Strapping on our lady balls and going menkul because we HATE THIS SHIT!! The Berries: a lovely bunch of 30 something Ladybros TTC #1

[happylass]

The small print:

The Berries have strict entrance criteria: TTC #1 for 12 months+, over 30, NO instadiffers, must have a special pimping pot and absolutely no mention of baby dust/dancing. Not that we're fussy!

Current Ladybros:

Minx 35 - TTC 2.5 years. Stage 4 endometriosis, both tubes blocked, 1 buried ovary, IVF #1 started Aug '15 at Mustache Towers, if all goes well results due mid-Sept.

Smidge 39, TTC since Jan '13. Unexplained. Some high NK cell immune treatment. IVF#1 Short protocol Jul'14 BFN; IVF#2 Nov'14 and IVF#3 Feb'15 both Long protocol BFNs; Natural FET Jun'15 - Another BFN. Trying to work out what to do next.

Happylass, 37, TTC since Aug 2012. 2 failed ICSI cycles, 1 failed FET and 1 abandoned cycle due to poor response. Hoping to start antagonist cycle mid September. HATE THIS SHIT!!

Beaky 35, ttc 3 yrs, 2x failed iui 1 long protocol ivf cancelled, 1 short protocol IVF BFN, very low amh etc etc. In 2ww for 2nd sp IVF.

Tigerdog, 35, ttc since Jan 2013. Unexplained. IVF #1 chemical pregnancy. Currently redoing tests in preparation for IVF #2.

barkingtreefrog 36, ttc since Dec 2011. clomid bfp summer 2013 then mc @7 weeks, iui bfp summer 2014 then mc @6 weeks. Factor V leiden thrombophilia diagnosed at the repeat mc clinic. IUI bfn Jan 2015, IVF bfn April/May 2015. FET bfn August 2015, remaining frozen embryo perished. Pursuing private tests and then long protocol ivf in Oct/Nov.

Lumen, 35, ttc since Nov 2011, unexplained, two IVF cycles in 2014, both bfns, waiting for lap&dye and results of numerous bloods, aiming for one last IVF cycle.

Kuma - 40. TTC 2.9 years. Low AMH high FSH - DH antisperm ABs. Failed IVF June 14 and March 15, cancelled cycle June 15. Last try September 15

Lucieloos, 36, TTC 18 months, low AMH & sperm motility. ICSI#1, April 2015, Czech, 2xblasts transferred, BFN. Icsi#2, cancelled before EC. Icsi#3, 2 mature and fertilised, both to blast and frozen. Icsi#4 in October, embryo banking.

Rain, 34, ttc since March 2012. unexplained. Mystery bfp oct 13, MMC Nov 13. IVF#1 Aug 2015

Sesame, 40, ttc with no dp, on this road for 2 years, multiple failed IVFs, 3 ETs, 1 bfp then mc, poor responder with v low AMH, but still looking for the golden egg.

nolly, 33, TTC 3 years, 1 confirmed MC, 2 more suspected. still in limbo

Spare, 34, TTC 3 years, IVF#1 short protocol + ICSI August 14 BFP but pregnancy loss at 20+ weeks, 3 failed FET, IVF #2 short protocol + PICSI August 15

Funkymonk 33. Ttc since October 2012. Mc June 2013, Mmc dec 2013, mc June 2014. Factor v Leiden thrombophilia. Abandoned IVF Jan 2015 due to thin lining. Abandoned FET Aug 2015 due to thin lining. 4 embies on ice. Cycling again November time I think.

Clem, currently on 3rd Clomid Cycle

Pip - quite simply the Best In Show.

seasame sorry I missed you off my post walks slowly to corner of the room, to think about what I've done hope EC goes well for you tomorrow.

sorry, 1 more thing (full of bloody questions today)...

I've been recommended by a friend of a friend, who has had trouble conceiving (now has a little boy), that I should get my level 1 immunes tested. has anyone else had this? what does this suite of blood tests actually tell me? thanks.

clem Level 1 looks at thrombophilia panel, karyotypes for both of you, hormone levels etc. Mostly it's what you'd have done by the recurrent miscarriage clinic. Some of it will already have been done by the fertility clinic.
Yes, always have any tests done when you don't have drugs in your system.
Royal visitors have been and gone. Quite glad really. They'd already visited all their friends and other relatives and DH's siblings before they came to us and they were just desperate to get back home. And kept telling us. Which was nice.

Lucie I'm on long protocol with the kitchen sink approach . DH didn't pay the invoice as he was supposed to when he went to the clinic to sign his forms today, he brought it back for me to check it really should be for that amount

sesame good luck for tomorrow. Shit load of drugs delivered safely. I opened one box to put a smaller box inside and then parcel taped it up like a lunatic in case anyone peeped inside as I just left it in the stock room!!

Nolly thanks for that, it's great having a resident scientist! I'm trying not to look at chances etc. I was presented with a chart of success rates on day 2/3, day 4 or day 5 transfers, with 1 or 2 embryos, for women in my age group. It was to persuade me to go for a single embryo transfer essentially but I almost just don't want to know. They reckon they have a 60% success rate if transferring a blastocyst. But that just puts the pressure on getting to blastocyst, and then makes you feel like even more of a failure if you fall in the 40%. Anyway, over thinking stuff again.

hello you lovely lot.

happy glad you're all underway now. How did the scan go today?

sesame good luck for your EC tomorrow. Everything crossed for you.

I found it interesting to read the information about the high stims nolly. I had no response issues but a high right ovary which they were worried that they may not be able to reach - as a result they upped my stims to 300 of menopur - I really wasn't keen on this and I'm certain it impacted on my egg quality based on a non-scientific hunch

Hope your drugs arrived ok barking. I'm envious of you starting now - I'm so desperate to kick off and I wish I could get a cycle in before Christmas.

clem I don't know whether you can get AMH tested on a clomid month but I would say that ANC would have to be on a natural cycle. Best to check with the FC. Do you know where you will go yet? Coventry and Warwick do an immunes biopsy to check for NK cells - I was going to do it but my new FC told me I wasn't allowed to do that privately without compromising my NHS entitlement. I don't think that's true but I don't want to risk it now. Health kick is going ok - ish. Doing yoga a fair bit, will add the running back in over the weekend. Still need to work on the diet and ideally want to lose half a stone or so pre wedding!

beaky lovely how are you doing?

ungoog did you speak to the GP in the end? Hope you're feeling ok.

Not much to report here - have a group session on Friday and got a letter saying that it would replace my nurse led appointment and mean the commencement of my treatment - I don't really know what that means! I still haven't had my 3D sis or dummy transfer - booked for 3rd Nov - so I doubt I will start before Christmas. Starting now would be ideal timing-wise though....

Wow barking I didn't think the success rates were that high for a blasto? Brilliant if they are though. I was thinking more around the 40-50% mark. What does your long down reg with kitchen sink involve if you don't mind me asking?

Tiger I was on 300iu menopur from day 7 on my last treatment and although we only had 2 eggs collected, one of the two made it to blasto and was grade 1 which they said was excellent quality. It was the first time that we managed to get a grade 1 our others have always been grade 2 on lower stimms so I'm thinking maybe it just depends on the getting a good egg to start with and not so much the stimms or just luck I don't know.

Sesame, good luck for tomorrow, hope it all goes well.

tiger hope Friday is useful and you're not waiting as long as you fear.

lucie I'm taking metafolin, having a scratch, then intralipids in a drip, suprecur to downreg and both menopur and gonal f for stims with another intralipids drip that week. After ec I'll be on heparin, prednisalone, calcium tablets and progesterone. Added the embryo glue and caremaps (their own algorithm using the embryo scope) to maximise chances. I'm using the hypnotherapy tracks from last time and having weekly acupuncture. Exercise stops now and I'm doing nothing more than dog walks and a very short cycle to work from now on.
I've probably forgotten something...
Oh, and chocolate brownies (eggs) with double cream and ice cream (protein) on a daily basis .

That sounds good barking and similar to what I will be doing. When I have transfer I will be on prednisone, 2 lots of intralipids, clexane, utrogestan and gestone! May as well throw the lot at it just incase. I'm going to be doing Gonal with only a small amount of menopur on my next round. Bcp first and then around 7 days of suprecur before af arrives. What doses of stimms are you doing? Sorry if you've already said.

I'm not an endocrinologist or a fertility expert (outside my berry life obviously) but I am trained in decoding science papers so I can hopefully be helpful on that front. They did show a declining relatioship between high dosage and live births but that's for a bunch of reasons.

I think it's possible, tiger that there is a relationship between egg qual and dosage of IVF drugs. However, there is no evidence presented in this paper of that kind of mechanism.

The way I think of it, is that the complex intra (within) and inter (between) cellular processes which control (a) egg production (b) egg maturation (c) egg release (d) conception (e) implantation and (f) every other freaking thing are so complicated it's a miracle that they can be controlled to the extent that they are. Every IVF baby is a miracle in my book. The tools they have to try and intervene in a system of such huge variety and compelxity are astoundingly blunt. Imagine someone who can't fill up their oil tank in a car, and instead they pour oil into the bonnet. Sometimes it'll work, but sometimes it'll blow the engine sky high. IVF is a bit better than that but not much. And all cars are bascialyl the same! Women are not. In that context, doing yoga once or four times a week is equivalent to buffing the headlights. feel free but for goodness sake don't feel responsible.

barking i guess I'd probably want to know myself but only because I'm an eternal pessimist. Also as a trained social scientist you do quickly come to realise that no statistics apply to the individual - only to the population. For example I smoke 200 a day and live only on eclairs.

but seriously it's meaningless. Think about any other disease and the infinite variety which e.g. cell division takes in any cancer shows you how the tools available (nuclear war against cancer cells) cannot really predict anything for the individual. There are very few occasions on which individual risk / success can genuinely be predicted because you are so different from other women of your age, weight, height, ethnicity, diagnosis, income group, education, fitness level - and yet all of those would be used as ways to group the statistics for the population. They're a guide for the clinicians - not for the patient. And a good clinician will take that into account, but really look at you, your choices, your preferences, your particular responses and test results and make their recommendation on those grounds.

Morning all

I need a break from studying so you lot can help me procrastinate.

It has been a busy few weeks on the berry board I see.

Smidge I am sorry to hear about the result. On a positive note it gives the FS something to work with.

Tiger Copenhagen is lovely. I could quite happily live there. Well only if they un ban vegemite. Princess Mary is Australian, it shouldn't be banned.

SesameHappy I hope the scans and EC went well.

I know I have missed people and Ill keep reading the thread to see what has happened to everyone over the past few weeks.

I am off to have another blood test tomorrow to check my syphilis. A chest infection can give a false positive and I had one during the test so that explains a lot. If the test is ok then I can start the drugs next week.

My DB and SIL had a baby last week. Little boy named William Hans Michael. I am very happy for them but this is two 'accidents' in two years. A colleague had a baby last week too as did a friend in New Zealand (10lbs 6oz OW!). Two more colleagues are due in the next three months too.
Ive packed on the weight since starting on the infertility fun fair. 16kg of fat (ok 5kg can be attributed to tim tams) and DH has lost 20kg so I feel like a fat heifer next to svelte DH.

clem I've got many a to ignore list of my own. a big one at work too It makes sense to do your tests on a natural cycle, though I think it might be possible the amh one could still be ok. I think continuous clomid's meant to impact on your womble lining anyway, so perhaps a break would help things.

barking hope your mysterious parcel didn't raise too many eyebrows then I'm always very interested in folk's Internet shopping Good luck for your scratch today.

tiger getting your health kick underway sounds good, and glad that things at the fc seem to be moving along.

lucie thanks. I'm sure that there's a great deal of luck involved in this game, despite all the things we try to influence.

nolly you are wiser than your berry years. Loved the car analogy. I have been tinkering with my headlights a lot, but at least I can take pride in my sort of shiny old banger.

grin hope you get the all clear on your blood test so you can get this show on the road. Sorry about the baby bombardment. I've gained a lot of weight too in the past year thanks to fertility treatment, which at least is a good excuse to go shopping.

Well after 5 hours sleep, I'm on a shockingly early commuter train to my fc and it's dark and stormy outside. Not a lot else to report for now. I really hope they can pull eggs out of me today and I won't have to turn round and get train home empty handed again.

Good luck sesame!

Nolly I think you've got it spot on there. I also liked the car analogy. I must admit though, my concern is slightly more superficial at the moment - need to sort out the body work for the wedding in April!

Hiya grin! Sorry about the baby bombardment, the fertility of the rest of the world feels relentless sometimes. I saw on the news the other day that even horses are having babies through ivf!

Just running in quickly to say good luck for EC today Sesame. Will be thinking of you lady - keep us posted x

Sneaky checking in from work to see if Sesame has news? Everything crossed still.

Thank you so much berries! I got one egg. I was quite upset beforehand as one of the follies had already disappeared before I even got to theatre - and the time this happened to me before I ended up with nothing. Went home and had a snooze and got woken up in a pool of my own drool by the embryologist who called to let me know the egg's mature and has been injected. Will know the results tomorrow. Fingers crossed ladybros!

And let's hope it really does only take one!

Excellent news smidge. IOTO!!!

My scratch this morning was hideous. My uterus is apparently C shaped and they couldn't get the catheter round. Took three of them including the consultant who they called in to have a go. I cried lots.
Would my uterus change shape? Why has no-one ever mentioned this before? EC and et has always been horribly painful, maybe this is why?

Yes Sesame!! Fx for you lady. Barry White and the spice girls on full blast at the beaky household for you! Shame about the other one, but IOTO

Fx crossed for you sesame hope you have a lovely little embryo tomorrow.

hooray sesame! come on embie!

Great news Sesame. Everything crossed for you.
Ladybros who've used the Gonal F pens, how did you dispose of them? Obviously I'm putting the used needles in the sharps bin but it isn't going to be big enough for the pens as well. Also don't know what to do with all the spare needles. My house is starting to resemble a pharmacy with all the left over meds from various cycles!!
1 more day until half term. Counting every second!

How are you feeling anyway Sesame?

Barking when do you start downregging? Sorry you had such an awful scratch experience, have you had one before?

I rang the clinic today, my results are still not all back. Back to the waiting and waiting. Blah blah.

Happy when's your first scan? Eek. Re the gonal f pens, I still have them in a bag in the wardrobe! Not sure of what to do with them.

booo beaky. How are you doing? not your normal cheery self lately. At least it's Friday?

happy how bizarre that they don't tell you waht to do! I guess you could hand them out to local smackheads? Or take back to clinic??

Haha. The local smack heads round here don't need any help getting pg, I used to practice in family and dealt with a lot of care cases and they were the most fertile people ever. Maybe we all need heroin?

Nolly I know, I am not my usual self and when of think of this shit I feel worse. How are you? Coping with the waiting ok?

Sesame any news?

Thanks for the music and the pompoms! Just took the call, my egg has fertilized! ET is booked for tomorrow. My clinic is a long way away so they're going to check the embie again first thing and let me know if it's ok before I leave the house. That's one more hurdle over with. Need to get to transfer next. I've taken the day off work in case I had to deal with bad news. Have to think what to do with myself now...

barking ouch! That's sounds like a horrible experience. You'd have thought they'd have managed to get a catheter in if you've managed ET before. And did you say you've had a biopsy before too? Is it possible it's something to do with the opening to your cervix? If so, perhaps it's worth asking if there is anything they can do to help before ET next time?

happy I never worked out what to do about the empty pens either. I ended up hoarding them until in a fit of frustration I just binned them all . I suppose a more sensible thing to do would be to ask your fc or take them to a pharmacy? I now only squirrel away left over needles and in date meds, just in case I end up doing a future cycle somewhere I get charged for these things. Yay for half term! What are your plans?

beaky I'm feeling fine, I only had the one puncture wound to my ovary, so just feel pretty normal today. I didn't even have any bleeding yesterday. It's bizarre. Sorry the fc are being so slow about things. And sorry you have to cope with all this shit Hope dh and beakypup are looking after you and you have something nice to look forward to at the weekend?