Anyone out there who took longer to conceive than they expected - can I ask you some questions?

[PeppermintPatty]

Just out of interest and to get some tips / advice on how to cope.

1. How long did you expect it would take you to conceive?

2. How long did it actually take (if you have been successful)?

3. How did you feel when it took longer than expected? How much did it affect your life?

And the most important one:

5. Did you find anything that helped you cope with stress / disappointment of TTC, or anything that took your mind of it?

Thank you

I thought it would take 6months, I first got pg within 6weeks, but mc, it was devastating and then took over 3 years to actually conceive, it did take over my life and ironically I went off sex. Eventually I changed jobs because I was depressed and miserable and unable to do my job (teacher) well. That did help and after a year out I went back into teaching. By this point we decided to put off going to get help for a year, as financially we had taken a hit and I wanted to concentrate on new job for a while - of course at that point we got pg straight away. DD is now 14mo. I found being pg awful, I was very pessimistic about it ending well, but she was so worth the wait.

1. Within a few months (no previous fertility issues with the first three children)

2. If this one sticks, over 6 years from dumping contraception to birthing a baby

3. Took over my life for over four years. First three of those were horrible and obsessive, last one was a long sink into apathy. Have not really been focusing on ttc for over a year

4. No, nothing. The only thing that vaguely helped was drawing a mental line under the whole business and accepting what fate threw at me.

Good luck

1. A couple of months

2. All in all from stopping contraception to giving birth - 5 years

3. It was beginning to take over my life in every way, had to be quite strict with myself, otherwise goodness knows what would have happened.

4. I wish I did, of could have found a better way of coping.

A bit of background, had quite a few failed attempts at ICSI/FET + an eptopic. Had one lovely daughter through ICSI and a miracle daughter through natural conception.

erm, annie, I appear to be up the duff. About 12 weeks (first scan on Thursday and I'm crapping myself- convinced it'll be dead).

1. a year
2. 19 months
3. I was very sad a lot of the time. Also frequently angry/ frustrated.
4. Talking to other people - sharing with family and friends really helped. I had a laproscopy which didn't find any problems but meant that I needed a week off work. Lots of people sent cards or flowers and I think that really helped too.

Also, it was important to me to work out how far I would want to go in terms of treatment. After a lot of thought I realised that I wouldn't want to do ivf and that helped. We decided that if we hadn't conceived within another 2 years we would look at adoption - so there was a long term plan there which helped.

I finally got pregnant when we went on a cruise. We are both people that rush around a lot and being forced to slow down and focus on each other seemed to do the trick. I had acupuncture too for a few months which may have helped. I was pregnant within about 3 months of starting that.

1. How long did you expect it would take you to conceive?

ooh about 3 months, and second time around thought it would take ooh about 3 months (how optinistic I must be...)

2. How long did it actually take (if you have been successful)?

first time - 15 months and 4 IUIs, second time 10 months , 3 IUIs and still waiting.

3. How did you feel when it took longer than expected? How much did it affect your life?

Took over my life both times, killed off my sex life, feel/felt depressed/anxious, wake up panicking at 4 am.... the usual.

And the most important one:

5. Did you find anything that helped you cope with stress / disappointment of TTC, or anything that took your mind of it?

um..... getting pregnant made me think I'd miraculously be able to get pregnant naturally/easily again.

Speaking to other women with similar difficulties and being on these kind of forums and knowing I'm not the only one helped tremendously. I think it's one of the worst things to befall us as women, it's so destructive.