The BESH are powering ahead on a gin and prosecco fuelled hover board, in the general direction of 2030

[barkingtreefrog]

Rules of entry: must be ttc #1 for over a year, be suitably evil and hag-like, and submit your BESHtionnaire for our approval. If you are a baby duster or a hun, this ain't the thread for you.

In order to join the BESH you MUST be over 30 and TTC for baybee no. 1 for over a year, be ok with swearing, shout CUNT at the world on a daily basis and howling at the moon should be a regular occurrence. BESHtionnaires must be submitted - no admittance allowed without it (we just want to snigger at your lesbian crush - it's true).Â

Revised BESHtionnare for reference

1. Do you like gin? (This is compulsory, you must say 'Yes')

2. Men - are you a gold digger or a cradle snatching cougar?

3. Baybee-making - to put a baybee in your tumtum, which hole do you use:
   a) weewee
   b) poopoo
   c) foofoo
   d) none, you just pray to the baby Jebus.

4. Testing - when someone wonders if they should test for updiff (pg), do you:
   a) bellow 'POAS!' at them non-stop and punch them repeatedly in the kidneys till they wet themselves anyway.
   b) Sprinkle them with babydust and send them hugs and kisses on lickle baby angel wings.

5. Is R2D2:
   a) an adorable robot from Star Wars.
   b) the source of all evil.

6. Number of pets?

7. Inappropriate (read: weird) crush of shame?

8. Lesbian crush?

9. How much money have you spent on sticks you then urinate on?
   a) Oh nothing, I'll probably catch first time and then get the doctor to confirm it.
   b) Over 100 quid
   c) I opened an account on ebay solely for the purpose of purchasing sticks

10. Which of these sentences is appalling:
    a) Off to see the consultant today!!! So excited!!!!!
    b) Gud luck hun sprinkling babydust for ya lol xxx
    c) both of the above

11. How barren are you?
    a) childless and TTC for at least one year
    b) one child and TTC #2 for at least two years
    c) I've been trying for 2 cycles and the wait is driving me mad!

If (c) then the BESH is not the thread for you.

Name checking in to let you know I just about survived Monday, but shit me is it still only Monday? Both my boys are crock now. Poorly ROCH, poorly coconut horse, lots of running about after the both of them today as well as a more than full on day at work = v tired now. ROCH will live but quietly worried about my noble steed who is no better. He sends get well wuffles to beautiful Rainycat.

Barking what total headfuckery, I hope your bod sorts itself out for you soon.

Go Fab COW thoughts heading your way and may induced menopause be good to you, snuggled in your cosyness with Mr Fab watching good telly! Exciting for the wonder cycle to be underway.

Fiz you're not wrong, every fucker seems to be popping them out at the moment, there are a plethora of smug parentals every which way. I LOVE that you went to your bed to escape. Not to mention totally fucking jealous. Hibernation is feeling very appealing right now if it wasn't for the no eating bit. Ignoring the fact that I've been stocking up for the last month.

Arm rubs for you Erica as you get through difficult times.

Thanks for the arm rubs Chez , hope the ROCH and the horse feel better too soon.

Fab Whop, whop COW! Exciting times! Hope the 'menopause' is not too bad.

Barking Best of luck today, hag. It really really sucks when it feels that our bodies are not cooperating at all. Go Barking's droid OR BFP, but show yourself now, whoever you are !!! (hopefully BFP though!!)

I feel your pain Fizz. I am also so fed up with pregnancy announcements. I have a couple of people that started TTC at the same time or later than us and are expecting #2 now. Makes me feel pretty hopeless and doom-y. Like it's just not meant to be... - administers fish slaps to self -.

It is meant to be and it will happen.

Ok, animals, buck yourselves up. RainCat and CoconutHorse need to stop adding to the worry, it's just horrible when the furry babies are not well.

I didn't go to the clinic, just called and asked to book in for tomorrow. No droid overnight, nothing this morning, no cramps yet, but bfn on a sensitive test. 13dpo. WHAT THE FUCK?!?!
I'm going either way tomorrow. If there's still nothing, then as far as I'm concerned I'll be at least 5 days overdue and demanding provera to bring it on.

Barking WTF indeed. Sorry about the BFN. I usually get a couple of days of on/off spotting before the droid does the full monty thing but this headfuck just before you start treatment is beyond frustrating.

Hopefully it will arrive today/tonight and you can carry on as planned.

Ok, IVF ladies. How long before transfer do you start the process (in terms of drugs etc). I don't want to get too obsessed about it but seeing that work schedule seems to be against us reproducing, I want to make sure we can do the necessary to start in May.

Headfuckery galore Barking. Aaaaargh for you from here.

It's a bit difficult to tell Erica I'm afraid as it really depends on how your body responds to the drugs and what protocol you go with. I'm doing long protocol which means that they put me on the pill then give me drugs to put my body into menopause, then take me off the pill so I have a bleed - at which point everything should be shut down. The shutting down (too funny - autocorrect just changed that to shitting down!) bit takes approx 2 weeks, then they do a scan to make sure you have a lovely thin lining and start giving you stims drugs to get it plump again (but not tooo plump) and get your ovaries working on overdrive to get you to produce lots of lovely healthy plump follicles That normally takes about 10-14 days ish but sometimes can take a lot longer depending on how well it's going. When the follicles are the right size you get another drug to stimulate ovulation which will happen 36 hours later at which point you have egg collection. Strictly speaking this is the only point at which you and your partner definitely do need to be together as he has to shake his thang at the same time. Then transfer can be anywhere between 2-5 days after that. That's really the best I can offer you on timings I'm afraid - it's all a bit loose and I would advise telling bosses that you are doing it as you tend to have to do things at a drop of a hat and this takes priority. If you don't you'll likely end up a stress head which isn't great. Also when you're in the stimulation phase you can end up doing scans every day or every other day which all takes time too and is very hard to cover up if you have a desk job and a clinic that isn't close!

The droid has finally landed. Clinic tomorrow.
That gave me a 12 day LP.
Which is causing more headfuckery. I thought I couldn't get pg because my LP was only 8 days. I liked having a 'reason'. Does this mean everything has changed and now I could get pg naturally, I just didn't this cycle? I had the end of the road as the ivf, now I'm not going to get that closure as one stupid cycle has given me hope of a natural diffment.

This ttc shit really does bring out the buried crazy, doesn't it?!

Fab and Bugs - Thanks! That all makes sense!

Ok, assuming my cycles stay regular, if our March attempts fail, droid would arrive beginning of April. Say we give ourselves another month because we are optimist fools (we are) . Droid arrives end of April/beginning of May so we could IVF sometime in June ... sounds ok! (good thing I am not going to obsess about trying IVF, ha ha!).

Bugs How is the buglet doing?? Are you still on maternity leave? Did you, at some point during Christmas, mentally told the Virgin Mary 'see I have a baby too, lady!' in your mind? I love that story. It's lovely when the PESH and the mamma BESH (CESH?) drop by in here, it reminds us that there is hope after all!

Barking Glad to hear your LP is doing the 'right thing' but I sympathise with the headfuckery. I seem to be unexplained for both infertility issues (unless you count small amount of endo, which really, doesn't seem to explain 3 years of this bullshit) and rmc. Which means that unless we start using contraception, there will always be hope... which is good? Don't know anymore.

glad the droid finally turned up barking. Have a cod of calm to keep those menkully thoughts at bay.

Interesting hearing about the vagaries of IVF timings. I was sort of natively hoping it'd be ask systems go the second we have our appointment!! I think I need to realign my estimate to April/May then.

Sad news for rainycat , ultrasound showed a small mass in her pelvic area and another blocking her intestine - all hallmark signs of lymphoma . Our vet has managed to get us a n emergency appt at a specialist vet hospital today so we're currently on our way over to see what, if anything, can be done.

I am so sorry Rain - best of luck with your lovely kitty.

So sorry to hear that Rain - have a bucketful of shellfish (and a sneaky unBESHly cuddle). Keeping all limbs for rainycat.

Hey Bugs! Nice to see you here in this neck of the woods . How's the cheeky little Buglet?

Hags have you seen your clinics regarding these potential ivf rounds yet? Are you doing it via nhs or private?

So sorry rain .

I am now trying to get head out of arse and engage back to being positive about iui working and ignore the LP confusion. Chances are my cycle will be totally different again if we go through 2 iui's plus an ivf and are still trying anyway, so right now it's all totally irrelevant. Eyes on the closest possible prize!!!
Seeing the nice acupuncture lady tomorrow so hopefully that will help keep things on schedule from now on .

Fab I am abroad so going private. I have no idea how long waiting lists are for IVF in the NHS - 6 months to a year maybe? That's the average time in my country, which has a similar healthcare system.

Thanks hags, sorry to keep derailing the thread on to my cats ailments! The appointment at the specialist was good (any of you seen Super Vet? It was sort of like that!). They're doing a bunch of tests of their own, but will basically be aiming to start some steroid injections asap to try to shrink the tumours. We'll know tomorrow whether they think she's going to be a good chemo candidate - the other options are surgical and I don't think they're in her best interests at all. The moral of my story is GET PET INSURANCE. We're in for approx £2.5k at the moment - eye watering stuff but you can't put a price on a fur baby can you!

Bugs 15 weeks! I hope you've got some good Michelin man chub rolls going on (by you I obviously mean Buglet). Love baby chub!

Barking a war is won one battle at a time - glad you're feeling more zen on the LP stuff now. Hope the appointment tomorrow goes well!

fab we will be nhs funded (fingers crossed!). We won't get our referral from gynaecologist until I redo Day 2 bloods (next week) and RAF has a HIV test and provides a new spaff pot (aiming to get them all done together, iyswim). We did attend an open evening at our hopefully soon to be clinic, but won't get to meet anyone till the referral happens. Our consultant's best guesstimate was somewhere between 4 - 8 weeks (which is what the clinic said themselves at the open evening).

Wow! 4 to 8 weeks is fantastic! Go NHS Go!

Great news about the supervet! Keep us informed :) and well done barking for getting back the zen. Ommm.

Ooh yes I love those chubba roles - I want to bite those scrumptious ickle leggies.

So is the 4-8 weeks for your consultant appointment or 4-8 weeks before you start ivf? The nhs normally like to out you through the run of every fertility test known to man before going ivf doesn't it? I went straight to private so don't have personal experience - has anyone else in here been down the nhs route? What's the norm? With my private clinic it originally took me 3 months to get an appointment and then it was quick sticks after that to ivf because of my extreme age.

The 4-8 weeks is the estimated wait time from our referral to when our treatment at the IVF clinic should start. It's been a 3 year wait to get to this point!
To date we've been under the care of a fertility gynaecologist - in terms of testing we've not really had much, just standard day 2/21 (a few times) which have always been normal, a spas test for RAF, chlamydia etc tests and I had a HyCoSy 18 months ago which wad also clear (I got diffed a couple of cycles after that but you know the rest there). Because there was no 'problem' we've not had any other form of medical intervention, no drucks or anything, and our CCG don't fund IUI so it's IVF or nothing (not that I'm complaining). We get two rounds of IVF plus two frozen cycles, if applicable, so four go's max. I know in this regard we are extremely fortunate and it makes my blood boil that there so much difference from CCG to CCG.

Apologies for my totally non PC phone and its idiotic spelling - SPAFF test is obviously what I meant

Good news on the ivf clinic - 2 full and 2 frozen is brilliant! My area didn't even give me a sniff at that - they only provide it up to your 35th birthday. Seems insane doesn't it. Given that the average age of first births is getting older and older - seems like a cunning plan to say oh yes we support people with fertility issues....but sod the NICE guidelines, we're going to cover a smaller and smaller section of the population and fork out less and less. mwahahahahaaa. At least the changed the younger age limit - it used to be only available to women who were 31-35 and had been trying for 2 years! I know of a poor woman who got married young (20) and couldn't get pregnant. She couldn't afford to go private so she and her husband had to wait until they were 31 before getting ivf, at which point it was too late and her AMH was virtually non existent. So terribly sad.

Ah gorgeous Buglet - unsurprisingly sounding like her mum

God, the 35 age limit is pretty scary.

I mean, we've started TTC when I was 30.5 and got pregnant pretty much straight away. After I mc-d we gave it another year (standard), had a cp, gave it 6 more months before starting the tests and those plus clomid/IUI/lap/diffage/MC/lap again has taken another whole year.

All this takes us to now, a year from turning 35. I mean, most doctors tend to try other methods before going straight to IVF but now i feels like we may have been wasting our time and we should have gone down that road a while ago.

And how long do you have to be trying for to be considered? Because we started in the autumn of 2011 but my second mc was only 6 months ago?

Argh.

Hi Hags,
Just about keeping up! I won't always be this lame - promise!

Hope rainy cat and all other fur babies are doing well. And hi to ickle buglet

I've no idea what our local provision is for IVF. Had a spaff test booked to get us there but Mr Blue (he needs a better name than this, help me out with it hags??) had to cancel due to work pressures (which honestly are taking us both under at the moment) so we are nowhere near the nhs route. However, because work almost drowns us it does mean we can afford to go private so I'm planning on going that first. Went to open day at the clinic yesterday and they will,in some circumstances, treat until you are 50 (and he is "significantly older than 50 but 90 years old might be pushing it a bit") so 14 years left to go!

Fish slaps and toe holds for all nearer to that end point that me

IVF provision makes me gnash my teeth in rage. So unfair that the different CCGs have different policies. Round these parts it's one funded round up to age 35, have to be trying 3 years or have other provable cause of infertility. And watch out - if you go private to speed things up, you might forfeit your free round - this is the case in my CCG. Sigh. Despite the rant, i do feel very lucky that we are eligible for a round - and that it's still covered by the NHS even though it's been going on for 14 months!
Rang the clinic today to book scans for my mock cycle. Beginning to get real again now. Also more pg announcements - two lesbian friends expecting in July. I did do an eye roll about the fact that two women have got pregnant easier than me and GFBW!

fab how are you feeling with the downregging?

barking hope you are feeling a bit brighter about things today.

blue I had to read that many times before I realised you weren't saying that Mr Blue was significantly over 50 but not pushing 90. Or were you and I've just put my foot in it?

One NHS round of ivf here, minimum 2 years TTC but you'd be lucky to actually get it after 2 years. We had our first iui after 2.5 years. I'm just glad we get iui first, even though it has a very low success rate and most places don't bother any more.
There isn't a 35 limit (thankfully, given I turn 36 this year before we'll have it if necessary) but the age limit for reduced cost private ivf via egg sharing is 35, so that ship has sailed .

rain how's the furball?

We have pet insurance. Good job too, given the time the dog broke his leg when the gate shut on it in the wind. And the time he mangled his ear trying to retrieve a frisbie by sticking his head under a fence.

fiz have you got a start date for the dummy cycle?

I went to the clinic this morning, scan all fine, started injecting tonight! Wasn't expecting that. Last time I had to go back for numerous scans and injections before my body was ready to start!
Don't have to go back until a week tomorrow, on the daily injections until then.
The nurse said in my situation she'd take the aspirin, so I need to go and pick some up. We were still dithering, but that made up my mind.