How the fuck am I STILL not pregnant????

[Goinginsane000]

Sorry, I appreciate that this isn’t an AIBU but I am at breaking point and hoping there’s more traffic here.

I have been TTC for 3 years. I was referred for NHS fertility treatment 2 years ago. Tests showed I have PCOS, as suspected. Put on Clomid, had a chemical preg after 3 months. Ovulated probably 10 times out of 12 cycles if I remember correctly. No further BFP for another year. 13 months ago I had a laparoscopy with ovarian drilling. Worked wonders, had a natural period for the first time ever (without needing drugs to bring one on). Continued on Clomid and ovulated every single month without fail. Got pg 6 months later but miscarried at 7 weeks. Was then put on Letrozole. I have ovulated on every one of the 6 cycles I’ve been on this but no fucking BFP. Due to the miscarriage, I had to wait another year for my IVF referral because you need to have not had a pregnancy in the past 12 months.

There must be something else at play, surely???? How can this be happening? Does anyone have any insight or personal experience of a similar history??

For what it’s worth, I am 30. Size 10, have eaten a mainly carb and sugar free diet for 3 years. I don’t smoke or drink much (because I am constantly “possibly pregnant”). I exercise regularly and can run 6 miles in just under 40 mins with zero effort. I take very good care of myself.

Seriously, WTAF!

OP have you joined the Fertility Friends forum? Lots of factual info there.
I had secondary infertility for 8 years. 2 MC. All the tests. Monitored cycle. Nada. It still took me a long time to have our youngest DD. I conceived on round 6 of Clomid.
Conception is just not so easy as people think. You can do everything you can each month and still not get the bfp.
I'd keep monitoring, track your cycle, chart your luteal phase etc. Keep pushing for further testing and try IUI first.
Best of luck, everyone who has been there knows what it's really like xxx

That’s just it, isn’t it banana? I always think that it’s not that infertility gets harder as time rolls by, it’s that you get better at accepting the disappointments. It’s a strange kind of stress. I wonder if people who aren’t experiencing infertility misinterpret ‘stress’ associated with infertility. It’s not like, say, the stress of losing a purse full of cash and all your cards and frantically retracing your steps. It’s a stress that you become used to. A quiet, dull, grey kind of stress. It’s always there and from time to time there are bursts of real overwhelming pain and anguish. Other times you’re struck by just how ‘normal’ it’s become to feel this way, despite it always being at the back of your mind. What people don’t realise is that, despite this, you still feel hopeful. Hope is actually the protagonist in all this, so I will never be able to accept that stress is the one thing that is getting in the way of conceiving the baby i so desperately want. I still have conversations with my husband speculating about what our baby would be like (even if the narrative has changed from “when to IF we have a kid”) etc. I wish people would understand that it’s not that we’re sat around crying and being negative all the time. If we did, we’d never rack up so many attempts. And I can only speak for myself, of course, as everyone is different but as soon as one cycle failed, I’d write it off and focus on the next. With GREAT HOPE. So hopeful in fact, that I’d buy little outfits or baby items just in case they weren’t in stock when I was finally pregnant. I’ve even enjoyed some bits of IVF as it’s felt incredibly proactive and exciting.

Sorry for the essay but I need people to understand that it isn’t black and white. We all know people struggling with infertility and probably don’t even suspect. They’ll be sat on the desk next to you, on the train sat opposite you, the GP treating you for your ear infection (my friend is a GP with long term infertility issues, for example). You HAVE to get on with it, otherwise you’d never hear of people conceiving with infertility issues.

Sorry OP, I feel like I’ve hyjacked your thread. Many people have offered excellent advice. You’re doing everything possible. I’m so sorry you’re in this position.

Love and strength to everyone in this wretched club.

I have a cat already, should I get rid of her and get a new one? Will that work?

Been on lots of holidays and booked some where it would have been inconvenient to be pregnant, that didn’t work either.

Just relaxing didn’t work, but so far neither have fertility lubricant, supplements, lying down with hips up after sex, temping, opks, Chinese herbal medicine, acupuncture, a miscarriage (as apparently should have been more fertile after), a diet, using mucus thinning cough syrups etc etc. Sometimes people are just subfertile and no well meaning “just relax” bullshit can change that.

@Goinginsane000

Here hear @kikisparks

I thought pineapple got the baby out rather than in?

Although that one is bullshit too...

The idea with pineapple is that it contains an enzyme called bromelain which is thought to aid implantation with its anti inflammatory/blood thinning properties. I too am always mildly amused when I read the statuses on SM if overdue women knocking back the pineapple. The irony is never lost on me!

One point I do think worth making, regarding myths etc is that we actually don't know that much about the female reproductive cycle and that's ridiculous. And I'm not talking about non hcps, I'm talking about HCPs. There really shouldln't be so many cases of "unexplained" infertility shuld there? The uterus is not some "that way there be dragons" unknowable Bermuda triangle.

The amount of money spent by the US military on erectile dysfunction was 84 million pounds last year.

Then when women do get pregnant and have a baby they deal with the reprucussions of bad medicine and bad practice and still get fobbed off. The whole thing stinks

Oops dollars, sorry. Obviously.

I do think that's why these myths get passed around by non hcps, if we're going to take wild stabs in the dark. Mine is as good as anyone elses.

AND while on my high horses, I think all of the myths have frequently been uttered to people (even on this thread) by their actual bloody doctors.

Having finally got to the end of this thread, I have no useful information to add to that which several excellent posters - Banana and PurpleDaisies for example - have already added. We had unexplained IF for 8 years before our miracle ICSI baby arrived.

For us it was definitely the ICSI that worked (although we had to try that three times before it did). IF sucks - it's horrendously stressful ("just relax" evidently), cataclysmically expensive and life changing. I hope it works for you, I truly do.

OP I'm so sorry you're going through this. I haven't been in your position but I have friends who have been. It is brutal.

I haven't read all posts but enough to see the justifiable narkiness from some folk who know a lot more about infertility and the reality of going through it than your average AIBU-er. But I'll stick up for them a bit. To those who are annoyed at people trotting out predictable and potentially hurtful chiches - I'm on AIBU a lot and no, there aren't loads of threads on infertility. Lots of folk don't necessarily know any better. They're trying to say something positive, and with all respect to OP, she posted here, not on the conception boards. At least people are replying and trying to say the right thing. I'm sure a few have learned a lot on this thread.

Plus... the reason OP has posted is that she is out of ideas. And she describes in detail why. Now a lot of folk have rightly said, maybe there is no reason and that is that and it's the luck of the draw. But as we also know that there's a lot we don't know, folk coming onto a thread and making some off the wall suggestions is, in that circumstance, maybe not as unacceptable as all that, in a 'what have you got to lose' way.

I'm sure that OP is well aware that she's going to get far more knowledgable responses on the conception boards and so isn't going to be shocked to the core that the responses here range from the uninformed and obvious to the detailed and nuanced. Lots of really interesting points made on investigating immune issues, for example.

I hope that OP has been able to pick out some useful info here as well as getting something from the number of responses expressing sympathy with what she's going through.

Here is my utterly uninformed and neutrally proffered suggestion, which comes from a place of no knowledge at all. You talk a lot about diet, obviously with the PCOS link that's highly significant for you. I see your diet is textbook 'good' as regards carbs, sugar sources etc. Given that your diet is a very easy thing to change and then change back, if it were me I would wonder what might happen if I were to experiment with changing this diet from the textbook 'good' to 'not so good'. To spend a month or two accessing sugar/carb sources with a higher glycaemic index, to relax on sugar intake a bit. Not to stuff junk of course, but to just relax that diet and especially the carb control. It's not something I would do for long but - it is something that is a 'variable' that you could change as yet another way to give the dice a roll so to speak. Who knows.

OP. Hope you’ not totally fled from the slight bun fighting a bit further up.

Sorry to harp on the thyroid issue, but this is something definitely worth following up, if you haven’t already. AIUI when people are monitored for TSH level by their GP, they are quite often just told “fine “ with no actual figure. Not only is this often not true for a ‘normal ‘ person (should be under 5, but some doctors don’t consider a problem until well above this), but fertility clinics consider 2.5 or even 2.0 the limit if ttc. Obviously if your TSH was going way out of whack by normal standards you probably wouldn’t be able to exercise, but a merely ‘fertility-unfriendly ‘ level probably wouldn’t show symptoms.

(AIUI the NHS/ some GPs either don’t accept the lower cut-off for ttc or haven’t heard of it, and I’ read of women really having to fight to get their thyroxine increased. When I had my MMC 4 years ago there was a study looking into the relationship between thyroid and MC - afraid I can’t remember more details- but it does seem that it might be entering the mainstream as a fertility issue.)

@TipsNotHacks's post on Monday at 00.39 is EXCELLENT.

I have PCOS too. It’s not enough to ‘low carb’, you have to increase your protein vs fat intake and take in fruit and veg carbs. You should speak to a specialist; maybe demand an IVF referral or pay for a pre-IVF check up - I have regular periods but it turned out the eggs I was producing were immature

Hi just wanted to see if you have any updates. I can understand your frustration my husband and I have been ttc for almost 4 yrs now. I had a laparoscopy done per Dr thought I had endometriosis thank God u didn't just had small cyst he removed. 2 months later put me on clomid and we tried the baby mosi got pregnant after 1 dose had miscarriage at about 6 weeks. I have had about 5 doses of clomid now with no luck. Specialist said both me and my husband are completely healthy. Period before last was 1 week late with only 1 day of pd. Most recent period normal just a few days early. I don't no if I should continue the clomid I'm also 30 yrs old my hubby is 34. I've also tried to relax and not think about it. I relaxed so much that if even forget when my pd was due so that didn't help me personally. I have a friend going through the same thing she just got pregnant but her husband took the clomid said it was to boost mobility..idk I'm sending my hubby to another specialist to look into this. Sorry for the long post just wanted to let you know that i completely I understand what your going through. O ya and I had also quit my job for 2 years obviously didn't help lol.

Your story sounds very familiar to mine. My last piece of the puzzle was that I wasn’t generating enough progesterone so had to take suppositories. Can you ask the doctor for a blood test

Also, how early do you test. I was actually having quite a few chemical pregnancies but losing them at about 4.5 weeks so just thought that it was a slightly longer cycle until I started testing early

I have two uncles who were married almost 10 years before their wives became pregnant. No issues with any of them. Just the way things worked out.

Only advice I would give is not to fall into the trap of blaming each other as times passes.

Good luck

Completely understand why you're infuriated by this whole journey. In your situation I think I'd go private and just get the ball rolling on IVF. It may be worth considering the bmi question (getting it up a little) and asking your medical professionals their opinions, given your PCOS and the possible impact gaining weight may have on that. Good luck. It's such an exhausting journey.

Things that worked for us (after 3 years TTC) was cutting out alcohol, cutting massively down on caffeine and exercise. Also, both DH and I took quite a few recommended vitamin supplements and boosted our diets with recommended foods. I used Conceive Plus up there after we DTD and raised my legs/hips for 20 minutes against the wall.

I know you probably do most of these and I know we were lucky but it’s what worked for us after a very long time.

Good luck to you

Lots of exercise I meant, not cutting down!

I know a few women who had this issue - getting pregnant and then early miscarriages. Getting progesterone treatment in early pregnancy was what got them their babies.

Also I'm not a doctor but I question that every other day is better than daily. Both times I got pregnant happened from daily sex during my fertile window. The few months I was TTC before it happened we had been doing every other day.

Reflexology. Really, try it!

I can really understand what you are going through. I also have PCOS and had three miscarriages at around 12 / 13 weeks before having ovarian drilling. My consultant then told me to try and get pregnant asap (as if I wasn't trying!) and as soon as I did put me on low dose aspirin for the whole pregnancy. I was one of the lucky ones and had my son without too much drama. You are doing everything you can. I was low carbing (still am) and trying to relax (easier said than done) but each disappointment was like a hammer blow.

It's just shit love, sorry to not have a magic solution. Some people get pregnant with apparent ease others don't.
Some people win the Lotto, others don't.
Lots of theories behind what could increase your chances of success, but nothing concrete.
Good luck and ignore anyone who says stop running.