Ivf and side effects

[Stillhopingstillhere]

I am trying to accept that we will never conceive naturally. It has hit me hard this month as I did think perhaps I might be pregnant...irrationally I know. But I've tested with a first response ( due on tues) and negative.

I am trying to resign myself to Ivf but I am worried about the side effects. I don't feel very reassured by the doctor I've seen. I was unable to take the combined pill as it caused terrible migraines and they took me off it because they said I was at risk of having a stroke. I mentioned this to my consultant and he didn't seem concerned. How can it be dangerous for me to take the pill but ok for me to have Ivf?

Anyway, I just wondered if people could tell me, honestly, what the side effects have been and how they've managed.
I was kind of wondering about natural Ivf but I know your chances are a lot less as you only have one egg. I'm 31 by the way and according to all the tests fertile. It is dh who has the issue, his sperm count is good but they all swim the wrong way.

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Hi there - this thread is a little old. [[https://www.mumsnet.com/conception/ivf
If you want to find out about IVF, we’ve got more information here]]. MNHQ

Hi there, we've done IVF (long protocol) and frozen embryo transfer and I can honestly say the side-effects were pretty minimal ime, although everyone is different.

The down-reg drug (nasal spray in my case) was fine, the stimming drugs (injections) were a doddle to do and the only side effect I had was a little bloating. Then there's the progesterone (pessaries) which were OK, but a bit grim to use (panty liners will become your friend!) and they're the only ones I really noticed in terms of side effects, as I was a bit constipated and bloated - both eased with decent diet and drinking about 3l of water a day.

You may feel a bit tired, but I really don't remember feeling anything too bad or concerning.

On FET I foung the oestrogen wasn't great on our first go - I would feel quite sick and had a few headaches. But on our second go I felt fine again - even though the drugs were exactly the same! Then you have the delightful progesterone pessaries again!

While certain drugs are needed at various stages, there are different kinds of each so talk to your consultant about those available to you.

Once you get started on the process it's pretty quick too, so I don't recall being on any particular drug for a long time - certainly not long enough for any of the effects to really bother me to the extent I wished we weren't doing it. However the FET was certainly more challenging physically.

I'd say talk to your consultant about your concerns but don't worry that you'll necessarily have any or many side effects.

I must also point out that for me it was entirely worth it - I'm now 17wks pg following the last FET Good luck!

Thank you, that is reassuring. Dr google is definitely not my friend!
How many attempts did you have if you don't mind me asking?

I also know it probably won't happen first time, if at all. Dh is a bit of an optimist, well he says optimist I say he's unrealistic. He appears to think I take a few pills, we nip to the clinic and nine months later there's the baby. I keep quoting the odds to him (dr gave us about 35% with icsi) and they aren't great. On the other hand at the moment they're basically nil so it is an improvement!

Four of my good friends have had IVF and none has suffered significant side effects.

Keep away from Google. Women who have uncomplicated medical treatment of any kind tend not to post about it on the internet so you only get the dramas online and that can give you a very false impression of treatment.

Thesaurusgirl was the treatment eventually successful for those friends if you don't mind my asking?

Honestly Stillhoping, the drugs come with the usual leaflet listing a whole heap of potential side-effects, but when you see that the down-reg drug you're on is actually a prostate cancer treatment, you kind of learn to take these lists with a pinch of salt!

We had 2 full ICSI cycles and 2 goes at FET - we got BFPs with both ICSI cycles but I mc'd with both. Our first FET didn't get off the ground but the second is (hopefully) nicely cooking. I won't lie and tell you it's great being pg after IVF, you can't stop worrying about all the bad things that could possibly go wrong - but at least you're closer to having your baby!

35% success odd with ICSI is more than we were told - but hey, a chance is better than no chance, right? There's nothing to say it won't happen first time for you, but you ought to be prepared to stick at it. It's not easy, but I found it tougher emotionally than physically.

Which clinic are you with?

Congratulations on your pregnancy, I hope it all continues to go well

We are with midland fertility services at Birmingham.

Hi still. I also don't tolerate the Pill well - migranes and leg pains suggesting possible blood clotting ishoos. It also makes me suicidal. At our first clinic, the usual protocol was to take the Pill for 21 days, then the down reg drugs, then add in the stimms. Because of my history they immediately decided I should skip the Pill bit and were not dismissive of that history at all. I went straight into down regging and to be honest had a horrible time - I was depressed, listless and then worked my way down the list of side effects getting most of them apart from the one almost everyone gets (headaches). In the end, the clinic asked me to downreg for an extra week to fit in with their availability (!) before starting stimming and I was just a wreck, so we stopped the drugs then and there and cancelled the cycle. My husband found it very unsetting to see his normally stable wife turned into this anxious unhappy wreck so he wanted to stop too. I have come across a couple of other people on this board who have had a similarly bad reaction to downregging and they do seem to be people who have a history of problems with hormonal changes (natural, i.e. puberty or the Pill). However they are a minority and most people find it is fine (including my two closest friends in real life, neither of whom could remember feeling anything when downregging).

After walking away from that cycle, we decided to go for natural IVF and I am much happier with that. We are about to go for cycle 3 (cycle 1 ended in miscarriage and cycle 2 gave me a chem preg, so we are getting close - we have made an embryo each time that has made it at least as far as implantation). The downside to doing it this way is lower success rates, higher cost (the rounds are cheaper as you are not paying for drugs, but you are likely to need more rounds) and multiple egg collections (which I find very stressful as i don't like hospitals). But all in all, it is the right way for us to go.

I've had ivf (long protocol) and FET. My knowledge is probably a bit out of date but here goes.

I found from the initial downreg that my memory went. It's essentially a very fast menopause. I got pregnant quite quickly and feel that my previously sharp brain never quite recovered. However I couldn't possibly tease out the reason, whether it's related to the downreg drug (nafarelin) or the stresses involved. I was also more grumpy, but it was a stressful time, so who knows? It was like PMT. Once I started on the injections, I felt better.

I had ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome and that had to be monitored by the clinic, but it was essentially temporary, though uncomfortable at the time. I could not have worked during it.

The cyclogest pessaries can be used vaginally or rectally, and (sorry for tmi) the latter is a lot less messy (I think there is no difference in the amount of the hormone your body gets, but again that may be out of date info).

Hope that helps, and good luck

Good luck with it eurochick

Perhaps natural is a good route for you too Stillhoping?

Yes, all four went on to have success.

One set of twins on second attempt.

One boy on third attempt.

One girl on fifth attempt. This was really complicated though - physical infertility, immune infertility, and male factor infertility.

One boy on first attempt and then a daughter naturally conceived so quickly afterwards my friend hadn't even had a period!

I hope you are lucky this time eurochick.

My consultant was all "I do have to tell you people have died in this country from the side effects of Ivf. Sometime OHSS comes on so quickly there's nothing we can do and it causes a dvt."
Oh great, thanks for that!

The pill didn't make me miserable or suicidal. It was just the migraines. I did take it for about six years, and it just started to happen during the last six months. As soon as I stopped taking it the migraines stopped so it must have been related.

I am going to ask about the natural cycling.

See I think because I've got it in my head that it wont happen for us I just don't think it will even with Ivf. I'm always heartened to hear of success stories. I only know one person irl who has had fertility treatment and I don't know her very well. She had one ds conceived second cycle but has since had eight more cycles to try and conceive a second. All have failed and it caused her to have a nervous breakdown. I can easily see how it could.

We do have one son, conceived naturally, but he appears to have been some sort of miracle.

Both my close friends have IVF babies, so I have good role models to look to.

One had endo and her husband had severe male factor. She had one full round with one fresh embryo put back (didn't work), then had two frozen embryos back and got one lovely girl from it (she miscarried the other one) and then had the last frozen embryo put back and got identical twin boys (the ultimate BOGOF deal, as she puts it).

The other had PCOS and wasn't ovulating. Her husband was fine. She had one full round and has a lovely baby girl from that and two frozen embryos waiting in the wings.

Your consultant doesn't sound great. I mean he's right about OHSS, but a good clinic should be able to control it pretty well. And I don't think he should have been dismissive of your pill experience.

Has your husband tried to improve his swimmers? A lot of people see an improvement with various cocktails of supplements, looser undies, no cycling, less alcohol, etc.

Dh has stopped drinking and is taking an array of vitamins. We can only think the problems might have been caused by the fact he's been SO stressed at work the last year or so. Ds was conceived first cycle, I appreciate we were very lucky. But to go from that to being told you'll never have a baby naturally is quite a leap.

The vitamins have made no difference. The count is fine, the morphology is ok but the motility is very bad. Apparently even the fastest ones are slow!

Stress can do it. The friends I mention with severe male factor were told it was unlikely he would ever be a father. At the time he was under a lot of family stress. His later tests were not as bad, although they still ended up having ICSI.

It does seem strange to go from instant diffage to needing ICSI! I can see how it must be tough to get your head around.

Dh is four years older too but he's still not aged in terms of male fertility (38).
I don't know... It's weird. I asked if there was anything else we could try but consultant was adamant that this was the only way. I suppose we might have just been incredibly lucky with ds, like winning the lottery. A million to one chance.

I still would have thought it wouldn't have happened immediately though with dh's results being as they are. We have had three analysis over four months and all have shown the same.

You can do IVF without down regging - I did short protocol IVF where they down't down reg you at all, just stim you when your cycle starts naturally. Better odds than natural IVF and I got no side effects. We needed ICSI because of bad morphology (DH) and because i didn't respond terribly well to the drugs so didn't get many eggs even though I was on hugely high doses. I had no side effects (apart from being naturally stressed through the whole process because i was so desperate for it to work). Didn't do terribly well on the first attempt but got pregnant with boy/girl twins on the second - sadly went on to lose them at 20 weeks, but then had another go and now have a 16 month old beautiful baby girl. I have since had four chemical pregnancies (naturally) and am now 7 months pregnant with another girl (again, naturally) so miracles can happen! :) Good luck.....

Thanks for that Dachsandpup and congratulations on your pregnancy. Was male factor your only issue? I keep hoping that dh's sperm will improve. I can't believe they were this bad when we had ds.

I don't really understand why they do long or short protocol. What are the advantages of doing the long protocol? Are there any?
My cycles are dry regular, 28 days exactly. Always have been. Would that help in any way

Very not dry, thanks iPad.

I had high FSH and low AMH so basically had to work really hard to ovulate and eggs were bad quality. My cycle was regular as clockwork at 28 days so unless i'd had the hormone tests I'd never have known that, but we were trying for 8 years before we decided to try IVF so I knew something was wrong. So I'm completely shocked to be pregnant naturally this time! No idea why they put me on short protocol, but I'm glad I didn't have to do the down reg stuff :)

I wonder if they'd let me do short protocol...
Why would they prefer you to do long protocol if short causes less side effects?

Long protocol helps with clinic timings (my first - NHS - clinic didn't do collections at weekends, so it used downregging to get people's cycles where it wanted them. Medically it can help to control OHSS (because they are not having to work with your natural hormone levels and the "menopause" essentially means they are starting from a blank slate, hormonally). I'm obviously biased because of my bad experience, but the negatives of LP seem to outweigh the positives (save in special cases such as PCOS where folks are prone to overstimulation). If we move on from natural, I would only ever consider SP.

Euro where are you having your natural cycles?

I did mention it to the consultant and he dismissed it and said it was much less successful but reading around that doesn't seem to be the case.

We would be paying privately.

I had 2 rounds of IVF, and like you I couldn't tolerate the pill. No side effects really, just like having major PMT. Gorgeous boy to show for it and 4 years later my second miracle baby girl, conceived naturally when we weren't even trying but I'd had some chiropractic treatment and my pelvis was out of alignment which is why I had a horrendous birth with my boy. Was my pelvis being out of alignment the cause of my infertility, I don't know and my chiroprctor will just smile as the evidence isn't there to back it up but I waited for my boy for 6 years, and few months after being treated by a chiropractor I conceived naturally. My husband also apparently had sticky swimmers. Good luck with whatever route you decide to go down x