Rumples IVF/ICSI thread continued

[lildottie]

Our thread was originally started by Rumples who now has her bfp, as have a few other ladies along the way. Here's hoping the next thread holds a few more bfps!

Just back from my clinic appointment and my follicles are big enough yet so back on Wednesday for another scan maybe need to up the medicine dose xx

that's frustrating JL but better they grow slower and stronger I guess rather than race to the finish line.

my plan and prescription arrived today. it's all getting real again!

I never made many follicles JL200. The most mature eggs I ever got from one cycle was 4! So I think my 11 attempts probably equates to about 3 attempts of someone who produces a normal amount of eggs. So if you have lots of follicles, hopefully that ups your chances of the perfect egg being in this batch.

It's all happening lil. The first time for me I had renewed hope because I was trying something new. The next time I had experienced first hand that IVF has failed in the past and it was a bit more stressful. So I assume that's how you're feeling. So you've still got to down reg and a bit of a wait before starting stims if I remember right?

spot on shell down regging on bcp atm then start buserelin 25/8 then stimms after that. it's wierd because I'm not doing everything different to last time so I should positive that I'll get pg again. but I guess the mc is stopping me feeling positive I'll get a baby out of it. I just hope my eggs are better quality this time, even if I have a couple less!

I totally understand how difficult it is to feel positive about it after a previous failed IVF lil. I am such a big believer in the high protein low carb diet lil for quality. I too believe in quality over quantity and the one thing that kept me going was the study says this increases number of embryos that survive to blast to a whopping 50% and increases the preg rate to a stagering 80%. It meant I lived on my protein shake with almond milk for breaky, then fish, salad and veggies for the rest of the day, and I know how hard that is when you're not feeling positive but of course all worthwhile now so I hope you can find some inspiration.

well so far this week I'm over on calories but still losing weight and protein v carb looking OK. busy day today though so need to try and stay good!
got my drugs yesterday dh somehow didn't pay for them but no bcp so need to call clinic. so annoying!

Hi ladies hope your all keeping well, I was at the clinic yesterday and was told my treatment has came to an end for this cycle as my follicles aren't growing and my oestrogen levels have dropped by 200 so it's best to end the cycle here don't really know where to go from here as I don't really have the money to try again

oh no JL . can they not give you oestrogen pills to keep things moving? increase meds?

Hi lil, no they advised I stopped taking medication as my follicles whereby growing I was on day 10 of injections and they where still only size 11's and below so my dr said better to cancel as she didn't think it would result in me getting pregnant so need to get saving again for the next round and fingers crossed I get somewhere this time as I feel really robbed of my money as I didn't even get to egg retrieval ????

really? I'll check my paperwork tomorrow but I'm sure I had loads of 11mm follicles at 2nd scan so about 10 days on menopur, and I got 10 mature eggs 7 fertilised and 2 were good enough to transfer at day 2. and whilst it didn't end well I did get a bfp from those 2 that were put back.

Oh JL, that's so frustrating. I've had cancelled cycles before and it's so dis-heartening. You get all your hopes up that this cycle will be the one and then you don't even get a chance. For me though, the biggest expense was egg collection and I was only out of pocket a few hundred dollars when the cancellation took place before egg collection, but it doesn't sound like that is the case for you - How much are you out of pocket?

I agree with lil. 11mm sounds about right for day 10 to me. If they were to grow at the average of 2mm a day, that means that they would be 18mm by day 14 (ovulation day in a textbook cycle) which sounds just right. The fact that your estrogen levels were dropping though is definitely a sign of poor egg quality and studies definitely shows this negatively correlates with a pregnancy outcome. So if it's any reassurance, perhaps it was the best decision for that reason. But now the question is why did this happen and how can they prevent it next time? Did the clinic provide any solutions in that regard?

lil, I'm so happy for you that you've found the motivation to get back on the diet. According to the study, it didn't matter about your BMI but it was having the carbs below 40% and the protein above 25% that resulted in the 80% preg rate - but if you want to loose weight too and you are then that's a bonus!

just checked and I was wrong. mine were 19, 18, 16, 15, 15, 15, 15, 15, 14, 13, 10, 9, 9, 8, 8, 8, 8, and 6 on day 10 of stimms, and that's after 4 days on oestrogen tabs. hopefully shell is right and you'll get a decent refund JL

Thought I'd check too and on my last IVF cycle, mine were 10mm, 9,, 7m, 5mm & 3 less than 7mm, so much smaller than lils. (We must both be obsessive people lil as we both have records of everything!). Mine were much slower growing than my previous cycles but it obviously didn't affect egg quality as I still got a BFP from them. But my estrogen levels kept rising and never dropped like yours did. Hope you get some answers.

Hope you got the bcp sorted out lil.

not without problems shell but all sorted now! 20 pills left to take!

and yes I'm very obsessive too

So everything starts in 20 days!

Despite everyone saying forget and it will happen, I think there's a healthy amount of obsessive in IVF. You've seen what went wrong last time and you've read about the high protein low carb diet increasing number of embryos to blast so I really hope it helps get you across the finish line this time.

yep but its still 5 bloody weeks until I start stimms!

Oh, still 5 weeks? When you said 20 pills left to take, I assumed that was 20 BCP pills and then you start stimms?

no 20bcp then I start buserelin which I think is down regging?! then I have a week and a half of that until first scan. all being well at first scan I start stimms that night but carry on with the first injection so I do 2 a day from then until trigger

though it's 17 bcps now

Okay, so down regging with BCP, then more down regging with Buserelin - your clinic sure seems a fan of the down regging! We'll just count down the 17 BCP's as an interim timeline to not make it feel so far away. Then when you start the Buserelin it will feel like another milestone and is only 1 1/2 weeks to count down before your scan.

I've got my 7 week scan in 2 hours. I've been counting down to that which has taken forever to get here. I've tried not to whinge on here because when I was in your position and others whinged about the stress of their pregnancy, I just couldn't relate because I could only dream of being in that position. But with 11 IVF attempts behind me, you can imagine my anxiousness about this embryo being a viable pregnancy after having seen over 30 other eggs fail along the way. Just because one finally implanted, doesn't guarantee there will be a heartbeat today. So nervous.

eeeeeeeeeeeekkkkkkkk shellster! good luck xxx

shell I hope everything was ok with the scan. I can only imagine how anxious I'll be if I get another bfp, you must've been a wreck these last weeks! hope you've seen heartbeat and all well and you can start to enjoy it. funnily enough I don't get annoyed by other ppls bfps when I know theyve struggled to get there. if anything its the Pol who take being able to get pg and expect they'll stay pg for granted that annoy me more! so feel free to share/vent when you need to. that's what friends are for .

Thanks lil. All went well with the scan. One tiny 1cm baby with a tiny little heartbeat. Another girl who went through IVF said that once the heartbeat is seen at the 7 week scan, the m/c rate drops to 1.5%. Not sure if it's true or not, but I won't research it and will just accept that it is true as that feels like good odds and I feel much more relaxed that it's a viable pregnancy now.

Funnily enough, despite only ever wanting 2 children and already having DS, after all the effort it took to get pregnant again and now knowing this is the final time, I was disappointed to see that only one had implanted! But am adjusting now.

Very glad I made the decision to transfer both available embryos. If they transferred the dud and froze the good one, it would have cost me $1500 for freezing and then another $1500 for FET with no guarantees this embryo would have survived the defrost. If the dud had of been frozen, then I would be spending this pregnancy timing when to transfer it and probably would have cut breastfeeding short before I got to old and spent months building my hopes up only to come crashing down when it didn't work.

shell I've researched it and mc rate does seriously reduce once you see a heartbeat. I'm so happy for you. sounds like everything has worked out for the best numbers wise. I'm hoping to be able to put 2 back again this time. Kinda got quite happy with the idea of 2 last time.

I've been to scared to research that myself so I'll happily go by your research if it concludes that I can stress less now!

I can imagine that two would be even more ideal for you. I already have DS but for someone without any children, it would be nice to feel like your family is complete with this IVF and not having to worry about going through this saga again and having to think about timeline before getting too much older.

14 BCP's now!