The Elderberry Sausage Wangers (thread 5) and the hunt for immaculate conception - a frightfully good thread for the over-30s TTC their first baby.

[Bunnygirlie]

Our new home, hope we will all be very unhappy here and leave soon ;-)

Hmm. Peak CBFM today but negative opk. Strong positive opk yesterday. Ov pains today. On balance I think today is Ov day. Fx temp rises tomorrow or I will be confused .

Ok. Elderberries. Please help me out with a dilemma. Hen do tomorrow. It's basically a drinking one. Wasn't expecting to Ov until after the weekend. The hen do is now basically in the 2ww and I haven't been drinking during the 2ww. But even if I did get a bfp this month (unlikely given short luteal phase although we have dtd 6 times in the last week...) it would only be the day after Ov tomorrow and the little tadpoles would still be swimming round looking for the egg (I imagine). Do I drink? Do I not drink?!

barking - I don't see why you shouldn't drink - until after implantation there's no interaction with your blood - don't get hammered though!

happy - I've read that a cold can be a sign due to lowering of you immune system fx!

merkin - sunday is the poas day over here... hope you have a good evening out

I'm starting to feel like I'm missing out here, I don't temp. however my problem is holding onto a baby not getting it started. I have a fairly regular cycle but I don't really know when I ov. can it be that different to what my app says? how can I work out my lap without temping? do I need to?

Hi Everyone - still no AF still no BFP 10 days late now 3 pg tests down oh come on stop moving the goal posts mother nature......
deep breath
Sorry let me fill in my details on the list
Pipersouth, 37 married (not teacher! ) ttc since Jul/August last year
DH going for tadpole testing next week
frog Any chance of sneaking non-alcoholic ones instead or will there be rounds? My Elderberry wisdom is not high but at that point I probably would have a couple.

Piper when I was 4 days later than normal this month & still getting BFN I found all this stuff online about people who produced such low amounts of hcg that they never came up BFP or v late. Maybe time for the GP to get bloods or AF induced?

Barking I reckon drinks ok. Rely on the law of Sod to make it this time that you'll get AFP when you've had a bender but won't have done any harm as no way you'll have implanted yet from my understanding. Up to you tho obvs.

BFP obvs not AFP!

Frog I can't see how a drink or two (or three) would hurt, but just goes to show how blase I've gotten about it all in the last cycle or two.

Hi Raining, welcome to the gang. I've been wondering about clomid lately, can you tell me a little about it? How did you come to get on it, what's it like? I have a cousin whose wife tried it and lucked out on the first cycle. She now has a gorgeous baby boy

Evening. Decided to poas today -cd81, 60 days after +opk. Bfn. When will it end??
cherry, vitex is another name for agnus castus, known as nature's clomid. It's said to kick off ov and regulate cycles. I don't know about dosage or about when to take it in your cycle, but holland and Barrett sell it. I'm very tempted myself. Post pill amenorrhea is dreadful, isn't it? My accupuncturist said that gynaecologists like women to have a bleed (her words not mine), at least every three month for uterine health. Could you push for some help or a referral on that basis, rather than purely ttc? She suggested it to me to deter the insurance company from going down the infertility treatment route. Lack of af is not normal in our age bracket, so is worth investigating for its own sake. I think I've scuppers my chances of being covered by the insurance by saying that we were ttc, as they don't cover fertility stuff. Accu lady told me to retract it and say that we've stopped trying as I want to get the amenorrhea sorted. The thing is, we can still fall pg this cycle, as could ov at any time..... Am clinging on to that fact.
Be kind to yourselves, especially if you're feeling emotional like me. Not enjoying the mothers' day extravaganza. To think I stupidly thought that I'd have a bfp to announce back at Xmas! How naive.

Hi, Sidney. I was prescribed Clomid because they chuck it at absolutely anybody who asks for a referral to a fertility specialist; I believe it's a way of shutting women up for a few months. There are wonderful stories of women falling pregnant on their first cycle on Clomid, however, if you have a mooch over on the Clomid thread you'll see that this evidence is mainly anecdotal (only two women have become pregnant on Clomid over there since I joined last September). Clomid is spectacularly unsuccessful for women who are already ovulating (like me); the success rate is quite encouraging for women with PCOS who would otherwise never ovulate.

They start you off on 50mg and scan you at around cd10-14 to see whether follicles are growing. When the follies get to a good size (around 18mm) they may give you a shot of HCG, which forces the egg(s) to pop out. Each time I have been scanned I have been shown to be producing two eggs - which got me very excited - but no BFP yet. As I said before, if you are already ovulating on your own then Clomid has a very poor rate of success.

There are lots of scare stories about Clomid: night sweats; horrific mood swings; bent-over-double abdominal cramps but I have experience none of this whatsoever. Either these women are on 150mg doses or they are spectacularly sensitive to drugs

Cats, I have no knowledge of missing periods but your ordeal has gone on long enough, in my opinion. Please tell your GP it is making you distraught (even if it isn't) and you want him to investigate. Life's too short - and ttc too stressful - to be saddled with shit like this which may easily be remedied.

Thanks, raining. I went to GP yesterday. He has referred me to a gynae, using DH's insurance. I just don't know if it will be covered now that I've let slip to them that we are ttc. I think GP would still refer me, but I'll have to wait longer. Going to ask GP not to mention ttc in referral letter, so that it's not in writing at this stage.

So sorry that you've been having a rough time of it. What are the next steps for you, if clomid doesn't do its thing?

Evening ladies! How are we all?

So who has the shag crown at the mo? I think I deserve the miracle shag tiara tonight

Yay, bunny! Wear your tiara with pride (does dp have one too?)

Good work bunny and mr bunny!!

Thanks for the drinking advice. I am tempted to go down the sod's law route!
cats I agree with raining. ttc or not, that is not right and I would be at the gp in tears (put on if necessary) explaining how worried I was getting about it and pleading that they did something about it.

raining that's really interesting what you say about clomid. At my gp they make you wait a year then fill in the forms to refer you to the fertility clinic although it takes them 2 months to get the tests done and the results back in order to fill in the form
No mention of anything they could/would do first. I didn't even get an ultrasound, that will apparently be the first thing the fertility clinic are likely to do when I get my appointment. I'm keen to try clomid as although I am ovulating, I'm doing so very late in my cycle and only 7-9 days before AF. Nothing else so far (apart from irregular cycles, anything from 24 to 37 days) has shown up to be a problem.

Cats, deffo tell GP to keep his gob shut, although, without a signed confession who's to know that you really are ttc?

My next step is IVF. Knowing that the Clomid has produced two lovely eggs each month and I am still not pregnant has been a particularly bitter blow. Only since I learned I have a blocked fallopian tube does it all make sense (my blocked tube is on the same side as the ovary which had endo on it). It doesn't matter how many eggs you pop out; if the sperm can't meet them you're fucked

Ok, could you please insert my post a few posts ago? Got distracted by tv and by the time I'd tapped 'post message' I was all out of sync!

Go Bunny!!

Sounds good cats hope you feel like things are moving forward for you :).

I don't deserve the shag crown. Having dtd every night but one this week I'm actually looking forward to sharing a hotel room with a girl tomorrow night and not feeling any pressure to dtd again!!

raining did they not check your tubes before giving you clomid? Or was it the gp that gave you clomid and you only discovered the tube blockage when you got to the fertility clinic? Sorry if you've already answered that.
Sounds like you've had a tough time :(. Hope you don't have to wait too long for IVF.

Sorry, Frog, we x-posted. Firstly, I would tell any 30-something woman to lie to her GP about how long she's been ttc. I would say if you've been having plenty of well-timed sex every single cycle for nine months and no pregnancy then it's time you were referred. This is how it works: transvaginal scan; Clomid; lap & dye; assisted conception. I wish, wish, wish I had had a lap & dye before any of the above; to learn you have a blocked tube and endo on one ovary is a bitter pill to swallow when you've been trying for yonks. If your gut feeling tells you that you have tried your very best and that you really think you should be pregnant by now - get a referral.

Hello! I've got a very busy weekend lined up so may not be around to hear what's going on, but just had to log in quickly to snort at raining and sausage being her favourite fruit! Fit in well, you shall.

Aaargh! Cross-posted with you again, Frog. Yes, I was prescribed Clomid by the same consultant who later on discovered - via lap & dye - that I had a blocked tube. Unfortunately there is no quicker way of discovering these things; lap & dyes are expensive and invasive and Clomid is cheap as chips. Guess which one they chuck at you first?

Frog, would Clomid help you with regards lengthening your luteal phase? I think so. Will it bring ovulation forward? Not necessarily. Will it increase your chances of pregnancy seeing as you already ovulate naturally (albeit late)? Definitely not.

I don't want to come across as being bitter about Clomid. I have found that this drug is thrown around an awful lot and raises alot of hopes when, in fact, it only really works for women who are not ovulating.

It's the luteal phase I think needs lengthening from what I've read. Stands to reason that an egg can't get implanted securely if the womb has already started shedding its lining.
I had no choice to lie to the gp, I was on antibiotics for my skin so went to see the gp about whether I needed to stop them as I wanted to start ttc, so they had it on record when I'd stopped the tablets. I even got grilled by the gp when I said we'd been ttc a year as she pointed out I should have still had 3 months supply of the pill left at the point I said we'd started! As if it was a 'must finish the course prescribed' kind of thing!!

Thanks cats thunder barking hopefully this will help with DHs confidence it was just fab to DTD and have fun with it too (does that make sense)

Well done bunny and mr bunny!

Welcome Raining.
I didn't ever get clomid. I had an HSG first which showed a blockage so they didn't ever bother with it.

I was taking to one of my pg colleagues today. She said that they were sure they were never going to conceive, (Trying for 2 years with a mc) that they decided after a bfn to get a cat. And guess what next cycle....