TTC after pregnancy loss: We're nervous, we're hopeful, we're checking all the charts and taking all the vits!

[BertieBotts]

Welcome back all and welcome new posters.

Oh Anatidae how awful to have to do that after everything you've been through.

Bertie I would say not a good idea, although this is my story with them!

Used it from 8 weeks successfully picking up baby heartbeat (definitely the baby's as could easily distinguish the two).

All fine used it most days checking in that all was well. Had a private gender scan at just under 16 weeks which again, was fine. So didn't use it for about a week after that. When I did I couldn't find the heartbeat. Panicked and thought ill try again later. Anyway a good week of trying and trying and not finding anything I gave up and convinced myself it's just that I'm not a midwife and baby could be hiding in a funny position. Had seen all was well so why wouldn't it be

Fast forward to 20 week scan, and turns out his heart stopped around the 16 week mark. So somewhere in the week of seeing a healthy scan and not finding the heart beat at home.

So for me next time, I don't know what I'd do wether I'd use it again or not as while it caused great panic, it was actually for a good reason x

I'm sorry Ana, it's the worst having to do stuff like that.

I just had a stupid row with a colleague and nearly cried. I really wish I didn't have to work at the moment. It's such a stressful job and my mind is all over the place.

Emvy I bought the pregnacare and they have sat unused in my cupboard as it says in the back not to use if you are on anti coagulants... I'm not really but I am on the daily aspirin.. I opted to just take the aspirin, folic acid and vit d.. In some ways for me I just have it in my head that I was taking the pregnacare the last two times and I needed to feel like I was doing something different this time around.
My diet certainly isn't great either and if I'm honest it never really has been.. It's funny though because very similar to you my big helps are ice lollies, Spirals and strawberries... Reckon strawberries can almost count as a liquid
Ineed and Juniper I second the window.. Would very much appreciated.. Up to this week I've had a scan every week but this week I have 12 whole days between scans.. It feels like an eternity!!

Hello everyone
I've been on so many boards that I recognise many of your names but here we all are again.
So sorry to everyone.

I have a 2yo DD but have had 2 MCs this year. First loss at 10 weeks (Feb) and second at 5 weeks (May ish, I think?)

My first pg would have been due 02/09 so I'm getting quite blarty this week but of course my DH (whilst generally very good) is totally ignorant to the whole thing.

I think I am pg for a third time this year. Due on around Weds, couple of small signs make me think I am. I have no trouble getting pg but trouble keeping them, it seems.

After my last MC I spoke to a consultant who carried out my MVA and she told me I could try taking a baby aspirin once I've had a positive HPT.
But only on reading this board have I seen a problem with taking pregnacare and aspirin - anyone got any more experience/knowledge on this?
Might call GP once I've done a test.

I have a huge party to go to on Sunday (organised nearly a year ago and very very important meaning to me) and I am torn between waiting to find out until next week and having a good fucking night out as I hardly ever go out and with what I've been through this year I could do with it, or finding out before the party and just resigning myself to doing the right thing and avoiding anything nice or fun for the foreseeable future... Yuck. I know exactly what I'll do or I'll never forgive myself if/when it goes wrong again.

I'm trying to not obsess or get too hopeful again but it is soooo draining isn't it...

(Sorry to rant here. I'm sure we're all roughly in the same boat.)

In terms of home dopplers, my friend swears by them and used one all through her first pregnancy. However, my DM is a midwife and they are just a no go for me - she's very passionate about how unhelpful they are and wants them to be banned. She has far too many stories of women thinking they had heard a baby's heartbeat and therefore waited despite feeling reduced movements before going in and ending up having stillbirths. There's just no way I'd get away with using one, even if I wanted to!

Anti, I'm sorry, that's so difficult to have to deal with x

Welcome, Dont, I hope you're right and get a nice bfp in a few days. I too noticed the packaging saying not to take with coagulants but as I'm not on aspirin it's not a problem for me. I doubt the Seven Seas version today to try instead as it was the only other brand I could find in Sainsbury's!

Also, in terms of finding out if you're pregnant or not before the party - I held off testing for ages so that I could be blissfully unaware at a couple of occasions. The first, I spent all night throwing up after 3 drinks and the second had a horrific UTI and had to lay off the drinks anyway. We now know why... so it didn't work at all for me! But it could be fine for you! Best of luck for when you do test x

Hi ladies.

Had an ectopic pregnancy about 7 months ago. Just started actively TTC again.

I also have PCOS so any advice/tips for TTC would be much appreciated x

Hi all, just catching up, so many posts. Hi to new people, I'm so sorry for the reasons you're here and hope it helps you to chat xx

I decided to jump straight back in and ttc this month... stopped bleeding days ago and treated day 1 of MC as cycle day 1... seem to be getting flashing smileys. Would have thought OV was 6 or 7 days away if this was a normal cycle but no idea what's going to happen!

Am at that weird point where you want to dtd every day just in case OV sneaks up on you early.... but if it is 6/7 days away you know you may burn out and not be able to carry on by day 7! Last month was a "5 days in a row" marathon (for us, that's a marathon anyhow!) and we conceived so I'm aiming for the same. So scared of the disappointment if it doesn't work this month!

Re Pregnacare- I used pregnacare max with my first (full term, healthy) pregnancy followed by their breastfeeding one. No problems at all. This time I used pregnacare conception and was using pregnacare max again before MC. Now I'm back on the conception ones. Have had no probs with them, no cycle issues or anything. I also take omega and ubiquinol.

Who knows if they really do anything, but suppose it can help to know you're doing everything you can (in a situation where you can't control anything else!)

ive googled my stats on ttc at 45. its hopeless. i rang an infertility clinic today.
it will cost almost £600 just for preliminary investigations. im on the verge of giving up i think.

id pay for those investigations but seems ill need donor eggs. so our baby wont be "our" baby even if it worked.

Vicar I have a family friend who was TTC in her 40s with her DH in his 50s. It did take them a long time - a good few years - and they had a lot of heartache along the way but she now has her gorgeous little DS. So although the odds might be slim and the road might be difficult, it does absolutely happen.

its so hard knowing i got pg last year. dp is super fit. like proper super fit and slightly obsessed with being fit ....

he is only 11 months older but is so health conscious im sure his swimmers will be olympians....

A lot of the fertility "stats" out there are crap though, you know that? The whole main thing about 35 being a cliff of fertility (for example) is especially dubious yet it's repeated everywhere. It was taken from census data or birth records or something from medieval French farmers and simply shows that the birth rate sharply declined at 35 among these women, with no analysis done. For some reason we've been assuming that means that it's less possible to get pregnant at that age or beyond but this assumes that those French farmers' wives (who probably had several kids already at that age) were energetically shagging away trying to get pregnant but failing. That seems hugely unlikely and modern studies seem to suggest age is much less of an issue than always previously thought, that the chances drop much more slowly than emotive language like "cliff" describes, and that women can get pregnant at any point up to menopause, of which the average age is 51/52.

Remember that women seeking IVF tend to have lower fertility/other fertility problems in general which is why they are probably more picky about things like eggs - nature wouldn't have to be.

You can even get pregnant during perimenopause. (My MIL did). The main thing that seems to be the issue with conception the older you are is higher chance of miscarriage and abnormalities as you've sadly already found out. But I don't think that means it's a lost cause, not at all.

I wonder if you would find it helpful to get FSH and/or AMH levels checked perhaps?

Found this old MN thread if helpful: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/pregnancy/221023-anyone-get-preg-during-perimenopause

BTW - did a bit of stalking and the OP of that thread got pregnant 2 years later after trying for 4 years, miscarriage, failed fertility treatment, it did happen for her. (Best thing about old infertility/TTC struggle threads IMO - you can AS the old posters and often find their eventual success stories!)

Hi all, hope you're all doing as well as can be expected. I had my due date from MC last weekend, so been a bit quiet. I survived it but it was tough to think i should have a baby (or a seriously big bump!). Was a bit tough as found out about 3 different friends who are pregnant with their third child now, including two who were definitely done after two but really just wanted a little baby again bt were in shock it happened so fast and are now really worried about having three....... Obviously delighted for them but had to smile and is before blubbing in the loos!

There looked to be some good news towards the end of the last thread, congratulations to all those with BFPs and keeping everything crossed for you.

Turquoise, your posts really echoed with me as my DH also has low sperm count. We went to the IVF clinic and they recommended conception vitamins and lots of shagging/wanking so the sperm was fresh - we had been trying to protect it by not DTD every day but were told that wasn't the best. It did work in that i got pregnant naturally but it did end in MC but was probably not anything to do with that.

Thanks for asking Bertie, was just an accumulation of the large part of my life I have no say in I think. Not really the kids at all, infuriating, adorable creatures that they are Feeling slightly more mellow now.

AF still pretty exciting, pain mostly gone today but my god has to been heavy again Oh well!

Next fw is over a dirty weekend away DH doesn't even yet know about as it's for his birthday, so something to look forward to.

Bertie, did she get you in the end?

Sorry we have so many new people here Hope you find comfort in our mad house x

Annie a dirty weekend over fw sounds like a great plan!

Just checking in & reading back through. Hello to anyone new, so sorry you find yourselves here.

I'm still crampy but no AF yet. Still being a hopeless twat though, I'm going to poas Saturday morning I think. It's been 7 weeks since ERPC what's going on?!

thanks for that bertie , it helps
xxx

Yeah she did. On to cycle 18. Googling balanced translocation and getting crap results :( it's difficult to find info though because it's so rare - estimates I've seen vary from 1 in 200 to 1 in 1000 of population. Because it can result in healthy pregnancy some people never know they have it. But results of people who have so many issues they end up getting tested are poor, like years and years and tears trying. So I think those cases come up more in a search and skew the results. Mathematically as I understand it it should be that 50% of created embryos are non viable leading to non implantation or miscarriage. And if we go with the idea that a healthy couple should successfully conceive 1/5 months then it could just be that we've had the unlucky coin flip 3 or 4 times, with 2 mc and unknown number of rejected embryos.

But Google research isn't really helpful and I am hopeful that we'll get better info from speaking to doctors, just seeks such a long wait until Jan.

Bertie

I can't remember why you have to wait till Jan? No way of bringing it forward?

Hi all.

Sorry you're feeling so down, vicar. To be honest I do think you need to see a fertility specialist about this - hopefully they could give you more personalised advice as I think general statistics and anecdotes are just going to have you cycling between hope and despair, as you'll never know which category you fall into.

Bertie - glad someone else sometimes stalks to see the outcome. When I Google things sometimes threads from another site (maybe Babycentre?) come up where people have signatures that say how many children they have, etc - sometimes I see ones from, say, 2012 and want to shout at them 'hang on in there! You have a baby in 2013!' like some sort of time traveller.

Just been for an ultrasound of my womb as part of the recurrent miscarriage testing. I hate the vaginal ones, and this woman was not very gentle! She said all normal, though, which is obviously good news.

Just the waiting list at the genetic place Anne. There's only one other in town and they are so full they are not taking new patients. We could go out of town but I don't expect the waiting list would be any shorter and we'd have to drive hours to get there whereas this place is local. She's also reported to be really excellent so I think we'll be in good hands when we get there.

Sounds like the vest option, always reassuring when someone has a good reputation, and handy to be close to home. Sorry it's so long though.

But we are nearly in September and the annual bargaining over xmas hosting has started in my family, so it seems like the end of the year is just around the corner already!

Sorry for being slow, do you know balanced translocation is an issue or not until you've met with the clinic?

Hello. May I join you ladies?
I'm 35 and 2 weeks post a mmc at 12/40 (baby dated 11+5). I had surgical management.

Our background is that we have a fab dd who is 5 who took 2 years ttc and various drilling/clomid/metformin. I now apparently no longer have pcos.

We've been ttc #2 for 3 years. Before the recent mc I've also had a mc at 6/40 and 2 failed ivf cycles. I think we want to start trying again straight away - preg test is neg so not going to wait for period - but I'm scared. This mc was so much harder than the early one. I had had 3 scans with hb and normal NIPT and hyperemesis so it was a massive shock to be still vomiting so much and be told my baby was dead.

So here we are, I am suspected we will end up having to have ivf again as I can't believe we will be luck enough to have abort her spontaneous pregnancy. But although I want to try I have zero sex drive. We've not dtd since baby was conceived as I was so sick. So can't see this happening :(

Lisa I love your time traveller thing, that made me laugh and also cry a bit (a lot making me cry at the moment). It's what we all wish we could do for ourselves, if someone said you'll have to wait x years and have x mcs it wouldn't make it nicer but you'd know there was a point to it all.

bean I'm sorry to hear about your experiences, you must still be recovering from the mc. This is a great, supportive group and I hope you get your happy ending.