Any on looking to start ivf/icsi in the new year?

[lucieloos]

Just wondering if anyone would like to keep me company and share the ivf/icsi journey. DH and I are both 35 years old and have been trying to conceive our first child for 10months. DH has lowish sperm motility and I have a low amh (7.24). We haven't had any luck so far and so the next step will be ivf with icsi in the new year. We are thinking of starting end of feb or march. Would be great to share the journey with others in similar situations and hopefully make some friends along the way

I have told work but would be impossible to manage time off otherwise, plus they have been very kind.

Jessie I will be sent my drugs this week, was day 1 of my cycle yesterday. Calling the clinic to tell them today made it all very real! Swing between scared and excited each day! Hope your doing ok.

I'm gonna be taking buserelin and then menopur, don't start till day 21 though (sat 24th jan). DP is expecting a mad women during this

I'm self employed so have booked the most of the month of February off.

I'm still to buy drugs need to find the best place to buy them. Also need to buy sperm as well. Just seems so real.

Looks like my painters have arrived this morning so I am off to buy drugs today! Good thing I am working from home anyway due to this afternoon's nurse's appointment. MrsWW After a recommendation from a friend I am going to Sainsbury's. I have read that Asda often are the cheapest as they do fertility drugs at near cost price (but my nearest one is a bit of a pain to get to and I can walk to Sains). Round here (SE London) the drugs in local pharmacies can be up to £500 more so it's worth getting a couple of quotes!
How are you feeling about it today? I saw from Saturday's post that you were feeling a bit unsure? Although I think that's pretty normal regardless of individual circumstances.

Kitten looks like we will be Buserelin buddies as I will start taking on 27 Jan... Are you injecting or sniffing?

Badgerface im injecting, I didnt get an option. How bout you? We start 3 days apart!

The hospital are ordering all of my drugs and then they get delivered to the house, I didnt know you could get them in sainsburys or asda. My drugs are only around £500 as it is so I never questioned it

I'm injecting too Kitten. I didn't get an option either but the injections worked for me last time so superstition means I'm fine with that!

I can highly recommend Sainsburys for drugs as I went in at 8.30am and they have ordered them for me and I can pick up after 5.30pm today which is pretty impressive. And it was only £110 when I was expecting £200-£300 (although that was based on just a guess so not very scientific!). As we are on a FET I am lucky in having less drugs than a fresh cycle and no trigger shot which my clinic told me was the most expensive part.

Will look at sainsburys thanks for advice. Am going to drop script in at llyods, asda, sainsburys and have emailed homecare and may even check local pharmacy as well. If I buy from clinic they total cost will be £1500 so am really hoping to drop it quite a lot. I'm the most nervous about the money £8000 is more than we'd pay for a home renovation and travel and for it to end in a negative which so many first cycles do I will be gutted. Am just going to have to ignore the cost as the stress is no good for anyone. Already starting to research clinics abroad. It seems like I'm on a lot of meds compared to you all.

Mrswishywashy I would think that if your doing donor sperm you wouldn't need icsi, that's for very low sperm counts, a donor wouldn't have that. We have to have icsi as they had to extract the sperm directly from DP testicles. There is a high per portion of women on this thread that are having ivf due to male infertility so would need less drugs probably.

My drugs are from Healthcare at Home, my 3 bottles of Buserelin are £63, 25 lots of Menopur is £440 and 3 lots of cyclogest is £40 which I don't think is that bad. I'm trying to to stress about money, spending it on ivf isn't a problem but the saving it when we didn't expect to have to have in the first place has been hard.

Shopping around sounds good MrsWW. For comparison to Kitten, my 110 was for 3x Buserelin vials, 70 Cyclogest pessaries and 2 packets of Climaval tablets although I don't know what the breakdown was between them all. The company I would have bought through from the clinic was 30 delivery charge let alone anything else which is why my nurse told me not to use them when self-funding! I will be on less drugs because it's a FET rather than fresh cycle. I hope you can make some savings on the 1,500 for drugs and as Kitten says, ICSI is usually for male low sperm count (we were borderline last time and they decided not to on the day) so hopefully you can avoid that cost. But as you say, you just have to ignore the cost to try not to stress about it I think.

We had a good nurse's appointment and I did a test injection which was a bit weird. And it turns out I can't count (despite being an accountant...) and I actually start injections on 26 Jan. Also found out that actually the Buserelin injections are for 4 weeks and not two like I had thought - gutted! We also saw the embryologist to talk about how many they defrost and the process. It's all starting to be a bit real now...

I've told work that I have a series of upcoming medical appointments for which I may need to take time off at short notice, but not to worry because I'm not deathly ill or anything.

My meds are arriving on Thursday, apparently... I also must get donor sperm ordered (I'm single) sometime soon!

That sounds like a really good compromise, Persipan. Badger - I'm sorry you've two more weeks to wait than you bargained for. Gutting indeed!

My husband thinks he's fucking hilarious - yes that is a picture of two months' worth of medication under the Christmas tree...

Two big boxes arrived this morning. I've now organised my supplies sensibly (joyless control freak that I am!) into downreg (pink post-it notes), stimms (green) and egg collection and beyond (orange.) It feels a bit more manageable in that state!

We didn't need much fridge room. The only meds that had to go in the fridge were the trigger shots. Plural. I have two vial/ampoule sets and two syringe sets for the trigger shots and I don't yet know if that's one dose (why two syringes in that case?) or one and a back up! Any ideas?

It's all a tiny bit overwhelming - not least because one of the pharmacy labels and some of dose counts are at odds with what it says in my protocol. Also, I've been prescribed heparin but as that's only indicated in cases of recurrent miscarriage I'm not sure why I have it!

I've just sent my consultant an email with a very long list of questions. See above re: "joyless control freak"

I'm hoping to get away with out ICSI however I know a couple of others who were using donor sperm and clinic on retrieval day recommended icsi. I guess it may also depend how many eggs are collected. Got a quote from an online company and came in at £1200 don't think it includes delivery. Will keep researching.

Glad to have others doing treatment around the same time.

Oh can I ask for those of you who are down regging is there a specific reason why. I'm on short protocol and start meds on day three of cycle after scan.

Hi mrswishywashy,
I am on short protocol too. My clinic decides based on AMH and other tests.
I didn't ask why - maybe I should have!

As far as I understand it's to ensure that my ovaries are "quiet" before the stimulation begins. This helps ensure that I get a bunch of follicles that are all developing together rather than ending up with a dominant one. That's my understanding anyway...

Warriorbot I love that picture under the tree! This Christmas you will hopefully be able to recreate the photo with a newborn... I would think that the trigger meds are a back up because it's so time sensitive. If you spilled it, or the syringe wouldn't work, and you only had one then you'd have no chance to get a replacement as the trigger has to be 12 hours before the collection (IIRC).

And I don't think it's a control thing to ask questions! I hope that your consultant answers them well. I need to speak to my clinic as when I read the notes that came with my oestrogen tablets last night it says to consult your doctor before taking if there's a family history of breast cancer, and my mum died from it quite young. If it means I can't take them then my medicated FET cycle is scuppered but I am hoping it's just a warning if you're going to be taking them long term rather than a few months. It's weird the clinic didn't say anything about it, especially as I'd told them I wasn't going to take the birth control pill for family cancer reasons...

Persipan Do you know where you're ordering the sperm from? Is it a fairly "simple" process?

This seems to explain quite well the differences between long and short protocols and why one might be used over another www.ivf-embryo.gr/en/ivf-protocols

Badgerface that's a great link, I have forwarded it to DP so he can maybe understand a little better that we can't book hospital dates in advance.

I hope you get good news about your tablets.

An feeling quite overwhelmed today, there just seems so much todo and I hate not being organised but I guess there's only so much I can organise. The post it note labelled drugs under the Christmas tree made me smile though.

Hope everyone's doing ok today

Good link about protocols. I must be on short as I've a low Amh at 5.6 and am 36 - hoping my eggs grow well would love a frostie.

My meds just arrived - blimey, that's a big box! Mainly because it's all packed up in polystyrene to keep it cool, to be fair. They've even sent a kind of cool bag, which is handy because I was thinking I must get one in case I needed to carry stuff about anywhere.

BadgerFace - there's a sperm bank associated with my clinic so it's fairly straightforward, I can just basically do it online.

Hugs for Badger.

Thank you for the pep talk! And the link.

Last progesterone-only day. Tomorrow I start the buserelin sniffing. Hooray for the teaser trailer for "Menopause: the Hot-Flushening"!

The clinic got back to me yesterday and the consultant is not worried about me taking the tablets short term - phew!

How was your first sniff Warrior? You are our vanguard!

Good to hear your drug stash has arrived Perispan. Is it the stimming drugs that are kept in the fridge? I remember some of the drugs going in my fridge last time but don't think I need to this time round. When do you need to order the swimmers by?

How are you doing Kitten? It is very overwhelming at times, and the waiting and uncertainty of timings for scans etc is very stressful (even more so for life's natural orderers aka slight control freaks, of which I am one!!). It's hard, but I think you just have to accept that nearly everything about the process is out of your control and take one day at a time. As my Nan used to say "Worry about the things you can change, dear, and do not worry about the things you can't".

How's everyone else doing? Hurray for the weekend!

That's great new Badger, at least you won't be delayed.

Yeah for a control freak like me it's gonna be a journey! I think once I finish work on feb 7th and won't have to deal with that as well for at least 4 weeks I will clam down a bit. Plus the trains are a nightmare at the moment so I'm stressing about stressing iykwim.

Hope everyone's having a good weekend!

Hi everyone, I'm trying to decide when to start ivf. Think I'm in the denial stage at the moment and can't believe it won't happen naturally for us and also worried about the money it's going to cost.

I have an AMH of 7 and am 35. DH has low motility but everything else ok. Just finished our 12th cycle in 10 months and nothing. How long have you waited if you don't mind me asking?

Its so hard to decide when to be ready. I'm in a same sex marriage so always knew we would need sperm donor but just over a year ago we started the process and my AMH is 5.6 (probably lower now), we've done five cycles of IUI (in 2014) all failed and now feel ready to move to IVF. First cycle planned for beginning of February. We've both signed up to credit cards today just to give us some wiggle room and found the pharmacy where we will get the drugs (£1190). Next weekend need to choose sperm and then get drugs and all will be set.

lucie We tried for a year before getting referred, although we already knew that DH had low volume as we'd done a private sperm analysis when we first started TTC. We started IVF after 14 months of TTC. Age was a factor for us in going for IVF "early". I was 34 and DH 40 for our first cycle.

I found it fairly easy to move from the denial stage to doing IVF as I felt like I was taking charge after a year of unknowns and disappointment every month. Are you eligible for a free cycle on the NHS? I know that there are (very unfairly) different criteria in different PCTs. Have you had any appointments? You can always defer your start date once you are in the system of you don't feel ready. One of the other reasons we went for referral early was because I wasn't sure how long we'd have to wait so I wanted to get on the waiting list although in the end we were very lucky and it was all much quicker than I'd been expecting, but I think part of that is because we live near a big teaching hospital in London and there are lots of other clinic options in a small radius which I guess keeps waiting lists short.

Hi Wishy and badger thanks for replying. We went for some private tests back in August but I haven't been to my gp. I think the waiting list for ivf on nhs is about 18 months which is too long for us given my age. We are looking to go private, even though we can't really afford it and they have told us we can pretty much start right away so it's just deciding when. I have been thinking I should go to see the gp anyway and get my name on the list so if it comes to the worst and it doesn't work privately we will be a bit further forward with a free go on nhs.