream of in the end

Hi.

for you all - I know how hard it is.

Hope this is helpful for you:-

It took us 6 years. I always knew it was going to be tricky (him not me), but we'd been trying for around 2-3 years. Was just working up to getting medical help when he was diagnosed with testicular cancer.
Which was quite terrifying, but was treated quite quickly and successfully, and from a conception point of view was very helpful (no need now to go to a GP and be told to go away and try for a couple of years, which tended to be the advice at the time). They froze some sperm before they treated the cancer; but in the event when it came to the time, what he was producing was better (it was another year down the line by this time) so they used the fresh stuff.
I had to have a load of injections, which was grim. One session in hospital with something like a turkey baster (not great, but I have had worse sex!).
25 when we stopped using contraception, 31 when I gave birth.

DD is 17 next week.

Good luck to you all.

Have you tried the sperm comet/ DNA fragmentation test for your DH? My DP came back normal/ above average for the normal semen analyses, but the sperm comet test showed such a high level of DNA fragmentation that we're not even good candidates for IVF at the moment. He's seeing a urologist to get to the bottom of it all. Might be worth considering as we were 'unexplained' for a couple of years & this has given us some answers.

No luck so far, sadly.

Was trying for nearly 7 years before we finally did ivf. I had PCO but not majorly, dh was fine.

In that time, we tried opks, clomid, Napro including lots of drugs and Cambridge blood test diet (had to give up peas!), acupuncture (which was over an hour away from my work and I used to have to break speed limits to make my appointment causing huge stress by the time I got there), bio-energy, cough medicine, preseed lube, IUIs and far too much examination of my cervical fluid.

I didn't respond to first round of ivf, changed meds for second round and got 15 eggs, only one of which fertilised. My problem all along was polyspermic fertilisation. We did a 3 day transfer and now we have our little boy.

I bloody love ivf. With my particular problem, taking my eggs out of me and observing fertilisation was the only way we could have figured out what was wrong.

Up to the point when I was told I was pregnant, I truly believed I would never have children.

If you don't mind me asking how tall are you? 53kg is very light, I'm sure your aware but try to stick in the middle of the BMI chart, being underweight can be just as harmful as being overweight. Fingers crossed for you 🤞

BY middle I mean middle of your ideal weight 🤦🏼‍♀️ typo

@undomesticgodde55 I'm 5 foot. Technically my bmi is fine. However for me, 53kg is too much. I know it sounds light, but I'm carrying weight around my middle. Like a muffin top.

@Meredith501 thanks for your story. It makes me more keen to go down the ivf path and gives me hope - even though I feel like hope is dangerous!

@ronswansonstache no I've never heard of it. My dh has done a number of speed analysis but that was never mentioned. I'll look into it thank you

@Meredith501 I googled polyspermic fertilisation but I don't get it. Do you have any very basic explanation of what that means?

@AhAgain I'm 5" exactly, very small boned, very petite. I'm definitely not the ideal weight atm.

In normal fertilisation, once the egg accepts a sperm, the egg closes up and no other sperm can enter. My eggs let hundreds of sperm in (there's a joke about over easy eggs there somewhere). The embryologist told me it is incredibly rare and we were so lucky that one fertilised normally. Next time we'll do ICSI to avoid the polyspermic fertilisation.

Have you had a lap and dye or hysteroscopy? I had polyps in my womb that I had removed before ivf because they can prevent implantation.

Obviously there are hundreds of reasons for infertility and these are just my experiences and I know how incredibly lucky we were that the doctors were able to figure out my infertility issues.

Best of luck.

For the CoQ10, as mentioned by a previous poster, there is not as much research on it with IVF, but there is research suggesting it may support fertility and PCOS overall. Here are the relevant research studies:
PCOS and CoQ10: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cen.13288/full
IVF, Fertility, and CoQ10: www.mdpi.com/2076-3921/7/10/141

Good luck!

Me and Dan tried for & years and had started to look at adoption. Then I found I was pregnant and he is now five years old

Thanks @Meredith501
I've had a hysteroscopy. However during it the doctor cut my uterus badly and I lost a fair amount of blood. I had an mri after to see if there was any damage to my uterus but it looked ok.

@ckc45d10 thanks for the info, I'll look into that!