40+ and TTC? Join the club...

[cloudjumper]

To continue the support for everyone 40 and over who is or wants ttc. Lots of hand-holding and understanding, we're all together in the uphill struggle.

freckle Why can't you be referred? You've had 3 mcs, so you should be eligible for investigations! I'd grill your GP on this a bit.

A word on aspirin - the opinions are very divided on this! Some say that it can help with ttc, others that it can interfere with implantation and only to take it after a BFP. GPs usually say to take it while ttc, but (in my experience) they are pretty clueless on this!

Well, AF has arrived here, too, so I will join you all with the

Feeling very sad and desolate at the moment, a new wave of pg announcements has hit this week, and I am really struggling with it. Feeling as if it won't be happening for me again, ever. I am now being 'overtaken' by people who had their first after me and are now already having their second. Yes, I know this is stupid, but I can't help it - all attempts at being rational have gone out of the window.
I've started the Cbfm up again (wasn't able to sell it, so thought, what the heck, I might as well use it).

I just feel so alone in this hell, which has now been going on for over 2 years. DH seems oblivious, as always, but whenever I try to bring up this whole ttc/mc business, he withdraws. I have indicated a number of times that I want to talk about it, but he never follows suit. I have never come so close to moving into the spare room Which, of course, completely defeats the objective here!

Cloud I think we are very much in the boat here, I found myself nodding along to most of your post. I think I am one of the longest standing posters in the TTC after MC thread and when I first joined I never dreamed id still be there. It is so upsetting.

We are waiting for DPs sperm results and then we will make a plan for the future. It maybe fertility treatment, my father said he will help us financially but I would probably only go for IUI. IVF is just too invasive got our situation I think.

Can I add my agreement. 3 years and 4 miscarriages later, the wrong side of 40 and lost hope. Every month is the same. It is so hard to stay positive. I don't know what I would even think about all day if I stopped thinking about ttc. It absolutely consumes me. I did go to a counsellor but I felt like she was looking at me going ' what's wrong with you. You have a child' the only people that understand are the people that are on here and when I read some of your posts I feel like I have found a place where I am understood and where I understand the pain of others.

I think somehow we do have to get over it. I don't know how, but for sanity sake I think we have to somehow switch the switch and see it as a bonus if it happens but not the all consuming thing that it is for us.

If anyone knows how to stop caring I would really love to know.

Hullo, Pessimo, I understand what you are saying. I am currently devastated. Had a late miscarriage. I really thought it had all worked out so well. I felt so lucky to conceive quickly, was delighted it was a boy, a brother for ds1, and there would be almost exactly two years between them. I was so delighted they would be able to play together. I just thought it had aligned so perfectly. I really thought it was meant to be. Ds2' s due date was even in the month all my family, and dh, were born.
Have hardly spoken to dh about it but he did say he didn't want to try again. There were a couple of traumatic episodes in ds1's pregnancy which hit dh hard. Now this. And to be honest, I just don't feel lucky anymore either. I am really worried about everything that can go wrong at our age and no longer feel confident that we will dodge the bullet and have a healthy baby.
But my desire to have another child is like a physical living energy. I try to tell myself how lucky I am to have dh and ds, but I feel so empty since I lost ds2. And I so desperately want ds to have a sibling.

Berries, I am so sorry for your loss. I wish DH's weren't men sometimes! So few men understand the loss of a baby and how it effects a woman. I think that men feel their role is to "fix" things, and as this is an out-of-their-control-to-fix thing they instead just say "no" to trying again. My DH said that he couldn't stand to see me so heartbroken, so trying again was out of the question. He just couldn't see that that not trying again was so much worse than trying again. I just wanted to be able to have a glimmer of hope, a chance at happiness again, and without ttc, it was an impossibility.

We were not able to talk much about it,and even now, it is not mentioned,after 5 years of ttc. He is not involved with ttc - his involvement is simply that he doesn't care to use contraception and he believes it is impossible at my age anyway (of which he may have a point ).

The thing that has made ttc bearable, and has brought me close to giving up ttc, is time. I've been doing it for so long, I have become hardened to bfn's, but there's still part of me that feels sad that it isn't going to happen (or hasn't). I do understand that physical longing.It is very consuming, and I have no idea how I would have coped if I hadn't been able to conceive Ds (who is now 6) as my desire to have a baby at the time was so strong. I've felt it since, but time,and losses have brought me here: a week from my 48th birthday and ready to stop ttc.

It has been in stages for me. Any of the long term members of this thread can tell you that I have tried to give up ttc on several occasions, but I keep coming back. One thing that I know for sure is that I have no regrets, because I have tried to conceive (sometimes half-heartedly),every single cycle since my DS was about 10 months old.

I have learnt so much in that time - about me, about how strong I am, about living with integrity and truth, about what it is like to lose a baby - something I could not really fathom until it happened to me.

I don't have any good advice on how to let this go, but I can say that having acupuncture has helped a lot with stress, and my acupuncturist is like a counsellor - she is a very good listener, which helps. My situation is very different to many of you: I already have a large brood, but that has never diminished the desire I had for a baby (illogical, I know) nor does it dull the pain of loss.

I wonder what has happened with Kiwi, I am worried that because she's not been back, perhaps it hasn't worked out for her. I do hope I am wrong.

I know one thing for sure: ttc in your forties is not easy and not for the faint of heart

Hi ladies, sorry AF has arrived for some of you. Sorry for your loss Berries. I don't believe it is something you ever get over. How far along were you with ds2? I had an 18 week loss & was offered counselling. I only went once but it was very helpful for dh to realise how I was feeling (the counselling was for us both). Of course, 2 years on & he doesn't mention it at all but I still think it's a useful starting point to open up discussions.
I'm not due AF til Wednesday but have had a few spots of blood today & am feeling a bit crampy. I was 2 days early last month too so I am now worried that at the grand old age of 42 & 2 weeks my periods are changing & my TTC chances are vanishing. We really went for it this month so I am extra disappointed. I feel if we don't manage it when we put so much effort in then we never will. I'm now on month 20 with no hint of a bfp & 5 years since a successful pregnancy.

Thank you so much gumblossom for your thoughtful and considered post. I don't blame dh. He is completely devastated too. Grizzer, I was 20 weeks. I used to have a therapist I liked, but she has retired. I found counsellors I tried before her to be either kind but ineffective, or actively made things worse and made me angry with them. I don't feel I have the emotional resources at the moment to cope with the latter. And it is so personal that I don't want to share with someone I don't know or trust. I don't even want to talk about it with friends.

Hi, I have been trying to conceive for the past three years and my partner and I are starting to really struggle to be intimate around the time of ovulation. I really don't know what to do...he just doesn't want to do it any longer. I have become really depressed, can't hear about anyone being pregnant, and when I see someone on the tube or in the street, I need to turn away. I am now considering trying IVF. Does anyone have any success stories to share (at 42)? Many thanks.

hopeful if it helps I can share!!! I got pregnant with ds2 at 41 and he was born I was 42 and 3 months!!!.
I am (hopefully) still pregnant 7+3 at 43yo....
Hugs to you xxxx

Also conceived at 41, DS born when I was 42. I spent a long time lurking on the 40+ conception thread (some of it when I was trying to persuade DP that we should try for another) and heard lots of positives in that time. Wishing you luck hopeful

Hi, thought I'd join you on here- I turned 41 in late August and DH and I decided to start TTC in September. Neither of us has any other DC, we just both took a long time to meet the right person. I don't FEEL my age at all and so far all is normal, came off pill, got AF fairly soon after and then real AF 29 days after that. Tried some Clearblue digital dual hormone OPK in that first month but only got negatives, however this month I got the flashing smiley high eostrogen reading yesterday and this morning my first fixed smiley indicating LH surge and unmistakeable EWCM! Bang on CD 14. So all looking very positive. I haven't told DH about the testing, though he has probably heard me rustling about in the bathroom, but we DTD both days and will be again tonight and tomorrow if he can still manage it! Am now getting carried away with myself and wondering if I maybe even could manage 2 children after all, something I had resigned myself to being impossible. Best of luck to everyone on this thread and keep away from the Daily Mail !

Would that be the same Daily Mail that reported those awful, awful statistics re ttc in your forties? I swear I have been depressed ever since I read that: Women aged 43 will find it ten times harder to conceive than a woman of 37. A 43 year-old woman has to get through 44 eggs - FORTY-FOUR! - until she produces a viable one. That's 3 years and 8 months of ttc. I'm on month 21 and only a mmc to show for my efforts. I will probably be 45 before I find the viable egg. If I thought those stats were ludicrously misrepresentative I could laugh them off, but my heart knows they are true. Yes, there are women having babies over 43, but I've been lurking on this thread for yonks and I don't see many successes. It makes me so sad

for all of us.

sicksquid you really must not let anything printed in that rag get to you in any way. My advice (as above) is DO NOT READ IT. They have an agenda, which is to scaremonger and therefore generate "clickbait" i.e. lots of anxious women clicking on the story and forwarding it to friends and family to keep their stats up. I am not a scientist but I have read time and time again that it is very easy to simplify statistics in such a way that they become meaningless. Try reading "Bad Science" by Ben Goldacre to geta sense of how they do it.

You say that you have not seen many success stories on here. I haven't been on this part of the boards long but I found a thread in "pregnancy" full of very positive over-40s pregnancy stories earlier today - I think a pp on here started it but I can't recall which or what it was called. The "old birds" thread that I looked at today seemed to have quite a few who had "graduated" on to pregnancy, though to be fair I don't know how many of those were under 43. Don't forget that the "conception" boards will be full of people who have not yet conceived and are probably having a few difficulties along the way, whereas the ones having an easy ride are less likely to look for support and post, so it's a self-defining group that probably makes the averages look worse than they are. And that's before you even take into account the tens of thousands of women who don't post on the internet at all!

I'm not in any way minimising your sadness, but please don't allow the Daily Fail to magnify it. Good luck .

Sicksquid the stats aren't great but as long as you are ovulating you stand a chance. I am resigned to the fact that it's unlikely i will fall pregnant now after trying for so long but whilst I'm still producing eggs I'm going to try.

We may go down the fertility route next year I'm not sure. I'm 40 in February and I should have had a baby in my arms not still be faffing around with opks and necking supplements. It pisses me off but there is nothing i can do about it bar order a time machine.

Thanks for trying to hearten me, ladies. I hope you don't mind but the article is here and I would really, really appreciate it if someone would come along and deconstruct the evidence found during those IVF trials. It seems pretty concrete evidence to me, but I would love it if someone helped me to consign this article to the trash. As I said before, it has managed to really upset me

NewEra, take heart - you only have to wait 9.4 months for your golden egg!

Well, for starters, I would consider anything written in the Daily Mail with great caution - they are not known for their scientific accuracy!
Haven't got time to read it now, but Jessie is right - so so many stories on here as well as among my circle of friends of successful 40+ pregnancies! And equally so many stories of people in their 20s and 30s that struggle. It might be slightly harder, but not all hope is lost!

SS sadly its been 18 months and 2 miscarriages so I don't think that's a particularly accurate stat.

I've been putting off ordering Co-enzyme Q10 as at the dose they recommend and the particular type you need to get it is SO FUCKING EXPENSIVE. Anyway, to hell with it, I've ordered it and i'll just have to suck it up. If there's anything I've learnt about TTC later in life is wow you can motor through some money!

Newera Oh, I'm with you on the price for CoQ10 - just had to order another round... Together with the Royal Jelly, the Omega oils and the antenatal vitamins, I am spending a small fortune. Especially since DH also takes the CoQ10 and the Omegas (he refuses the Royal Jelly and takes the male version of the ttc vits).
I've also started on the Cbfm again, since I wasn't able to sell it... Do you think that I'll get away with getting DH a really cheap Christmas present?!

Get him a bottle of Q10

I feel bad as I don't work so I end up sticking it on DP's card. The thing is we are getting pretty close to deciding to have fertility treatment so I think by comparison to the money that we will haemorrhage if we wander down that road, £60 is nothing.

God I feel really low today. Bad day

Argh! I hope I haven't contributed to your bad day, NewEra. I will henceforth shut my gob about stats. I'm on my first cycle of Clomid after convincing my doctor to refer me to a fertility consultant, whom I then persuaded to give me six months of Clomid at 100mg. When I told him I wanted the chance of popping more than one egg out per cycle he went like this: but gave me my wish. I've heard the reports of Clomid thinning a woman's uterine lining but I don't honestly care anymore, I just want to be able to say I actually did something, you know?

Been lurking and keeping up with your journeys - i know it is such hard work TTC in your forties but you are all so strong and inspirational. You kept me going with your wisdom, empathy and understanding and made me feel like it was possible. Thank you.

Just wanted to let you know that I had my 20 week scan today and everything looks good and nicely normal. I can feel the baby moving now which is taking some of my anxiety away (until I start stressing it isn't moving enough obviously ). Its a boy .

For those that don't know me - my DP and I are both 45 - we have been TTC for 2 years and during that time have had 1 MMC at 12 weeks and 1 Blighted Ovum at 8 weeks. Accepting that my crap quality eggs were the likely culprit we started donor egg IVF in June this year, conceived twins but sadly lost one at 9 weeks. We are starting to be hopeful that this one sticks around and makes it. Where there is a will there is a way and all that it, and even it wasn't the quite the way I thought it would happen we are thrilled nonetheless.

Good luck

xxx

Awwww Green 20 weeks already!!!! Glad everything is going well & hope you are able to relax a little for the rest of the time. What's your due date?
I am all over the place at the moment. Had a couple of red spots on Saturday, thought AF was going to be early. Nothing since but still got some mild cramping. Not actually due til weds & I'm certain AF is coming but my heart keeps thinking maybe it's just 'stretching' cramps & not AF cramps!
When I was pregnant with dd I thought AF was coming & didn't have a positive test til I was a week late so the hope doesn't go until it's actually here. It's a total head fry!!!!

I am so happy for you Green. Just so thrilled that all is well with your little one.

Hang in there Grizzer, it may well be implantation . I know it is a total head fry, but you will make it. Hold tight.

As for me, I am inching closer to the end of ttc. I really do think this has been my last month of ttc. I have exactly one digi preg test in the house. I am not buying anymore, and I will only use it if AF doesn't arrive by Monday (my 48th birthday). However, judging by my chart, it is likely I will see AF either Sunday or Monday (although last month it wasn't until 15 dpo).Monday will be 14 dpo, so I'll either get AF, BFN or BFP...Anyway temperatures are very average - no nice high ones, so I am not expecting great things.