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.

Got a consultation and a scan on the nhs yesterday. They want me to come back in 10 days time to confirm that it was a non viable pg and did not accept the private scan. Only after that I will be offered a procedure.
cloud I was 9+4 according to midwife but the sac is 7 weeks and the baby 5+5
And of course my body doesn't knowm I woke up with the symptoms finally here...nausea ,blocked nose and bigger boobs ( very tender).....I am crushed but what can I do???
I don't know.....
Thanls for your support everyone....

Notso it's an awful time you're going through. 10 days sounds like so long when you just want answers & things sorted. I'm thinking of you x
For me, dh has had a total about turn & has gone from saying we need to stop TTC when I turned 40 to let's give it one more year (I'm now 42!) very surprised. Annoyingly he's now talking about all the assistance we may need ie IVF which I think is a little late but to be fair, neither of us thought we needed that as getting pg didn't seem to be the problem. I have made an appointment with 'natural gynae' based in Richmond. Anyone heard of it? I'm going Tuesday week for a very expensive consultation. I'm pleased dh is now up for trying these things. I think a sperm test might be my next suggestion. Wish me luck......

notsoold, I am aghast that you will have to wait that long.It is really cruel to do that to you. Why does it have to be so long?

Grizzer - it is good news that you have DH on side, hopefully your bfp and baby is just around the corner.

Well, for me, I am pretty sure that my days of ttc are over. I got AF this morning and I just don't think I can be bothered with any of it any more. I bought my last pack of HPT's on Friday (just in case) and used a couple despite knowing I wouldn't get a bfp, because I just don't want any reminders of ttc around me anymore. I will turn 48 tomorrow and although I know it is possible to get pregnant at my age, the reality is that it is very unlikely and I need to move forward with my life.

LAst night I went through my wardrobe as it is warming up here, so I decided to put away all my winter stuff. I came across some favourite maternity clothes I had kept, and put all of them aside to list on ebay, or give to charity. I will do the same with all stray baby items that are still around.

It is time to move on and think about other things - planning a nice 25th wedding anniversary trip, and something special for my 50th.

I wish everyone here the best - I would love to hear that all of you are blessed with a healthy baby, or with a peaceful acceptance of whatever your situation brings.

I think it best that I stay away from all things ttc: I will close my FF account (and guess at when AF will turn up or use a calendar), and I think I need to keep my distance from Mumsnet because there's so much talk of TTC, pregnancy and babies. I will have to find a new hangout on the web, or actually start doing something more useful (like the housework!!).

To all my lovely friends - thank you for all the support over the years, through four miscarriages and all the trials and tribulations of ttc.

I will really miss this thread.

Gum - I wish you lots of happiness! And that you will find the peace that you deserve. It's been a long and exhausting journey, and I completely understand that you want to draw a clear line.
Thank you for all your kindness and support xxx

Have a lovely birthday Gum. Thanks for all your positivity & support. Enjoy your future milestones & celebrations xx

happy birthday, Gum! And all the best in the life without ttc effort! i so know it will be very much a relief finally to have crossed the line - even if of course you would have preferred to cross the line with a newborn in hands. But you are blessed with big family and it is of great consolation certainly. Good luck and all the best, if you are still around....

Notso I do not really know what to say. Sounds your lost pregnancy was so similar to my last attempt. reading your news brought it all back suddenly...... I was very calm when it happened and concentrated to getting it sorted but now suddenly feel very emotional for all these little beans who just lie there never getting to feel a heartbeat making their tiny bodies truly alive.....For me it was the furthest along mc, the only one where there was actually a baby, even if it was a tiny one it seemed to have head/tail and looked real..... i still look at the scan pictures sometimes....

gum.... happy birthday and may it be a wonderful one. I hope that your life will be always fruitful and full of joy.
Thank you for all the support you gave me throughout the years and I will not forget your kindness xxx

I am really upset for the 10 days wait and hoping I don't end up having an infection .... thank you all for the support. Dh took it better this time and the only other person I told in rl has been really nice.... it doesn't make it easier though....but thank you all....
grizzer having a dh full of enthusiasm will make life easier .... now tell us what he thought of your suggestion? Dh here would panic so I hope your is more accommodating....

jazz I remember your mc ( and so sorry it is bringing you the memories). Ohhhh girl what to say or do? How hard are we to become ( going through these horrible experiences) be able to have a baby??? Xx

Have a good Sunday all see you all later

Happy birthday Gum if you're still reading. I understand how you feel and hope you can find some peace of mind , you sound like you have a very full life and wonderful family .It might be nice sometime to set up a thread for those of us who met on here and are not now ttc but I understand if you want to make a break from Mumsnet for a while. Thank you for all your support over the last few years, especially through my miscarriages x
notso I'm so sorry to hear your sad news, it is heartbreaking and so difficult to have to wait now too. I was told infection was unlikely when I was deciding how to manage my third miscarriage. I had had two scans at 7 and 8 weeks showing a heartbeat but a scan at 10 weeks showed the baby had died at 9 weeks.I opted to wait to miscarry naturally ,partly because the older children didn't know I was pregnant and I didn't want to have to explain a hospital stay but I also read that statistically there is less chance of infection or complications compared to medical or surgical management. I was booked for a rescan 2 weeks later but actually started to miscarry the morning of the appointment. It is very surreal waiting and still feeling pregnant when you know what the inevitable outcome will be, I know what you're going through and it is hard.Glad you have support in rl x
Jass certain triggers do bring back all those feelings and emotions, I think it is often in the weeks/months after a miscarriage that you feel the full emotional impact even when you have recovered physically.Look after yourself x
Good luck with your appointment Grizzer !

freckle lovely to hear from you!!!! Thanks for your words. gum and you helped me a lot through the first mmc....
grizzer how are you doing???

Hello everyone!!!

All good here thanks, Notso. More importantly how are you feeling?
I've just been for acupuncture so feeling very relaxed. Haven't brought up the sperm test subject yet. Think I'll wait til my gynae appt & then say 'the dr says.....'
We're going for a different approach this month - normally we dtd quite a bit around ov but this month I'm going for every other day FOR THE WHOLE MONTH!!!! Super stamina that's me! We'll see how long it lasts - currently readying for session 2. Already can't be bothered......

Still reading. Thanks so much for all your lovely words.

Just wanted to drop in and say that I had a lovely birthday.

Also wanted to say that I was at acupuncture yesterday and my acupuncturist told me she'd had a lady see her who was 43 and pregnant. Her partner was only 27 Perhaps having a young lover helps?

My DH bought me a lovely little bracelet from Tiffanys which has a little bean on it. I asked for it, to remember my lost babies by. Not that I need help to remember, I do that easily most days. I still have a sadness about not having that last baby I so desired, but it is probably better that I move on (more realistic at least).

Dh is having a terrible time of it lately: his father is now in the Hospice and we don't know how long he has got. He is now uncommunicative, so it may be close. To make matters worse, his mum had a heart attack last night. I am not sure how she is as DH came home in the early hours and I've not had a chance to talk to him. Sigh...tough times.

Still no news from kiwibabe? And calibee - wondering how your frozen sperm IUI went?

Hi all, lots of ups and downs on here.

notso Hope you are hanging in there, the waiting for something to happen is the worst. Did they offer you the medical management route at all?
I don't think that there is a greater risk for infection with the waiting, infections usually occur afterwards, ie when the mc has actually taken place. Not that this is much consolation, sorry! Do look after yourself xx

grizzer Good for you, and good luck! A whole month of dtd every other day - I'm exhausted just reading that! But that'll really boost your chances.

Hello lovely, good to hear from you. Your poor DH, that sounds awful. Wishing you lots of strength.

So, it turns out that I am not out for this month after all. My body decided to alternate between short and normal cycles, so I got a very strong OPK +ve on Sunday, while at my sister's in Germany, thinking that it was all over! Followed by a peak on the Cbfm on Monday, so dtd on Monday night when I got home from my trip. And again last night... According to my FF chart, I ov'ed on Monday, big temp rise.
So I'm now again in the 2ww...

Help please ladies! I'm on cd10. Finished AF on Saturday but have started bleeding today. It's not much (mostly when I wipe) & it seems to be old blood but I've put a pad in so I can monitor it. I feel a bit crampy too, nothing major but am just aware of abdomen. Why am I having this? I've never bled mid cycle before. It's not a sign of menopause is it?

Gosh it's been a while and lots happening on here; I can't keep up.

Notsoold: I'm sorry you had sad news at your latest scan. I had a similar thing late August after seeing a heartbeat on early scans. I also had to wait for another scan to confirm bad news. I think they said that protocol was to wait 7 - 10 days (was all a blur) and my re-scan was 8 days later. Meanwhile my body totally didn't get the message and still acted very pregnant. Like you I worried I'd get an infection, but I didn't (perhaps it's because your cervix is closed while you're waiting?). It was so hard deciding what to do about it - Hobson's choice if you still want to be pregnant - but despite perceiving some pressure to have an ERPC (which I found a bit weird) I had medical management the next day. Physically it was grim, but not particularly painful. I was surprised HPTs were still positive afterwards. I did a Clearblue digi (because I had it) at 10 days after and it still showed 3+ weeks. It took about 16 days to be negative. (And there was definitely 'nothing left' as they re-scanned me again to make sure.) I hope you're OK in the circumstances, it's such a rubbish [polite version] situation to find yourself in.

Greenlizard: what a lovely, lovely 20 week scan pic - massive congratulations!

Freckle: thanks so much for your post [Wed 29 October] answering my question about how you conceived your DD (DC4). And wow, to do that after 4 miscarriages between age 44 and your successful BFP at 45.5! I'm sorry for your losses, but with such a great outcome in the end, it's truly a lesson in perseverance. I was really interested to see that you took 75mg aspirin daily from BFP to delivery. It sounds like the advice you got from the hospital doctors (via your GP) was to take aspirin whilst TTC (although I know you started after BFP as you weren't officially trying!) - did I understand that right?

The reason I ask is that I've had similar advice on aspirin, but I'm a bit nervous about it. When I saw a miscarriage specialist doctor for some blood tests, he advised 75mg aspirin daily even without a diagnosis of a clotting disorder (for which there would be extra meds I think). I said I'd heard aspirin might impede implantation, but he said it didn't, and it takes 6 weeks to get any benefit from it, so that's why he says take aspirin while TTC. A gynae I'd seen previously had only recommended aspirin from BFP (but to prevent against pre-eclampsia) so it was news to me to start aspirin so early. He also gave me the same statistics as you were quoted for miscarriage aged 45, i.e. 50%. But actually I thought they could've been worse; if it's basically a coin toss after a BFP at my age, then so be it.

I'm also hoping the critical factor for you Freckle was not that your AMH was so good! I had my AMH tested the cycle I conceived and was disappointed, but not surprised, to find it was crap (1.8 p/mol). But then my FSH and Antral Follicle Count were fine (day 3 FSH of 5 with normal oestradiol, and AFC of 13), so I'm just trying to ignore the AMH. Maybe DHEA will help.

Cloud: I notice you also mentioned aspirin and wondered if you'd decided when (or if) to start on aspirin yourself?

Are you still around Hopeful72? You asked about success stories at 42? I've been thinking along similar lines lately, when struggling to stay positive.

Anyway, I've counted up 7 people I know in RL (including me) who conceived naturally and had healthy babies at age 43, plus another one by IVF (own eggs) aged 44. Also a close friend had a termination at 42 (horrified at unplanned pregnancy, uni nearly in sight for her other kids and felt she couldn't do it all over again) - maybe we don't realise how often that happens.

Inspiration for myself at age 45 is a little harder to come by, although while my tests are still OK and I hear of a few successes - like the lovely Freckle, a friend of my mum's who decided her symptoms must be menopause and put herself on a diet, even Cherie Blair FFS - it keeps me going.

But here's a story I liked from the recurrent miscarriage clinic. After seeing the consultant I said to the nurse how much I appreciated that no one had sneered at me for trying to get pregnant aged 45. She gave me a weird look, like I was crackers. "Oh we're used to it here", she said. "We had a 48 year old give birth to a lovely healthy girl, from superovulation, own eggs, after [loads] of miscarriages." She did tell me the actual number of miscarriages, I forget how many, but it was a LOT. And it was definitely own eggs too; the treatment she referred to was just Letrozole (tablets like Clomid) plus whatever RMC protocol she was on.

Gum: glad you enjoyed your birthday. I like the bracelet idea. I feel sad for you to be giving up TTC. Logically that's a ridiculous thing to say to a lady who has 5 lovely DC, but it sounds like you really, really tried for DC6, so I'm sorry it hasn't happened. I get how you might be fed up with temping/charting and obsessively POAS, but wonder if you could try, but just not so very hard? Like maybe cut any expensive supplements back to a regular prenatal multi + folic acid (which must be good for you anyway) and casually DTD around the right time on the calendar? Surely you're not thinking of contraception????? If so, that must feel like a massive shift, and if not, well you never know. Whatever, I hope you have a lovely future - if you go, the thread will miss you for sure.

Chewy, about aspirin - yes, I will take it if I get another BFP. However, in my case, I have been advised by the obstetric haematologist to take it because I've had a pulmonary embolism/DVT a few years ago. I have to inject heparin whenever I'm pregnant for the same reason. So it's slightly different for me!
However, I think I would take the baby aspirin from BFP onwards anyway, even if I didn't have the medical history. I've heard it can interfere with implantation, but the opinions are very divided on that! However, I reckon that once you get your BFP, implantation should have already occurred, right?

It is so difficult to decide what to do...

I'm currently in the 2ww, and woke with a bladder infection today On antibiotics now, having a duvet day with DS, hoping to feel better soon! DH left for a week's business trip to the USA this morning, great timing!

Grizzer - I've heard that some women spot and cramp when they are ovulating, could it be that?!

I've just done an ovulation test & it came up positive straight away. It's all a bit odd though because I have been using ov sticks for over a year & never get anything until day 14 & I'm currently on day 11. Going a bit crazy & have sent dh to superdrug for a pregnancy test! Stupid really because even if by some small miracle I was pg it can't be good to have had a period & now be spotting can it? Probably better not to know but......

Well ladies, the test was POSITIVE!! I can't quite believe it! I'm not allowing myself to celebrate because I don't think having a 'period' & now spotting for a day (still brown blood though) can suggest a happy ending but today, rather bizarrely, I would appear to up the duff!!

Bloody Nora Grizzer! So, talk us through it again, you had a 'period' at the usual time, then 11 days later you got cramping and spotting, and you've got a BFP?! I have no idea of the science behind that, but isn't a line a line?!

Just popping in to say congratulations to Grizzer. How fabulous! A stealth BFP!!

Thank you Fireflies. It is a bit weird as dh had booked us a table at a sushi restaurant tonight & suddenly I'm having think about what I'm allowed to eat! (We had Italian).
The more I say it the stranger it becomes awomb. AF arrived exactly as expected. The first day was normal the other 3 were fairly light but not enough to make me question it. I'm now one week later, have been dtd every other day & had some brown blood appear yesterday. For some reason I felt the urge to test & there it was. A big fat pink line! I think I need to do a couple more tests though just to be sure......
I am not relaxed in the slightest. It's going to be a long couple of months but I am going to cancel my appointment at the gynae place & go to drs instead because I need to start clexane straight away. Hopefully they'll be able to reassure me a little x