First time trying IVF... anyone want to keep me company?!

[loulamay]

Hi all,

Few quick facts - partner and I are both just into our 40s, have been TTC for a year with no luck. He has a slightly low sperm count at just under 16 million and I have a past history of PCOS, although according to my Dr, am producing an amazing number of eggs for a woman my age (in fact interestingly he talked to me about recent studies that may show that women with PCOS may have a delayed reduction in fertility in line with age: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4447787/).

We have had one unsuccessful IUI and have decided to move onto IVF to try and take advantage of the fact that my ovarian reserve still looks good. I also froze my eggs when I was 36, before I met DP, so we will probably fertilise them at the same time as only that we collect from this cycle.

Feeling a huge mixture of nervousness and excitement, especially during these crazy COVID times, and wondered if anyone was in the same boat and starting IVF now? I am on day 2 of my cycle and had my first Gonal F 300 injection this morning - 5 more days of that and my Dr wants to see me for my first scan.

L

Hey just wanted to wish you luck in your journey 😊

My partner has low morphology and we have a first appointment at fertility clinic on Wednesday. I am 31 and he is 28 so i doubt we will be doing IVF immediately but i know it might be necessary if IUI doesnt work so not excluding the idea.

Have you told your relatives or family that you were doing ivf?
I wonder if i should even tell them about dp issue... i dont want people to blame him or anything.

Thank you!! Let me know how your appointment goes.

I told my family about the IUI and the fact that it didn't work but I've not told them that we've moved into the IVF phase... not because I don't think they'd be supportive, but there's something around the idea of more people knowing and then more people to tell/to disappoint if it doesn't work! Do you know what I mean?

Yeah that's the other reason why i dont feel like sharing. There are already asking every month how come we aren't pregnant again (had mc in december) and i feel like they are always waiting for something... and are probably disappointed at the "no news".

So are you going to have eggs collected for this cycle? Or using your frozen ones?

they are^

We're going to do both - have eggs collected and defrost the younger ones and then fertilise them all and see how many get to blastocyst stage. I'm really hoping that we can use eggs from this cycle and save the younger embryos for the future because I always wanted any child I had to have a sibling - I am super close to my sister.

It all seems like such a numbers game!

Can I join you too? I'm a few weeks behind as (fingers crossed) going to be starting my first round in early June. I'm 29, DH 28, I have polycystic ovaries and he has low morphology. We knew about my ovaries as I don't spontaneously ovulate so always knew we might struggle to conceive, the low morphology was a bit of a blow though and as 6 rounds of clomid have succeeded in making me ovulate but not resulted in conception our next step us ivf with icsi. We were starting the process with the nhs but lockdown put a stop to that, so we have decided to try a private cycle. I had my baseline scan last week and everything looks good inside so just hanging on for a couple of weeks until I can take norithisterone to bring on a bleed and hopefully get started 🤞I've read loads on here but it would be good to have other first-timers to go through this with!

Yay! The more the merrier! If you don't mind me asking, what is low morphology exactly? DP's sperm is fine apart from being on the low end so our Dr didn't discuss any other elements with us - said quality was good but count was just low.

Happy to hear you can get started despite lockdown - it makes a stressful time even more stressful...

Yeah it's been a nightmare with lockdown confusion hasn't it? It's so good they can start again - it's nice to have a small amount of certainty at such an uncertain time!

My understanding - which was gleaned from the nhs consultant and a ridiculous amount of time on google - is that morphology is basically the shape of the sperm. So DH has a good sperm count and motility, which means they move well and there's plenty of them. His morphology came back at less than 1% normal forms, which sounds bad but anything over 4% is considered completely fine. There's a lot of debate about whether morphology actually matters and some drs don't think it does at all. They basically have a "perfect" sperm and anything that doesn't match that is counted as abnormal. But an abnormal sperm could technically still fertilise an egg. That hasn't happened for us though which is why we're doing icsi rather than straight ivf, so DH's sperm will be injected into my egg.

How are you finding things so far? It must feel good to be getting started. Although I'm a bit scared too!

So far so good! Just wish I was younger but I didn't meet DP until 3 years ago so we were a bit behind my other friends. I am hopeful that from what the Dr is saying, biologically my body is looking younger in terms of egg production etc and it's just a case of the low sperm count meaning no luck so far.

I really really need to stop googling things like 'IVF success rates' and all the other awful stats that go alongside having children later in life... but sometimes I am my own worst enemy!

The injections don't bother me, and when I had my eggs frozen it was the same process, so it's slightly familiar. The nerve-wracking bit will be the embryo stage I guess - not done that before and it's so out of our control!

That all sounds really positive! With googling, I keep trying to remind myself that the success rates are based on a broad spectrum of people having treatment so it doesn't necessarily reflect your individual chances if you see what I mean. It sounds like your doctor is optimistic too.

Yeah, I guess embryo transfer and TWW will be the tough bit really. When do you expect to have your transfer?

I'm not sure - I tend to ovulate late (day 19/20) but with the IUI the drugs controlled the cycle a lot more and so I think we did the IUI around day 15. I'm not sure though about how IVF will be different because they will let the embryos grow for up to 5 days I believe, and so I wonder if that means you do it all in the same cycle or the next one? I am seeing my Dr on Saturday for my first scan so I will ask him.

Ah right, I think our clinic said they would do the transfer after 5 days (if we're lucky enough to get some nice embryos, and also if I don't get OHSS which i higher risk for because of the polycystic ovaries) so I guess it depends on how things go and the collection date - hopefully the dr will have some clearer answers for you

@SunnySideUp2020 how was your appointment?

I’ve got my first scan tomorrow so fingers crossed lots of follicles show up!

@loulamay
Good luck with the scan!

Well i wasnt allowed with DP as it was mainly to discuss his sperm and covid i waited outside but the outcome was good.
Ultrasound revealed one testicle has some genetic issue that makes it not as good and the urologist suspects a prostate infection that could be the cause of low morphology and slow sperm.
DP gave more SA urine and blood yesterdah for further testing and i am going for my appointment on tuesday.

Doctor was positive and said if it's only an infection then in 3-4 months we could easily conceive (given i have no issues myself) and otherwise he advised much less frequent sex in the meantime. So only twice a week to give us a better chance.

That's great news! If it's just an infection then that can be sorted pretty easily hopefully. At least you know more now - which is always a good thing. Just step by step!

Scan went really well - Dr is 'wowed' by my egg numbers and I had 8 follicles on one side and 7 on the other which is encouraging. Doesn't necessarily mean all of them will get to the right size or actually contain a viable egg, but we'll see. I am now on Pergoveris (injection where you have to mix the powder and the water yourself and then inject it - not super fun as the Gonal-F was in a ready made 'pen' and was much easier) tomorrow and Monday and then back in for another scan.

He thinks egg retrieval on Friday. Will keep you posted!

Oh how exciting! Always a good thing to hear when you produce good amount of eggs- definitely increases the chances of success.
Does your husband have to do anything in the process?

Not so far. I think his job will only be on fertilisation day. We've decided to both cut back on alcohol and caffeine during the cycle. Boring!

Quick update from me. After successful scans showing the drugs were doing their job and my ovaries were performing very nicely, I had my egg collection two days ago (the only injection out of all of them that hurt a bit was the trigger one that I did on Wednesday night - although my stomach did bruise in a few places so looks like a bit of a pin cushion!). Felt pretty groggy yesterday when I got home, but just took it easy and feeling fine today with a tiny bit of spotting but not much pain. I'm sure I remember being in more pain after the egg retrieval the first time round but there we go!

Just got an email from the clinic to say that they collected 23 (!!) eggs, 22 (seriously?!) were mature and 13 are showing 'signs' of fertilisation. I am a little shocked at the numbers given my age but so grateful to my wonderful Dr who seemed to just time everything perfectly, dosage and collection.

13 does not mean 13 blastocysts of course so we will find out more on Tuesday. Then all being well I will have my transfer on Thursday. Not sure yet how many we will transfer because we don't know how many healthy embryos we will have but hoping that 13 is a really good start and they carry on growing!

Jesus. The suspense!

How are you both doing?

How are you getting on @loulamay? Sorry I missed your last update! I'm hoping to start injections this week, expecting AF anytime from Wednesday so I'm looking forward to getting started!

Ah that's great to hear. I didn't find them as bad as I was expecting so let us know how you get on!

We ended up with 8 great embryos which we were thrilled about! One of the best ones has been transferred so now just the agonising wait until I can test :-(

I'm sort of preparing myself for it not to work, but happy that we have 7 backups in the freezer!

That's brilliant! Fingers crossed 🤞 I hope the next couple of weeks go quickly - hopefully you'll have the best news at the end of the wait. 7 more as well is a fantastic result

Hi

Just read your stories and praying you all get your positives soon.

Hope you dont mind me joining this thread. We got referred in March to the fertility clinic following the standard tests such as bloods tests and sperm test and all is fine. Im ovulating and DH sperm was above what was considered normal. I also have regular cycles. We have been trying for a year now and have decided we dont want to wait another year for the nhs referral so will go private. Im 34 will be 35 in October and my husband will be 37 so this is our main reason as we would love 2 children.

Ive posted on the infertility board but everyone seems well ahead of me and im a bit overwhelmed to be honest. So any advice you have will be great. Are you all NHS or private?

Wishing you all the best of luck xx

Hi @Whilstwewait

Sorry to hear you've been having trouble as well. It must be very frustrating if everything seems fine - at least in my case I knew we were likely to have problems so I was kind of prepared (although I'm not sure anything makes infertility easier).

Just from our experience - we were under the nhs (St Mary's in Manchester). I went to the GP in September explaining that I had polycystic ovaries and didn't ovulate, this meant we got referred more quickly (had been trying 6 months at that point). The referral process was relatively quick, I think our first consultation was late October. The consultant we saw was brilliant, the issue we found with the nhs was difficulty getting in touch between appointments plus also I only had one follow up scan when I was on clomid so can't be certain I ovulated every month. We decided to go private when covid put a spanner in the works as the uncertainty as to when nhs treatment will start up again is too great. I'm with ABC and they've been fantastic so far, especially given the circumstances! I had my baseline scan a couple of weeks ago and the nurse explained a lot more to me than the nhs dr had. It's nice to be able to contact someone with any questions and I really feel like they're on our side 😊

It's obviously a tricky decision financially but my experience is that private treatment allows you more control over timings etc, nhs can feel like you're totally at the mercy of the system!

Have you had a look at any clinics?

@eggling Thanks for your message

We have decided to definitely go private. We dont know how long NHS would take plus looking at a 4 month back log at least after covid so going to go for it. I cant believe we are actually at this stage and with no known issue slightly worried we are jumping the gun a little but TTC is taking over our lives and with no guarantees feel we have to go for it.

Just researching clinics at the moment. Based on where we live options are currently Hewitt fertility in liverpool and care fertility in chester. The Hewitt fertility also do NHS for our area so not sure if they would be best incase we also need to use our NHS cycle or will it make no difference?

When did you first get in touch with ABC? Do you know when egg collection will be?Ive just signed up to their webinar but i think it'll be too far for treatment if we need regular visits xx

We got in touch with them a few weeks ago. I had a really low point after all our nhs appointments were cancelled and a few pregnancy announcements from friends and family. We did the online webinar then had our first consultation via zoom the following week. It's all moved really quickly since then. If all goes well I'll hopefully have egg collection in 2-3 weeks.

I know what you mean about worrying about jumping the gun, it's quite a scary decision. I was quite resistant to ivf tbh. It seemed so "final" somehow. It's different for everyone but I'm really at peace with the idea of it now - obviously I'd have preferred an easy stress-free conception but the element of knowing we're trying this is much better than the uncertainty and stress every month, plus the inevitable heartbreak when AF arrived!