IVF failure and intuition?

[ohbigdaddio]

I found out a few days ago my 2nd embryo transfer has failed.

DH and I didn't feel we wanted children until I was 37 and I distinctly remember when DH and I were discussing it that I said "knowing my luck we'll decide to have kids and then we won't be able to, and I'll be really upset."

We began TTC. After 6 months or so I began to get the feeling I just wouldn't get pregnant and after 18 months of TTC I didn't once see a BFP.

We started tests and were diagnosed with unexplained infertility. IVF followed last September which resulted in a BFN. After this a horrible 6 month wait as I had to wait for an operation to remove a fibroid and then in February this year we began a medicated frozen cycle. Over 8 weeks of hope and determination later and again a BFN. I am devastated but had thoughts after the embryo transfer that this attempt probably won't work either. (I also had some happy thoughts about how amazing it would be if it worked so I'm not being entirely pessimistic but in general I wouldn't let myself think too positively.)

I'm not trying to be negative but I feel like I have a feeling that I'm just not going to ever get pregnant. I look at pregnant women and wonder why can't my body do that? I am 39 and we have 1 frozen embryo left. We are too swept up in our grief to decide what to do next but I am already thinking 'I bet this one won't work either.' It's just a feeling I get and I've had it all along. I'm not sure if I am being silly or if I have a deep intuition about my body.

Could I be right? Has anyone else felt like this but been proven wrong?

Please be gentle (and, please, no 'have you thought of adopting?' comments!) x

I felt like this after embryo transfer. I was convinced I wasn’t pregnant and started to look at other clinics to help deal with the disappointment I was sure was coming. I couldn’t believe it when my test was positive.

Thinking negatively will not affect your chances- I’m definitely a glass half empty type!

You probably get sick of hearing these stories, but my friend has just got pregnant naturally after 17 IVF cycles. She has 1/4 of an ovary and hasn’t ovulated for six years. Miracles DO happen. We never expected her to ever become pregnant. She hated hearing these stories and can’t believe she now has her own to tell.

Good luck and keep trying!

Yes I always felt it would be a struggle for me and lo and behold it was. I knew both times that IVF wouldn’t work and it didn’t. It sucks OP

One day whilst we were waiting and saving for IVF abroad I woke up and new I was pregnant and I was, he is now 2.5. When he was 12 months old I had that feeling again and baby is 9 months old.

Not a lot of help to you I know (and I hated hearing stories like this) but don’t give up hope OP and don’t forget there are lots of ways to start a family x

We're in the same boat as you, I feel your pain.

Sometimes keep carrying on even though it's making no difference isn't the best thing to do. I wanted kids, but it turns out that I'm so completely barren that no intervention would work. It was hard for a long time, but then got better and is actually ok now.

You don't have to make a decision now. You've got one last chance, if you decide to take it. If not, then it doesn't mean that you didn't try hard enough or you didn't want it enough. Some people just can't have a child whatever they do.

The difficulty is always the miracle stories. However how many more people never get their miracle baby? We just don't hear about the many many failures, only the few successes.

The other problem is the have you tried.....etc etc and, of course, fostering and adoption. For some people, like Lizzie48 adoption is the answer. For others, like me, it is something that I knew wasn't the answer.

Good luck and maybe have a look at the infertility board where there are likely to be more realistic people.

I used to hate the success stories. Especially those stories of couples who gave up trying to conceive, applied to adopt and were successful, child lined up, and then lo and behold a miracle pregnancy. It It doesn't happen in RL, or at least very rarely. It isn't helpful at all.

Just don't say anything, infertile couples are not looking for suggestions, advice or success stories.

Sorry I really wasn’t trying to upset or offend anyone with my story

You can't live your life for fear of upsetting people. I used to love hearing positive stories because it gave me hope I may be one of them at some point.

There are sadly no guarantees IVF will work but it is a medical procedure and force of will or positive thinking won't spontaneously create life so I wouldn't stress about feeling negative. I was pretty sure my the IVF would fail on cycle one because the stats said so, it was pretty much random chance it didn't, my thinking didn't impact on the process at all.
Statistically we could have had a baby without lab help but ten years haven't produced one regardless of our positive feelings about that happening.
Stay as together as you can and build up as much of the other areas of your life as you can.

Infertility is shit enough without being made to feel it’s your fault because you aren’t thinking positively enough or doing something else wrong.

No one's saying it's not shit.

I agree completely with some of the posters saying actually the healthiest thing you can do for your own emotional wellbeing is to know when to call time.

So do I.

I actually naively thought the first go would work (same sex relationship donor insemination at home) But it didn't and now many cycles later I'm starting to think there won't be a child in my future and it breaks my heart. Like a previous poster said how do you know when to call time? :/

Hi op,

We had unexplained infertility. After 4 years of TTC I was at near breaking point with the emotional rollercoaster.
Just before our first IVF cycle I started hypnotherapy sessions, with a hypnotherapist who specialised in infertility.

It was pretty amazing. The hypnotherapy shifted my mindset massively. And when it came to do the IVF.... instead of thinking about how statistically our chances weren't great, I went in with "how can this not work?!"

I know hypnotherapy isn't for everyone but you have nothing to lose in giving it a go. Xxx

Curiously, although I was devastated at how things turned out with the IVF, it meant that I could know that I'd done what I could and could move on to the next stage of my life. It made it easier to gain closure. I didn't have to agonise over when to call time.

When I was 19 I had my horoscope forecast stupid I know and was told I'd never have children of my own. From that point I had a deep and abiding belief that I would never have children that lasted until the birth of my first child. The months when we were try and failing to conceive (only 10 months of them, nothing like your case) were particularly bleak.

I don't know whether you will ever have children, I dont know whether you should carry on trying (fwiw I think this is a deeply personal decision to which there is no right answer). I do believe though that intuition in these cases is often not intuition but our own deep fears and we need not listen to it and if we do it will make no difference.

Wishing you all the best

My fertility consultant said to me that stress doesn't cause infertility, but infertility causes stress

Another fertility consultant, a professor in reproductive medicine, told that that statistically with persistence most people do get there eventually

Sadly he said that I was one of the very very few people for whom there was no point carrying on with treatment, as there was no realistic chance of me ever being able to sustain a pregnancy, because my womb was too damaged

We are having to come to terms with the fact we can't have children. But most people do get there eventually - just not us. Good luck with your treatment

Not us either. Or perhaps we weren’t persistent enough......

Agree @SerenDippitty.

When we finished treatment I had an IUD put in. We can't live in limbo hoping to be one of those miracle couples before menopause like on this thread. As the saying goes - the despair I can deal with, it's the hope that kills me.

It's really really shit. We're trying to come to terms with it all. Never have I tried so hard to get precisely nowhere

@bananafish I’m sorry for what you have been through. It does get better I promise.

3 ivfs and no baby. I feel you OP. I am also start to wonder if we are not meant to have any DC. Sorry not helpful but good luck to you

So sorry about your loss! All I can say is to stay hopeful. DP and I tried to get pregnant for about 2 years before being referred to a fertility clinic (we're in Canada). Our doctor did recommend that we do an Endometrial Receptivity Analysis (ERA) to help determine the best time for a transfer. You may want to discuss this with your doctor if you haven't already as I believe it helped. The results indicated that I had a displacement of about 12 hours so they knew exactly when to do the transfer. I got pregnant on both transfers that I had. Sadly, the first one resulted in a miscarriage at 7 weeks, but I'm now at 39 weeks and going into be induced on Wednesday.

It was through a company called Igenomix. The doctor took a sample which I had to fedex to the US, but it looks like they have a presence in the UK (www.igenomix.co.uk). It cost about $1200 CAD. I hope this helps. Good luck!!

With all the advances in reproductive technology, it's like there's always another option, always something else you can try. Which is fine if you want to keep trying, but it also means that if/when you stop trying you have to deal with the feeling that maybe the next attempt was going to be the one that worked. It's hard to get closure, it's easy to feel like you have a sort of responsibility e keep trying and you really don't, your only responsibility is to yourself and your own wellbeing.

I think that after the first failure it's very natural to be negative, I think it's your brain's way of protecting you. I think loads of people feel like that, I certainly did, despite the sort of tabloid narrative of "we did 22345 rounds of IVF and had to sell all our possessions and come and live in this hole in the ground but we never lost hope and eventually our prayers were answered" sort of thing.

Thanks all for your comments, some really comforting words there. Mumsnet has helped me immensely on my IVF 'journey' (ugh!) so far.

toomuchtooold this is my 2nd cycle, not my first. In between these cycles I’ve had an op to remove a fibroid so I guess I was fixated on that being the issue and this time it would work.

bananafish81 and SerenDippitty thanks so much for your input and love to both of you.

yourveryworstnightmare I hope we are both proved wrong.

no, it doesn't sound like intuition when you say you feel you won't concieve - it sounds like pessimism. I don't mean that in a critical 'buck up missus!' way, just that pessimism is the name for predicting the worst outcome. This has really helped me try to see things differently MirriVan Really helpful comment, thank you x

And not so helpful…
You probably get sick of hearing these stories, but my friend has just got pregnant naturally after 17 IVF cycles.
I forgot to mention that we are paying for our treatment and the option to keep going forever is not there. 17 cycles would cost something to the tune of £85,000. Is this a true story Osirus? I’m not sure any doctor would let you keep going for that long or how anyone would afford it.

Thanks all who have given virtual hugs, flowers, and love to those feeling the same and struggling to conceive through IVF.
I have counselling today so am hoping the tears will come so that I can start to grieve.

Sorry daddio I know it's not your first attempt, I just meant that in general once you've had one failure, the subsequent tries I think it's natural to be pessimistic to protect yourself.

I also wanted to say, I'm with you on the 17 IVFs. I had recurrent miscarriage and I met someone in one of the clinics who'd had 15 miscarriages, and I thought, I don't care if I never have children, I'm not trying 15 times. There was a limit to how much I was willing to put myself through and at 3 miscarriages I had pretty much hit that limit. I just wanted my life back either way. And people might think that's an awful thing to say, particularly as I did go on to have children (twins, by IVF, and we decided once they were born not to retain the remaining frozen embryos) but the truth is even especially if you do go on to have children, you want to be in a state of mind where you're able to care for them. That is a big challenge in itself and it's hard to go straight from bereavement and medical interventions into parenthood. I think that's the reason why PND is more common in mothers who conceived using IVF. You know I wouldn't put anyone off trying it, but I wish a bit more was said about the emotional toll that infertility and miscarriage take on people.

That's ok toomuchtooold – I got the wrong end of the stick there!

Yes, I'm really not sure how many years it would take to do 17 cycles and what sort of consultant would let you do it that many times?!

The 'keep trying 346 times' comments are all well meant but usually from people who now have DC and can look back with hindsight. I can't go on living like this indefinitely but I have no idea how and when you would choose to stop and have nothing but admiration for people who have. Sometimes enough is enough. I have one friend IRL who decided that IVF just wasn't for them and drew the line there and are now living a different, childless, future. After a lot of counselling and support they are ok, which gives me hope, but they went through hell to get there.