Any 40+ ladies out there TTC #1?

[JessieMcJessie]

Have looked at the buses and things but I feel a bit geriatric on them, with all the ages there for all to see, and the "old birds" type threads are lovely and supportive but a lot of the posters are dealing with issues like how to juggle older kids and a later pregnancy, or comparing ttc experiences now with the first time round.

Just wondered if anyone else was like me, basically didn't meet the right person till pretty late in life and now playing catchup and feeling slightly terrified of having left it all too late. I'm 41 (and 3 months) and DH and I got married in June and are now starting TTC. Most of my contemporaries had 2 or 3 kids before they were 40. I'm not afraid of the tiredness/no energy older Mum thing, or even really how old I'd look or feel at the school gates- I have actually been told many times I look younger than I am. No fertility probs that I know of and cycles seem regular and 28 days, but I have this awful dread that if the average time to conceive when young and healthy is 6 months, I just don't have enough time left. Silly to worry I know since we've only just started our 2nd cycle TTC, but would love to hear from anyone else in a similar position.

Hang in there daisy. You've got to this stage and it sounds good. How many weeks are you now? Unfortunately it's a rollercoaster of milestone after milestone so try to distract yourself with lovely people and lovely things for now as much as you can. Is your doctor doing a repeat HCG test soon? X

Thanks, Annie
I have another test tomorrow with a progesterone test. My overseas clinic were running out of the progesterone injections, so I am one short (every 4 day booster shot) so I have an appointment with a fertility doctor tomorrow to get some
More and have the tests.
I am taking each day as it comes and understand what you mean about milestones! All I can think is 'can I get over 200 this time?!?
I have had
Mild cramping since hcg hit 30, and it has been pretty constant, so im taking that as a good sign. But I am too scared to get my hopes up too much.
I am trying to think if this is the one, it will be the one. If it doesn't work out, not to be, usually cos of chromosome issues and then that is Mother Nature choosing the best path. But it is easier to think that now, will still be heartbroken if it doesn't work out.

Hcg has gone up from 83 to 202!! Woo hoo!! I don't need any more tests!! Now just wait and see!
Progesterone fine too!

Gosh, you are full- on up the duff Daisy. Congratulations!

DH and I have now completed our quota of DTD for this month and I have decided to be wildly optimistic, based on the fact that I think it was ovulation from working tube this month and so the first real try since I started the co enzyme Q10 and DHEA, which have now had a couple of months to kick in. It's also a year since we started trying (and just under a year since I started this thread) so I feel it is an auspicious time somehow. Not to mention Sod's law- I took delivery of a grand's worth of non - refundable IVF drugs this morning which would go to waste if we don't need IVF...in an odd way the Scot in me sort of finds the financial impact of that potential waste quite difficult to reconcile with wanting to be pregnant .

Not working today, off now for a burger and a matinee of Sufragette.

Daisy ... HUGE CONGRATS!!! :-) :-)

Jessie ... yeeeaah for all that optimism and let's hope it rubs off on the rest of us! Think I've lost mine a bit ... but then maybe Daisy's good fortune this week bodes well for us all. Let's just choose to believe that :-)

Hi there, wanted to add: pregnant with my fourth, all pregnancies were after age 36. I am going for record for most babies to a geriatric mum, ha ha. Seriously, I hope that other women can see that later fertility is possible, all mine were conceived naturally within a few cycles. My GP told me I was too old, I stopped telling her about my pregnancies, she was so negative. My tips are to use ovulation predictor kits and to take temperature... you have to become an expert on your own eggs. Best wishes.

I hope above post does not sound condescending. I don't mean to minimize how stressful it is to try to conceive after 40. But it does happen. Catching the egg is tricky, use as much science as you can to pinpoint it!

Hi Lilli and congrats on being pregnant- how old are you now?

Re OPKs I do use them and it's been interesting to keep track of cycles, but do you have any particular tips on when/ how often to have sex in relation to getting a positive OPK? We were told by doc that every other day was better to replenish DH's sperm properly, but this time I said sod it and we went for every day from the evening of the day when I first got the positive OPK in the morning and the 2 days after that. Are you going to say that I need to temp to pinpoint ovulation? Tried that for a while but was too embarrassed for DH to find out as he'd think me mad, and could not do the morning temp without him knowing as you are not even supposed to move before taking it! Was just too much faff.

Hello, Sorry, forgot to mention ages of baby births: 37,38, 41 (hopefully) 43.

OPKs are great, I used them to get pregnant quickly in a few cycles. They are misleading and I worry ladies will wait until a + opk before doing the deed.
I never timed intercourse for day of ovulation, always aimed for the day before. I believe there is a lot of literature warning that after a positive opk, it is too late to conceive. I stand to be corrected, but I also have three children based on this method! lol!

I have even gotten pregnant after 40 with a single try. Basically, we are very old and exhausted with lots of little kids, so every night or four nights of sex a month never happened for us. In fact, our first three were conceived by having sex only four times in four years. Did I mention we are exhausted?

My tips across my four geriatric pregnancies: use fertility friend, become obsessed with mucous, use opk to determine when to do it next month, aim for day before poitive opk, have an orgasm yourself after sex and don't move for half an hour. I also don't drink much, stayed away from the pill for a decade before (condoms, timing) and charted for my last, in addition to opk.

Actually, I used cheap strips, then smiley face to confirm. But once I got the smiley face, I knew the ship (for me) had sailed. So you have to use ovulation predictor kits to learn about next month, if that makes sense. I also don't panic about scant mucous, short luteal (10 days) or how old I am.

Finally, there has been some studies stating that light from devices can disrupt circadian rhythm AND FERTILITY. So don't use your phone or iPad at night, seriously! lol!

Finally, remember that historically the AVERAGE age of final birth for women was 42, meaning half stopped earlier, but a full half had them later.

A great book is the inpatient woman 's guide to getting pregnant, by I think jean twenge? I have it and it was good.

Please don't wait until ovulation to have intercourse. I believe this is a big problem with the way predictor kits mislead.

I honestly, honestly believe that in my case, anyways, having sex after the LH surge only guaranteed AF next month. Honest. I remember when, after taking a year to conceive the first, we found literature explaining the LH surge and the proper timing of ovulation with sex. We never focused on sex after the surge was detected.

The last three were conceived with no delay despite advanced maternal age!

here are some notes I had on timing intercourse. We never tried after ovulation:

(sorry no link to this)

It’s common knowledge that sex around ovulation will improve your chances of getting pregnant, but having sex 2 days prior to ovulation will improve your chances even more. According to a 2001 study by researcher D.B. Dunson, women who had sex two days prior to ovulation had the greatest chance of conceiving. An even more interesting observation from the study was that women who only had sex on the day of ovulation had just a 5 percent chance of conceiving. In comparison, the women in this study that had intercourse 2 days before ovulation had as much as a 50% chance of conceiving in any given cycle, depending on their age. What was notable from this study was that conception was most likely in the 4 days before ovulation. The day of ovulation was surprisingly the least likely day to conceive.

////

My point is, for me, anyway, I used the kits to learn when I would ovulate the next month. I wouldn't have sex after a positive. I feel the kits are hugely misleading in this way and may even be contributing to delayed conception for women who depend on them.

Forgive me if this is common knowledge, it wasn't for me when I started ttc.

Hi Lillipudlian. Thanks so much for popping in and encouraging us all!

I've been trying for a few months over a year (just turned 42) and ... nothing apart from tears every month when af arrives! ;-) I'm lucky in that I can actually feel the day of ovulation, but it has changed a bit lately (maybe due to lifestyle change), so I might go back to using OPKs.

We're like you in that we can't keep going for days and days on a 'schedule', so I think this might work for us. We've been trying once every 2 days over my whole fertile period though for months and months. I'm not sure what else I can do .... although might try pinpointing day before ov. now as you suggest. It's tough though sometimes even with opk.

Thanks!!

Lilli we also make sure we have sex before the OPK turns positive, every other day for about a week before I think (based on my experience from previous months) that it will.

However my clear understanding is that positive OPK means that ovulation will happen within 12 to 36 hours i.e. the LH surge precedes ovulation. So by waiting for a positive OPK before having sex a woman will not have missed ovulation. Obviously you know your own body but if it was already too late when the Clearblue OPK show a smiley face then Clearblue would be in legal trouble for describing that as "peak fertility".

Ha! Jessie, I understand your feeling about the meds! When my last cycle failed, I had a drawerful! Luckily the expiry date is a few years away!
Had to buy 300 quids worth yesterday!!
I was on the highest dosage before so it does cost.

Hi Jessie, I hear what you are saying, but I do believe clearview are a bit sneaky, if not misleading, in selling opks. They aren't lying, but as I said, I've researched the literature and I think waiting for opk gives much reduced chances (5%) over much higher chances doing it before ovulation.

Anyways, when we switched our game plan based on that data, things went very swimmingly three times consecutively!

Clearview can't profit as well by showing when egg was just missed! Bad marketing plan. It depends greatly when you detect the surge, of course and how quickly you can get sperm (sorry) mobilized, but I understand where what you are saying.

I thought egg meets sperm looked extremely promising, if not a lot of work. Not sure if we could have managed, to be honest.

Best wishes all.

Hi lilli
Thanks for cheer leading! It's good to get focused.

We do it before ovulation when internet cheapie opks start to get darker and then keep going until it's gone. I temped for 2 years and know I got up the duff when we dtd 2 or 3 days before ov temp rise.

You've got to have the sperm ready and waiting (I say soldiers waiting at the gate) Takes them up to 10hours to be fit and ready to penetrate the egg once they're up there. Capacitation it's called.

Saying that I'm not temping or using sticks now just shagging a few times mid month when I get the horn.

Annie,

Yes, excellent explanation! I felt that I was able to get pregnant much more quickly, despite being geriatric, when I understood the whole mechanics of ovulation very specifically. Otherwise, with my 26 day cycle, I would expect to be ovulating half way through, maybe day 12, according to medical wisdom. I ovulate day 17 with a very short luteal, so may have missed the boat if I subscribed to that wisdom. Blah, blah, sorry for going on and on.

Best wishes to everyone!

You're not going on lilli, it's helpful and reassuring to hear so we can check against what we are doing and see if there are any changes we can make to the way we are doing it.

My problem is maintaining the pregnancy. 4 mc in the last 3 years. Probably my age (42). I am fine about it now but when I tell friends about it for the first time in RL they cry for me and that really upsets me. I am strong until I see someone else's reaction to my situation.

I've been on here for years now and seen so many pregnancies and even seen some come back and have 2nd pregnancy. It's the same in real life. I could have had 2 by now... I always wanted 2. Now I don't think there is a chance of having one. I'm scared I'll get pregnant and miscarry again.

I do love my life though! Gorgeous DH, love my mum and all my friends and I can see a wonderful life ahead, not so "desperate" as I was. That could be part of the acceptance.

Sound like I'm on a downer but I'm not! Just Sunday night reflection.

Hope everyone is well and hoping to hear some more good news soon! X

Hi all,

Hope everyone is well.

Apologies for being a bit awol lately, I have been checking in and reading up on everyone’s news, just haven't really had much to post myself.

Huge whoop whoop to you Daisy, wishing you a stress free pregnancy, lovely to have a good news story here.

Good luck also to Jessie and HS with your upcoming rounds of IVF.

It looks like DH and I may be heading down that path sometime next year, if we are not successful naturally before then. We had our follow up appointment with the 'lovely' NHS consultant and he said all the test results showed no reason for us not to be getting pregnant apart from my age. Interestingly my AMH which was 9 in May had shown this time to be 4. I questioned him about this and he said that results can vary depending on where the sample is analysed, which I find quite frustrating that you cannot really rely on it being a 'accurate' number. However, he basically said we should not be hanging around and start thinking seriously about IVF in the early part of next year as time is not on my side. DH and I decided we'd start thinking about/discussing it in the new year. One of the main things I worry about, which will sound crazy to you all, is about taking the meds. I've always had issues with swallowing tablets and I'm already panicking about how I will manage it. I haven't swallowed a tablet (except the pill which even though tiny, I still struggled with) since I was about 10. Anyway, that will be something I will have to work out nearer the time. Apart from that it will just be the small issue of trying to work out how to come up with the money!

DH and I kind of took a more relaxed approach these past few months. After a summer of disappointment and other friends with their happy pregnancies and more being announced on FB, I decided to cool off a bit about the whole thing. I also had a couple of really great holidays, which if I was pregnant or with a baby I would never have been able to do, so it is not all doom and gloom.

Thanks Lilli for the advice, DH and I have consciously started early in the cycle because I think I was calculating my window too late when we first started trying.

Hi Sparrow. I had an almost identical drop in AMH- 9.8 in January to 3.3 in July. My consultant couldn't offer any elaboration on it either.

As to IVF drugs, good news- no pills to take! It's all injections and pessaries and I think for some a spray that you sniff. Have you not been taking folic acid though?

Nice to "see" you again and thanks for the good luck wishes. I am still hoping we'll get a BFP this month and not need IVF and am in very tedious limbo of week 2 of the 2ww.

Ooh some interesting stuff on here lately re OPKs! I agree I’ve often thought that the advice given in a well-known brand of smiley face OPKs could be a bit misleading – i.e. a smiley face means you’re at peak fertility for 48 hours afterwards .

Well maybe so, but that's possibly as accurate as assuming that every woman’s cycle is 28 days long. Its also a bit confusing when there's an article published by Clearblue themselves which includes a table summarising the results of various studies of when ovulation occurs in relation to the LH surge. Some of those studies found it was as little as 0 – 9 hours afterwards - link to article on LH surge.

And then for practical purposes at home, unless you were testing say every hour, I can’t see how you could know whether a positive OPK had been triggered by the start, peak or tail end of an LH surge (which could cut down the time to ovulation). Then you need to factor in that an egg might only be capable of fertilisation for 10 – 12 hours. Plus - as Annie mentioned already – you have to allow up to 10 hours for capacitation of the little soldiers ... it’s enough to drive you mental!

I’ve also read somewhere about studies that sex on the day before ovulation (or even two days before ov) is more effective than the day of ovulation. I couldn’t find the link I had in mind, although I did find this one - best time.

I guess all in all, we need to start early – and hope for the best!

But the main reason I popped in was to apologise for having a whinge a while back (2 Nov) about finding this TTC lark so emotionally hard going. I really do, but I just wanted to say that although I was only trying to empathise with the pp’s, I’m sorry if it appeared insensitive to anyone given that I do already have a child. And of course I realise how lucky (and probably undeserving) I am to have her. Sometimes I feel I’ve been TTC#2 so long that I've lost all sense of perspective, normality and manners.

It reminded me though of a phrase in Julia Indichova’s book – her autobiography about trying to conceive her second child – when she describes going to a Resolve group counselling session for infertility “... I feel a pang of guilt, as if I were getting in line for seconds before everyone else had been served.” Its possibly worth saying that if anyone hasn‘t read it yet, I’d heartily recommend it. Not so much for tips – although you can pick up one or two – but more because it’s a quick, uplifting read for positive thinking. So here's a spoiler alert! She starts when she was aged 42 (in 1992), with FSH the same as her age, 42 miu/ml. No ‘conventional’ medical doctor in New York will help her, so she looks for numerous ‘alternative’ boosts to health and fertility. Eventually she successfully conceives her second child aged 43, with an FSH of 30.4 (the lowest her FSH ever got in that time was 21.4). Inconceivable: A Woman's Triumph Over Despair and Statistics

Good luck all x

And I nearly forgot -

Daisy - many congratulations on your BFP with a fab co-ordinating manicure to boot! (Maybe matching nails to pregnancy test could be a good luck thing worth trying!)

HS26 - hope you have some of Daisy's good luck if you're going for IVF.

Jessie - FX for your 2ww and really hope you don't need IVF next month, but of course, best of luck if you do. May I ask - are you taking DHEA and if so, have you continued with the DHEA in your 2ww if trying naturally?

Hi Chewy. Yes, I am taking DHEA, 75 mg micronised daily, 50 mg in the morning and 25 in the evening. Funnily enough I was thinking about that very question this morning I.e might the DHEA be bad for implantation? Decided just to keep taking it as I can't imagine it has documented detrimental effects on conception or it wouldn't be so widely used, and my main aim is to take it consistently up to IVF in order to get max benefits (as it is I will still be 3 weeks short of the recommended 3 months).

Thanks for the book recommendation, sounds interesting.

The OPK calculations just pile on the stress for me, I must say. Though I suppose telling myself we fucked it up on timing is better than thinking we failed yet again due to crap eggs and sperm.

On the question of whether you continue DHEA throughout 2ww if trying naturally - thanks Jessie, your answer sounds very logical.

I'd tried to investigate a bit and found several articles that mention - if only very briefly - taking DHEA until pregnancy is confirmed by a second, 'normally rising', HCG test. I've linked a few examples below.

I think they're all from the IVF context - and the USA IVF context at that - so they seem to refer to blood tests (rather than POAS tests). I suppose blood tests can detect pregnancies very early, but if you're waiting for a second one, would it not be the case that they're confirming the pregnancy (and discontinuing DHEA) at about the same point as you could do yourself if trying naturally and weeing on a stick?

Some examples of those links:
- patient leaflet: "... CHR physicians supplement eligible patients uninterrupted until conception (confirmed with second normally rising pregnancy test)"
- Gleicher article: "... 25 mg of pharmaceutical grade, micronized DHEA, TID, uninterrupted until pregnancy (second, normally rising human chorionic gonadotropin level)." 3x daily
- link

Jessie - I've heard that 'micronised' DHEA is the good stuff. Do you mind me asking which brand you've gone for? (Sorry if you've mentioned that already)

Sure- it's McPherson labs ( can't link but should show on Google). They send from the U.S. by DHL but not too expensive.