Fantastic 40+ Thread - Part Eight.

[goldengirl71]

"Come on ovaries! Let's get this party started, yeah?"

DP has just learned of the death of his biological mother - she ran away with a man called 'Cliff' when DP was teeny-tiny and returned to claim only him, the youngest of her four children. His father told her to fuck off and she was never seen or heard of again. DP's relationship with his father is non-existent since DP spent time in prison a few years ago (his father thinks alcoholics are work-shy imbeciles and a thoroughly bad lot). DP has just rung to say that not only has his mother died but that his father is not his biological dad - it's 'Cliff'! (who is also dead). What the f**k?! I wish I smoked

goldengirl71 Wow. That's almost too much for any one person to take in at once. As someone who has never really had any family per se (long story), I know the sense of loss of belonging. Hope your dh is ok.

Oh, and yes, hat trick, definitely!!!!

Oh Golden, how sad for your DH. And how confusing to learn that "Cliff" was his father, but he never had the chance to know him. I hope your DP is okay.

Bluebird, thanks for the articles. The one about timing intercourse was great.It really made things clear.As golden said, it shows how important EWCM is. I worry that I don't have enough of it, and pray that my DH has so many olympic swimmers that the lack of fertile mucus won't be too much of a bother.

When I got pregnant with DS,at 41, I was taking red clover tablets, which were actually for menopause, but the reason I took it was that red clover helps to support the production of estrogen, which in turn helps produce EWCM. That is why as we age, the fertile mucus dwindles. I am thinking I might invest in some red clover again and see if it makes any difference.

I have been thinking about getting a fertility monitor again,and have been having a bidding war on ebay for one, but the price is getting a bit high, so not sure what to do about that. The article gave it a good review, so I'm tempted. I wish I'd kept the one I had before, but I was trying to give up ttc at the timeIt is really interesting that by the time we have a LH surge it is getting a bit late. The monitor doesn't tell you the correct days of "peak" fertility, but it does identify the couple of days beforehand.So knowing this, the monitor would help pinpoint the best days to DTD.

It is Sunday here and I plan to finally get off my fat arse and get some exercise.I'll take a walk on the beach this morning and do a yoga class this afternoon.

Hi golden sorry for your dp's news. How awful and difficult to digest.

In answer to your queries I was 41 when I had dd and she was my third. It had taken 2 years of constant shagging, and 2 mc one mmc. Now it doesn't sound so bad but at the time I really doubted we were ever going to get there. Several times we almost gave up.
gum yes I love all the baby stage, she was sleeping through til 4 months. Since then it's been two or even three night feeds. Still with a busy other two dcs at least I get to wonder at her just by myself for a bit each night.
Sticky dust to you tina and good luck to you all.

Hey all....I am still around.
golden poor DP...how is he feeling about it all??

gum cbfm's are expensive to run...a bit like my car lol. I gave up on mine due to my long cycles. Can you perhaps see one second- hand on ebay?? They can be reset for a new user.

So much seems to be going on on here....much love to all.

I had a week from hell last week with work. Feeling very very undervalued and having virtually run the place all last week, I received a snotty email at 4:45pm on Friday from my acting line manager (mine resigned 2 weeks ago)to say that 2 of my dispensing errors had got out of the Pharmacy recently (I do make errors when I'm stressed and we are understaffed....I've admitted that to them) and so they are severely curtailing my dispensing and checking duties whilst they recheck me. Strange how they waited until the end of the week to do it. If they had decided earlier on that week the department would have had to shut!!!! I'm mortified to be honest...total humiliation. So... that coupled with DP being away and all this ttc business (which none of them know about) has led me to feel a little "on the edge"..if any of you know what I mean? I have seriously considered going to GP and getting some time off...however am torn as this may have an effect if I decide to move on at some point.

I am now 10 days post Provera.....no af. Bizaarely I have noticed some ewcm yesterday and this morning. WTF?? I have stopped temping, no more peeing on sticks, no charting or poking at my body and the very stilted conversation with DP on phone has not even broached the subject of ttc. Suffice to say it seems to have been more to the back of my mind. He is home next Saturday until Monday morning and at this rate I could have af so even a good shag is out of the window. Raaaa gah and double poo.
So apologies for being all doom and gloom....but it is an explanation as to my absence for a few days.

Bastards calibee one day I would like to write a book about workplace culture where it is considered ok to push people to their limits and then when, lo and behold, they have limits, somehow construe that as failure. There is something wrong in the system - in the private sector it's capitalism always seeking to grow profit for greedy shareholders. In the NHS where it sounds like u work I'm not so sure but
It sucks! All my sympathies. Xxx

Somewhere...how you just worded that 1st sentence.... Absolutely, completely and utterly spot on. I may well just use that when the time comes. Thankyou x
I love my job and as far as is possible I want to progress and develop....I feel like a failure just now. My body is failing me and now I am made to feel like I have failed at work too.

Just wanted to echo what Somewhere said to you, Calibee. You must try hard to rationalise what is going on around you and not be made to feel inadequate or in any way a failure. Too many people have been relying on you to deliver too much and you are only human. Just because you work in a pharmacy does not mean there is no room for human error. Fuckers. You cannot say yet that your body is failing you, you simply haven't figured out the logistics yet. Your Provera and my Clomid are not magic beans and if this shit doesn't work for you and me then we'll figure something out. Please stay close to those who love you and appreciate you xx

Thank you, ladies, for your kind concern re DP. He is okay, if a little pensive. He is particularly crushed that his beloved (dead) grandmother may not have been his real one. Apparently they worshipped one another. Last night I tried to make him a posh supper to return to: lempngrass beef stew. It was an unmitigated disaster - lemongrass stalks floating like flotsam and beef tougher than old boots - so we ended up having a chippy tea

Today was great, though! We decided to go on a 'proper date' to cheer us up and so, after trekking up three hills to wait for yet another bus that didn't turn up we eventually boarded the next one and went to the nearest town. We had Double Whoppers and milkshake in Burger King and then went shopping for me a jumper. This is where I start to rant: what the f**k is going on when you cannot find a quality jumper on the high street which doesn't end under your tits, have panels of lace or pictures of owls on the front? And why is everything tat? Why are we being asked to pay £40 for a 100% acrylic sweater which will bobble under the tits and down the cuffs before you've made the bus-ride home?

Anyway, I found one (80% cotton, 20% acrylic) in cream with the word GEEK across the chest in burgundy. Please don't ask me why . I hate slogens across breasts and I'm not a geek (not even in the ironic sense). I guess it feels self-deprecatory. Or something.

..then we went to the cinema and watched Argo with Ben Affleck - utterly superb - and I polished off a bag of chocolate chewing nuts and giant white mice. There was an hour wait for the bus home so we went into a pub (the first time in over two years!) and drank two pints of blackcurrant cordial in tap water (£2.35, the robbing bastards - and what's with the odd number for the price of two drinks? How can one cost £1.17 and the other £1.18?) On the bus-ride home we snogged alot (wince) and concocted A Cunning Plan to get me preggo this month - more of that tomorrow (I can hear you snoring).

Gum, forgive me if I've misinterpreted Bluebird's article but I think it suggests that fertility monitors may pinpoint the peak days too late - the day of the LH surge and the following day. This would be problematic for you, I would suggest, because you sometimes get a positive OPK on the day of ovulation. This leaves precious little time to have enough sex. I don't know what the answer is if you really don't know from month to month what day you ovulate. I get a positive OPK at least 36 hours before I ovulate and so there is time for more than one sex session (if DP's recalcitrant penis behaves). However, I can now see that any sex we have in the evening on the day of ov is just too late. Probably. This month I am having my HCG shot at 10am on CD14. This means I will ovulate at the earliest at 6pm the next day. DP has decided we will have sex on the evening of the injection and then again early morning on the day of ovulation before he goes to work. I am thrilled with this plan and, after abstaining for the five days beforehand, I am hoping DP's turbo-jetted sperm will do the trick

Shandybass, thank you for replying. May I ask how long you waited after your miscarriages for a BFP?

Bluebird, I'd like to thank you again for posting links to those articles for us. I really appreciate people sharing knowledge in this way. Please will you think of us again if you come across stuff which is pertinent to us? Knowledge Is Power and all that.

*slogan (sorry, I'm anal).

Yes, Golden, I also understood that about the fertility monitor, but the good thing about the monitor is it tells you when estrogen starts to rise in the run up to peak days. The monitor tells you it is "high" fertility days, then tells you "peak" when you have the LH surge. So if that article is correct, using the monitor and having sex on "High" days will have the sperm in place in time.
That's why I think it would be better than the OPK's alone.

Having said that, although I'm having a couple of wonky cycles (I'm fully aware that I'm perimenopausal) I know if I start having sex on day ten,every second day, then I'm in with a chance.And having sex on the day of the surge as well should cover the bases. However,I'm still looking at getting the monitor. I have to go and check on ebay as the one I'm bidding on will finish soon.

Sounds like your DH has a plan to get you upduffed

Your 'every second day' plan is a good 'un, Gum. I wish we could manage that, but then again, I consider my DP's sperm wasted if deposited more than two days prior to ovulation - especially as EWCM is becoming elusive

Have to say I still don't understand why my CBFM showed highs from cd14 to cd26 then back to low when I didnt ovulate until cd32 last cycle. I'm afraid I lost my faith after that. Cost me a fortune in sticks it did lol.
Off to face the wrath soon at work. I am however armed with the appropriate policies naming humiliation and degradation as a form of harrasment and bullying. I hate that nervous feeling in my stomach which seems to have taken permanent residence lately.

Best of luck, Calibee, be strong x

That CBFM sounds mental

Test

Hi ladies - new to this and have just joined today!

I take it that this thread is for women TTC in their 40's!?!

Hello, Geminita, and welcome to the thread Yes! We are all over 40 and trying to conceive!

Can you tell us a bit about yourself ie. age, children, criminal record (joking)?

CaliBee - hope it went OK at your work, that sounds so stressful! Fingers crossed they back off, it's the last thing you need right now!

golden - how is your DP holding up? That certainly is a lot for someone to take in, he must understandably feel rattled. Glad to see that you two are making every effort to lift your spirits, sounds as if you had a nice date night!

Welcome to the thread Geminita - yes, we are the quadragenarians on the rollercoaster ride ttc!

Ladies, I'm struggling to understand my temping chart - last month was textbook, nice temp rise, coinciding with EWCM, OPK and what not, then going down again before af arrived.
This month, however, it looks like the skyline of the Himalayas! Apparently, I ovulated on the day I got my positive OPK (I know that's possible, but still...), and since then, my temp is going up and down and up and down. Way below the coverline yesterday, way above today, and I'm only on (supposedly) 6 DPO. Anyone can shed any light on this?
I've also noticed my cycles becoming quite a bit shorter than they used to be - usually, I'd be pretty much excatly 29-30 days, now I'm hovering around 25-26, should I be concerned about that?

Told you I'm spending too much time looking at these flippin' charts...

Right, here goes - I'm 43 and will be 44 next birthday (June '13) and have no children of my own - purely due to spending too long with the wrong ones and not meeting the right one until a couple of years ago and we are now engaged and very happy!

My other half has been married before and has two children of 9 & 5. He made it clear to me right from the start that he didn't want any more children. Although I had always wanted a baby and thought that I would become a mum, I went along with this, as I really thought that I had missed my chance in life now.

As time went on and I have had to deal with becoming a step-parent - not always an easy thing to deal with and any other stepmums out there, would be great to hear from you too - the acceptance of never being a biological mum has got harder and harder to bear.

Sooooo, I came off the pill about 8/9 months ago, without telling my other half, really believing that nothing would happen - yes, I know it was wrong, but I really thought that if anything happened, it was meant to be - hadn't really thought about how I would approach other half if it did though!!!!!

To cut a long story short, when we came back from our hols in the summer, I was a couple of weeks late. I had resumed having monthlies after coming off the mini pill. I still didn't really think that I could be and I started bleeding after a couple of weeks - it was heavier than normal and didn't stop and when my Dr sent me for a scan, they weren't def sure, but thought I was miscarrying - I then had to own up to other half what I had done - he went ballistic at first, but since then, has totally supported me and is behind me trying for a baby of my own. The week after the scan was horrendous, backwards and forwards for internals/blood tests etc and the final blood test showed that the pregnancy hormone level had gone right down and showed that it was def a Missed Miscarriage and I then had surgery to remove the gestational sac and contents that was still attached to the inside of my womb.

Currently, my Dr has said try naturally for 6 months and then come back and see him to decide where to go from there. I am now panicking and after having researched the topic to death, am convinced that maybe my eggs are too old and any future pregnancies will end the same way - 1 in 2 result in miscarriage age 42 onwards! So, should I wait another 6 mnths or be getting my ovarian reserve tested now?

This is causing difficulties in my relationship, as other half thinks I'm jumping the gun a bit now and it is making me snappy with him and very tearful and I am withdrawing from the stepchildren too, leaving other half to deal with them over the last week or so, which is alienating me even more and annoying other half, as he cannot understand my reasoning - may I add that they are two beautiful children that I love very much and they have accepted me - but their mum & dad will always come 1st and I want a child that will think that of me! I want a crystal ball to tell me whether or not it will happen - but know that's impossible, but how do I carry on rationally and stop reacting so irrationally about everything!?!

Sorry if it seems like I have been ranting - hard to get everything out........

JBrd, thanks, DP is coping well. Your erratic post-ov temps relate to your progesterone levels, which should remain nice and lofty until they plummet towards AF. I would suggest you go to your GP and ask for help to improve these levels of progesterone (without high enough levels we can't sustain a pregnancy). I take it your shorter periods are caused by shorter luteal phases? This would indicate a problem with your progesterone, too. Unless, of course, you didn't ovulate this month at all - despite your positive OPK. I would say get thee to the GP and ask for progesterone tests.

Geminita, firstly, I am sorry you suffered your mmc - horrible. Secondly, I would run, run, run to the fertility clinic to get your ovarian reserve and progesterone levels checked. My ovarian reserve is really quite good but I haven't fallen pregnant in the eight months since my mmc. This ttc malarkey is the toughest thing I've ever undertaken - and I'm a relative newcomer compared to some ladies on this thread. The statistics make horridly depressing reading - 1% chance of conceiving each cycle if you are 43.

If I had the money and I was 43 I wouldn't waste any more time. I would go for IVF with donor eggs. That is purely my opinion and there will be others on here who will tell you that it is a matter of being patient for that golden egg. This is also good advice, however, the older we get the more realistic those statistics are beginnning to prove. Get as much help as you can and arm yourself with knowledge regarding your ovarian reserve etc. Good luck.

P.s..I am in awe of women who are step-mums without children of their own. My DP has a seven year-old twat son who, thankfully, I rarely see. Hats off to you for not only tolerating your step-kids but loving them too. They are lucky to have you in their lives.

Geminita, to put things into perspective, there are two women I know of on this thread who have got pregnant and given birth over the age of 43. Jollster was 44 and Lolfactor was an incredible 46. Others have managed to get pregnant but have sadly lost their babies. We have four pregnant ladies on the thread currently - all in their very early 40s, I think. Tina is pregnant with twins after IVF with donor eggs.

hi geminita welcome to the thread, you'll find everyone here is very supportive and several of us (not me so much lol) have a wealth of experience and advice to give you. As golden says I am 9 weeks pregnant with twins and I'm 44, due to my eggs not being great I went the donor egg route as I'd been trying for a few years without success, thats not to say others of my age and older haven't been able to conceive themselves I was just unlucky (but very lucky now!)

I feel for you as a step parent, it's the other way round for us, my dh is step dad to my 21 year old daughter and has been through the mill over the years with her although they're great now. These will be his first biological children though so he's thrilled he's got a b.o.g.o.f

the ttc journey is unbelieveably hard and does part the most awful strain on your relationship, I got obsessed with it to the point I disconnected any friends on FB who were having babies as I couldn't bear to see other people having babies and I just thought it was never going to happen for me.

I'm so sorry about your mc, I think quite a few of us on here have had at least one. I would say if youre stressed waiting for 6 months talk to your dr and ask if he can do the tests now for you - it doesn't help to worry over things

I also found acupuncture helped to relax me and hynotherapy cds at night

Geminita, I don't wish to hog the thread but you asked how to deal with your irrationality. It's a good question. For me - and this may seem a rather depressing, fatalistic view - the belief that none of us has the 'right' to happiness is what keeps me sane. Happiness, for me, is having a baby, but I know that, for whatever reason, I have left it a little too late to start gagging for one now. We are not supposed to be having babies in our forties - despite what some quarters would have us believe. If we manage to realise our dream we are very bloody lucky. I think wanting a baby and not being able to have one is one of the most painful things a woman can endure - but who said we shouldn't endure pain? This probably hasn't helped you - I can only tell you what keeps my head out of the clouds when I'm aching for that baby I may well never have.