Assisted conception (and the bits in between!) - part 3 - all welcome

[Caitni]

Right ladies, time for a new thread.

And a big welcome to everyone . Here's to many more success stories and healthy pregnancies!

LL you will never look like 'that'. And you know I have a theory about being scared - especially on the inside - it's actually because you are doing your prep. When I was at film school I used to get really freaked out by the students who didn't seem to be in a panic about their shoots- safety, catering, artistic success etc. But they were always the ones that went belly up(so to speak). I was always awake with a grinding stomach at 4am on the dot planning, panicking and worrying and although I can't judge the artistic success, everyone got well fed, they ran on time and no one got hurt. Blissful or willfull neglect of problems is a form of survival when you actually can't cope, but preparing yourself to cope is much better in my book.

Aliz the baby going missing was a bit of a misnomer. The woman was hiding the pregnancies from her friends and family and giving them up for adoption. The last one she took home, but it went missing, and no one has been able to prove where it went. She claims the baby went to it's father, but they couldn't find him.

Had my IUI yesterday and the Doctor managed to explain WHY exactly single egg IVF was still a better option - because after 38 it can be hard for the sperm to penetrate the egg and so even if you are achieving fertilisation in the petri dish there is no guarentee you are doing it in the insides. Anyway, I can't believe I 'missed' that point, but it does make sense now that I think of it. So anyway, next time we'll go with IVF regardless. I have enough money for two more cycles and then we'll call it quits.

Yes I know what you mean about it being difficult to adopt LL, but I think that is for babies. From what I can gather if you are prepared to take older children it's not so problematic. In a way I am as most of my friends kids are at least 4 by now (time we've been trying) so in a way that sort of works for me. You are right though that donor egg is not all about money (at least not in western countries) . . . maybe I will get my head around it. Maybe I just need to draw that line on my own eggs. . .

Anyway, on the 2WW, but with the success rates for IUI for my age I expect it shall be quite a low key one.

Heading off to the beach house now for a long weekend and going to pick up the hound from the kennels (my mum is away) and give him a weekend out of doggie prison. Have a good weekend all, S

Have a lovely weekend Sooty! Ailz I don't know about natural progesterone cream, but my docs insist that I take progesterone gel (in oil, actually) every other night. This is in order to support the lining for a normal luteal phase.

Of course, you probably know all that already, and might just be wondering about "natural" option instead - if so, my sincere apologies!

No Islegrin, no need to apologise, all info welcome. I have heard of the gel, but wondering if i need to get it on prescription. must get to the GP and see if he can prescribe it. sometimes GP looks at me like i am mad i think. they know very little about fertility matters. it is just that i am having break before trying ivf again and was hoping i could boost matters and get pg all by myself!! hee hee, now there is proof that i can be stupidly optimistic when i want!
sooty that is shocking! that woman sounds very strange. i hope the baby is ok, wherever he or she is. Have a lovely weekend and i agree about the panicking and worrying a bit. I am a teacher and have found that (hands down) the ones (teachers) who panic and worry and stress always pass their exams and do really well in inspections and those who dont panic always fail. so if we worry and plan for babies, we will be great mothers, or something! but dont worry too much!!!

Islegrin am booked in for my tww test on 27th so guess you must be about then too!!!! last nite i could not sleep at all was wide awake about 3am when i realised that i needed to go for a jimmy and then i was fine after that, layed in bed though thinking and hoping that the two emb's are burrowwing in nicely down there i am getting para though about any slight change in my senses if i feel a bit light headed i am thinking is it because...... or maybe its the fact i havent eaten yet etc but not going to think about it too much as i dont want to be disappointed by getting my hopes up too too high. ventured out to the supermarket yesterday and was gutted that i couldnt push a trolley around for fear of it being to heavy so came home and decided to order on line instead cause am trying to take it easy, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated though Hi to everyone else and hope that we have lots and lots of gud news over the forthcoming weeks from everyone

have a good weekend sooty and everyone else too incase i didnt mention it earlier

Hi ladies
am trying to catch up with you all. So apologies if I have missed anything. Am in a mad dash trying to get everything sorted for maternity leave and in between that have put myself in quarantine due to outbreaks of swine flu at work and I really, really do not want it at the moment.

Sooty - I read with interest your perspective on donor eggs. That was the route I had to take due to having ovarian cancer. We also tried adoption, it was/is a 5 year process even for an older child and is something we are still considering. unfortunately, the institutions that serve to protect kids, incarcerate them all to frequently in the name of protection, which is sad as there are many many people like you and i who would love to adopt and provide love to these children. Sadly, many people who want to adopt have to go abroad in UK and Ireland 1) due to a lack of kids or lack of ability to adopt, and 2) many of them "pay" huge amounts to obtain their dream. is this really different from egg or sperm donation? Is it really that different from spending thousands of pounds on fertility treatment, even with ones own eggs or sperm?

I have never, for once, thought I was buying my child/ren. yes, I paid for my treatment (Drugs for me and the IVF itself and also out of pocket expenses for the lady who has given me the most precious miracles in my life).

I know how daunting a decision it can be to go ahead with egg donation. It took me 7 years to get to embark on the journey. I didn't have a choice whether to use my own eggs, they were taken away. But the decision was still difficult and we were torn between adoption and egg donation. I had to give my DH the opportunity to be a biological father.

I now counsel a lot of women who are in a similar situation to yourself re continuing to go through IVF with their own eggs or go the donor route. It is a tough decision to make. And I know it is not the route for all women/couples. There is a grieving process to go through, many of the women I talk to have to go through that and come to terms with the "loss" of their ability to have their biological children, before moving on. I did it, it took me a good couple of years. In fact i was more upset about having my ability to have kids taken away from me, than being diagnosed with cancer. I used to sit in my bathroom and talk to the wall, AKA Shirley valentine style!!! - they probably should have locked me up then. Whatever happens, I hope you decide what is best for you and your DH and if you do want to talk about it off mumsnet let me know, I am always at the end of an email.

LL - sorry to hear you are in a hormonal trough. The plague of hormones. It will move past. I have become huge, putting on 2 stone, but most of it is baby. And this baby is bigger than the last. But it goes. You will cope too. Every new mother/mother to be worries about coping especially with two, but believe me, you will not know any different. A lady I know has had 2 sets of boy twins in two years. She copes amazingly well. Try and find some online groups (babycentre has a good multiples site). Sending you hugs ((((()))))

sorry, I need to cut the post short. My cat has brought me a frog and the poor thing is screaming like a sodding banshee!

Soz flibberty but is the cat screaming like a banshee or the frog?

I too need to know if it is the frog or the cat who is screaming like a banshee, because they are two very different pictures in my head - both quite disturbing. i am not an animal lover and they tend to scare me to death when they scream. We NEED to know now.

The frog!!!! - It is the most horrendous noise. It sounds like someone is beating a human. Quite shocking the amount of noise that can come from a frog!

It isn't the first time, we have a frog pond in the back garden and the bloody cat plagues the poor frogs all through the summer and then becomes slightly annoyed by their screams.

I don't have cats, so I was relatively unfamiliar with this issue until recently. I visited a friend last month who has two cats, TMI/disturbing alert when they brought headless chipmunks, baby rabbits, mice and all manner of things to us (in the house) EVERY NIGHT!!! My hosts left me in the house alone for a day and I had to discover one on my own - I was wishing for my dog "problems"! ugh! So, I knew without a doubt, it was the frog screaming. Poor humans, that have to deal with that!

OK - back to babies!

I'll be testing (well realistically all next week) but I'm officially supposed to test July 28th. So there are a few of us, it's always more fun that way. I started symptom spotting last night - boobs were noticably sore - but WAY too early for that I suppose. I'm only 3 dp IUI.

Waves!

phew thats a relief talking of frogs went into my greenhouse the other day and there was one staring at me gave me a fright DH had to get it away, just the thought of the slimyness anywhere near me makes me cringe. I have a cat who is quite territorial and really doesnt get on with a black and white cat which lives just behind our house, so far it has cost £120 in vet bills when they have been doing some serious fighting not nice but he is a member of the family.

Islegrin i have been symptom spotting aswell yesterday i right fancied chow mein but it had to be from a certain chinese restaurant in town i enjoyed it that much tht i could have eaten it again. Boobs are seriously sore cant bare anyone touching them or going near them but sometimes i think that it is because of the hormones i been injecting into myself other bits are so minor that i havent really thought about them. Sleeping pattern is up the wall. I think i am gonna wait until 27th for test cause i might torture myself early if i do what if its a false positive/negative etc etc etc but then it will still be torture if i dont (does that make sense)oh and GOOD MORNING EVERYONE

Hi everyone, I'm back again, mid IVF again second time this year, hoping for better and more lasting results this time round

First, double congrats to Lottie, can't believe you are 14 weeks+ already. Looking back, I think I had to wear my first maternity trousers about 15 weeks into pregnancy last time......hope you have some comfy trousers lined up. When is your due date? Am hoping you will avoid being heavily pregnant in summer!

Good luck to Roseca and Islegrin too, you testing dates are getting closer.

Have read back some way on this thread, lovely to catch up with everyone else again too, and seems like there has been lots of good news too over the last few months

I'm using a different clinic this time around, and so far everything is going well. Slightly different protocol this time using a different follicle stimulating drug that I have to mix with water - and I need 6 of the wretched little vials of powder each night! So each night I have to lay out two syringes, two needles, 2 lots of distilled water, 6 vials of hormone, one bottle of buserelin and one sterilising wipe - and then start mixing and poking away. However, I am progressing well "for someone of your age" according to the fertility nurse, so fingers crossed.

Should have egg collection toward the end of next week I think. Bluebell when is your EC scheduled for, is it around then too?

I have to say, this time around, I am so aware of the chemical pregnancy/missed miscarriage thing. I was left in a consulting room at the new clinic yesterday, and it had the first quarter's results on the wall - 44% of IVF cycles started had positive pregnancy tests, but that figure came down to 33% for actual continuing pregnancies. I was so pleased in January to get a positive pregnancy test that I didn't really consider the odds of it not being a viable pregnancy, but now it is just on my mind all the time - it just seems such an uphill battle to do IVF, get a positive result and then have to wait to see if it is a viable pregnancy. I am trying not to dwell on it too much though as frankly it'll drive me loopy.

Thanks Lottie, I'm 39 but this is getting over the hill in IVF terms!

Re bump size - I was size 16/18 before getting pregnant last time and was frankly enormous at term with just the one baby - but (and this is the encouraging bit) all the 3 stone+ of baby and pregnancy weight just fell off within 2 weeks after giving birth. It was great - I kept weighing myself every other day and finding I'd lost another 5 or 6 lbs with no effort which is a never-to-be-forgotten experience, trust me. Ah, happy days......

onlyaphase I thought that all of the FSH drugs had to be mixed. I've taken menopur, and gonal-f for most of the cyles of IUI I've done. Guess I just thought that was the norm. What else is there? Follistum? The poking and changing of needles can get old very fast - but if it works, it will all be worth it. At any rate, I wish you all the luck in the world on this cycle, I'd say you have a very good chance if you came up pos last time. We'll keep our fingers crossed that this one hits and sticks!

roseca I'm trying to eat a vegetarian(mostly) diet recently - after I read a very interesting book on nutritional research. So I've been staying away from my favorite restaurants, but I did have a devine onion soup last week, went back for two more since then! I'm going to try to keep myself busy so I don't symptom sot too much. Going to a sketching class at an estate today!

LL I'm still so very excited for you, thanks for reminding us there is real hope!

My DH reminded me that there are bonuses even if we don't have a baby - was bribing me with world travels last night! He has agreed to one round of IVF after a 6th round of IUI. It's been on his mind a lot, texting me about hpt yesterday, then he woke me up this morning asking "if we go IVF, then would you want to pick the sex of the baby?" I don't even know if that's possible, but I wouldn't. He doesn't even know which he would choose if he could! HA! I love that one.

Oh, meant to say, how lovely to have your babies due in the middle of winter. By the time the summer comes they'll be sitting up and you can take them outside on a rug to roll around. Much better than having newborns in summer when it can be too hot for them.

And I agree about the number of eggs - it seems it is rare to have spare embryos to freeze (only for 1 in 14 women at my new clinic) and it really does seem to be that quality not quantity is the way to go. I only seem to produce less than 10 follicles, about 5-6 mature eggs, and only 2 embryos of reasonable quality at the 2 or 3 day stage, so am not really expecting miracles this time around - especially at my age!

Hi ladies. I wonder if I could join this thread. I am 37 and I have 2 DC's from my first marriage (long story but Ex DH had affair and left). I married a wonderful man last year and we have been TTC for over a year now. My DH has no children of his own although he is a fantastic step dad. We know we are lucky to have my two DS's but to have a DC together would mean so much to us.
I have had my day 21 progesterone which was fine, but my DH has had 2 sperm counts which were not great. Count was low at 10 million per ml, motility low at 30% and morphology low at 6%. We are both pretty fed up really. We are not eligible for NHS treatment so have just been referred privately to our local fertility clinic. I'm not sure what to expect really. I can't get my head round the fact that we may never have DCs. I just wish I knew what was going to happen. I think I just need to offload this to be honest, as we are not telling anyone in RL about our fertility issues. Of course people keep asking if we will have any DCs of our own which is hard.
We have our initial appointment on 30th July and in the meantime we are TTC as usual. I may be jumping to conclusions but I'm thinking we will need IVF/ICSI. I am trying to get to grips with all this IVF terminology!!

Hi Gingerwine, welcome to the board.

Completely understand about your not wanting to tell people in RL - I think most of us are in the same boat here, and hence we tend to dump everything onto this thread.

I'm afraid I'm not that up on sperm count results etc, but I know that a couple of people on this board have had similar issues, and hopefully one of them will be along soon. I do know that you will find out a lot of information at your consultation, so remember to take notes!

Hi everyone

welcome to gingerwineim new on here too and ive got to say its been a godsend, so much excellent info and support. Your dps SA sounds like it will be suitable for ICSI or maybe even IVF. My dh has low morph around 8% which is why were are doing icsi, but we did have our ds 2 yrs ago just with iui so please dont feel too hopeless, you only need the one good swimmer. We are having our first go at icsi, privately, this month and have only told my bf and my sis, nobody else in RL knows.

onlyaphase that sounds like some serious chemistry youre having to do every evening! hope it works and you get a good result. Im due first scan tomorrow to see how im responding to drugs then EC is scheduled for end of the week, so we will be cycle buddies!
So far, im feeling like Ive had way too much coffee and have big giant brocolli florets for ovs so somethings def happening! ps. Im 41 and LLs right, theres life in us yet!

welcome to the gang gingerwine Hello again onlyaphase nice to see you back. DH got a bit emotional yesterday saying that he doesnt want me to think that i have let him down if we dont get the result we are hoping for on 27th, I was quite strong suprisingly and told him not to worry what will be will be trying to make things easier. good luck with your scan bluebell hope you get some extra good results. When i first tried earlier this year i only ended up with 3 folls and had to make the decision to abandon the cycle and restart later on the year. because i responded to medication so poorly the clinic decided that they were going to go with the flash protocol which means i was injecting Buserelin on day 2 of AF and on day 3 i was injecting Buserelin and Puregon at the highest doses, early scan revealed that womb lining was thick and that i had 10 folls growing which i was really pleased about. 4 days before EC at least for of my folls were a very good size and they were happy for me to get booked in for EC on monday just gone and ET was booked in for wednesday dont feel really different as such put on a bit of weight (jeans tad tighter) but am wondering if that was cause i over indulged in McD's which i shouldnt really but tasted good at the time anyway have decided that starting from tomorrow i will aim to eat alot more healthier, have brought myself some decaffinated coffee and green tea (is that good?)

Flibberty oh my god i am traumatised, i had not idea that frogs could make that noise! poor frog. yes i think we should stick with babies, no pets for me. i am quite an outdoors type, but not the animal type, makes no sense really.
LL i agree about he pessaries, dont know if gp will prescribe them, would pay for them privately. dont know how to go about it. gp on hols for couple of weeks, cant imagine the stand-in doc caring about my progesterone problems. dont really know what to do. my spotting begins about 8 or 9 days post-ovulation. so it is short phase. i just dont know what to do really, i have been having this problem for about a year at least and have seen gp and two gynaes and no one is able to do anything about it. i literally dream about progesterone at night, i am not joking.
we get the foxes and the shagging cats too, i think they come in our garden at night and have orgies.
hi onlyaphase sorry but that sounds like a hard job you have there, with all the needles and vials! scary stuff isnt it. i know what you mean, i did one ivf and just thought about the process, not how i would feel when it didnt work. I never had to mix anything, Gonal F and the other one at day 5 just came in pens, where you twist them to the correct dose, pre-filled and easy peasy. could not trust myself with anything else. but i suppost you get used to everything. and one other thing, in my experience you dont need lots of eggs or miracles, you just need one good little obedient embryo to sit still and stick on! some are just too naughty, wriggling and falling off! good luck with some well-behaved embryos!
Islegrin glad to hear dh is coming round to ivf, but if you asked me a week or two ago i would have said stay away from it! it is funny how they become so obsessed about it isnt it. my dh would literally turn around in the middle of a really interesting movie and ask me a hormone questin or something! dont know about choosing the sex though. the only thing i have heard about that is to do with the timing of sex, if you do it 5 days before ov, you can get a girl because the female sperm last longer than the male and the male sperm have all died by the time ov begins. taking a bit of a chance in my opinion! World travel sounds nice too!!
LL I can only speak for myself when i say tthat i look forward to your posts. it IS great to hear from someone who has come through so successfully to 'the other side'! it definitely gives me hope anyway and it is nice that you have stuck around! xGingerwine dont despair, and welcome! you are amongst people who know how you feel, it is best not to tell people about the fertility problems as you get those sympathetic looks and that will make you want to hurt someone. regarding the sperm bit, before you jump into IVF etc. have you considered the whole vitamins thing. a lot of people say it is completely possible to bring up a sperm count using vits eg zinc, flax seed oil, vitam C, B complex and vitamin E amongst others. particularly zinc and vit C. in really high doses. anyway Zita West's book raves on about this if you want to take a look. a year is not that long really, i know that is so annoying to hear,and it doesnt necessarily mean you should just carry on doing what you were doing before, by all means begin investigating the problem, but try everything. that is what i would advise anyway. i will look it up and report back.
i would like to take this moment to remind everyone of the woman in my home town who tried for a baby for 15 years to no avail, had couple of failed rounds of ivf and couple of years later gave birth to twins and a single child (all within 3 years), natural conceptions at 47! true story, i know her, seriously. dont ever give up hope.oh roseca it is all so emotional poor guy. nice that he is thinking of you. the guys think we will fall to pieces and we think they will fall to pieces. just one thing, if you are trying to avoid the caffeine, green tea has some caffeine, less than coffee obviously, but still has some, a lot of people dont know this. good luck.
if anyone knows a plan to get progesterone suppositories or if gp will prescribe them please let me know. thanks

oh my god what a huge post that was oops!