FSH - what does it mean? IUI treatment

[OuiOui]

I'm posting this on behalf of a friend who doesn't wnat to do it from work. She's just gone for first round of IUI treatment and on Sunday had the insemination. So it was looking pretty good until the nurse turned around and told her that her FSH (I think it stand for fertility stimulation hormone) levels were too high.

She then told my friend that when FSH is high this was an indicator that she's premenopausal and it could well lead to miscarriage. Not surprisingly my friend is distraught and both she and dh can't sleep at the thought of this scenario. Now they've got to go through 2 weeks of agony before knowing whether she's actually pregnant and then will she manage to keep the baby?
Does anyone know any more about this?
In my experience, nurses/midwives etc tend to give early opinions and cause anxiety and indeed sometimes inaccurately - my friend now thinks she won't ever have children.
For the little we know about FSH - it's about the quality of the egg - so if that's the case, then anyone know any alternative medicines which might improve the quality of the egg? Homeopathy, Eastern/Western herbal medicines?

FSH may be Follicle Stimulating Hormone if I understand the sites Google came up with (search on FSH and fertility)

this might be interesting - it's about "low tech" ways to help you conceive.

Soupdragon - yes you're right - the f stands for follicle not fertility. will have a look at that site. Thanks

A friend who is thinking of donor insemination had this test done. She's 40 and the clinic said they won't treat anyone whose fsh is above 10. Hers was 8 and they thought this was good and said she had a 12% chance per cycle of conceiving.30 is menopausal. It's something to do with how hard the ovary has to work to ovulate???? or something..

One of the sites said that as you approach menopause, you are basically running out of eggs. At this stage, your body needs to produce more FSH to get an egg as it has fewer functioning egg follicles to work with. Kind of makes sense!

Most infertility clinics will do a blood test to check FSH levels early on anyway, so I'm not sure whether this is the nurse reading off the original tests done, or whether it is specific to this cycle. You don't say whether the cycle was medicated (ie the woman was actually being injected with FSH) or not. You should also remember that the FSH level is just an indicator - presumably the insemination was only done once the clinic knew that she had/was about to ovulate, so she certainly shouldn't despair yet.

Not sure whether it would specifically assist in the case of high FSH but the clinic I use always prescribes progesterone pessaries after treatment in order to support any pregnancy should it arise - you can then take these up to 12 weeks pg when the placenta should have formed and take over production of this hormone. I think that there are alternative forms of this available and a good health food shop may help.

I'm not sure of anything that would help but a high FSH level isn't ALWAYS an indication of problems. My closest friend has just had ivf and her FSH was highish and yet she got pregnant first time even tho they were only able to put back one egg...

thanks for all the advice. I read on a site yesterday that FSh should never be tested mid cycle as that's when it's highest and of course that's when the nurse tested it.
Ok, understand the theory about FSH being high if ovaries needs to work harder but does that necessarily affect the "quality" of the egg??? If so, what's the link to miscarriage???

I think your friend needs to have a chat with the consultant in charge of her treatment, as the nurse doesn't seem to be making much sense!
Yes, FSH should be checked right at the start of the cycle (when levels are lowest) to assess whether a woman is approaching the menopause. This should be part of any routine infertility workup.
FSH levels don't in themselves directly affect the quality of the egg or the risk of miscarriage, but these things are all more likely to occur in women who are approaching menopause. As women age, the quality of the egg tends to decline, and any eggs which are fertilised are more likely to have chromosome abnormalities and therefore miscarry. This ageing process obviously occurs at different rates for different women, hence some 40 year olds are still pretty fertile while others are not. But even when egg quality is in decline, you can still have occasional 'good' eggs, so its perfectly possible to have a successsful pregnancy.

Your friend wouldn't have been offered treatment if there was a serious problem with her FSH levels. And my story is a bit like bayleaf's friend - my first IVF produced a batch of eggs of such poor quality that only 2 fertilised - but one of those was ds!

I hope things work out for your friend, the 2 week wait is hard enough without needlessly anxiety provoking comments.

Elliott - thank you so much for that lovely message - I've just read it out to my friend and she feels so much better. You're so knowledgeable about it - did you have a great consultant or where did you read???