Anyone starting IVF soon? Join me (3)

[purplemeggie]

Ha! I was just about to post the last message in the old thread linking to this, but I'm too late, we've already filled it up! I'll do the same as last time and send PMs to everyone who's been on the thread recently, but everyone's welcome

Sorry for all the typos... blimming phone

Thanks blue yes I'm in 2 minds about it as well but then more and more places seem to be offering it now and women who have tried quite a few times but then use immunes have had success but then maybe they were just lucky. I'm 35 so I guess there should be some decent eggs left in there somewhere but who knows. I am having treatment at Reprofit in Czech so if you want to know anything about that one just give me a shout. They don't really promote all the immune stuff as it's not an area they specialise in but they will do the blood tests if they are wanted and they are pretty cheap so I think next time I'm out there I will try and get some of them done just for my own peace of mind. I know it's only my first go and it could work for us on 2nd or 3rd but for some reason I have just always felt that it won't. I know that's silly as there is no way I could know.

I'm wondering now if a hysterescopy and HSG could be performed at the same time as egg collection? So after they have collected the eggs would there be any harm in popping in with the camera to check everything looks ok? It would save us a lot of time and money rather than having to go over on a seperate occasion for it.

Hi Lucie have you thought about trying to get the hysteroscopy and HSG done on the NHS? It's a gyno investigation (not IVF treatment) so you are eligible. Perhaps you should speak to your GP. Even though we've used up our one 'free go' of NHS IVF I'm still getting all the investigative stuff done for free, especially anything related to fibroids. Make sure you lay it on thick with your GP about painful periods etc....hopefully you can get it done quickly.

I'd recommend having the HSG and hysteroscopy done before you do your next cycle. If you do have fibroids on the inside of your womb you'll need to get those removed before you have the egg transfer. Fibroid removal is easy and they usually do it at the same time as the hysteroscopy.

Thanks blue, nothing is quick with our gp though. We are having to wait 12 months for the initial consultation for ivf and then at least a further 10 months before treatment. Even if the gp agreed to carry out those procedures it would probably be a good few months by the time we were referred and had got our appointment and I want to start my next round asap. I have lost all faith in the nhs to be honest and would rather just have it done privately. If I have it done in czech then the HSG is only about £50 and the hysterescopy is around £150 so I would rather just spend the money. It would be a lot easier if I could have it done around egg collection but will have to see what they say I guess.

Hello everyone, I've been having a few days 'off' as have been so busy and a bit stressed. Dh has decided we have to wait 2-3 months before our fet, his reasons being that he thinks I'm "too ill" to go straight into a fet cycle.
At first I was annoyed with him but tbh I've felt awful. Bleeding only really stopped a couple of days ago and I'm anaemic again (only slightly but I'm really feeling it blood results were 9 and gp wants it at least 11)
Also, I've been doubled up with cramps everyday and pain each time I eat which I think was due to taking nurofen the day of ec (it never agrees with me) and dh wants me to be 100% before we have fet

I can see his point but I'm so desperate to try ASAP. He thinks we should relax, take vitamins/eat healthily and make sure I'm as well as I can be. I just want to start next AF but. He's adamant

Not sure if I've asked you this before, Lucie - it was a godsend for us, so I always check - do you have any medical insurance through work? I get free insurance as part of my package and it paid for all my investigations - it excludes fertility treatment, but as Blue says, this is a gynaecological investigation and not fertility treatment.

My UK clinic said the same as Blue's about immunological testing. When we went to CZ, they did the test for the thrombolising mutation, which I turned out to be carrying, so I'll be taking heparin if the next cycle works.

Thanks purple, I don't have insurance through work but I know my parents have some kind of insurance which I think also covers the whole family including me. I think it covers initial investigations so could be worth a look but would it still need to be referred through gp and what reason would I give for them to authorise the procedure? Do I just say that I have had a failed ivf and so want to check everything is ok?

Lucie - I don't think you need to mention the IVF unless you want to - you can say that you need the investigations because you've been ttc for xyears and nothing has happened. I had them done pre-IVF...in my case, it diagnosed the problem and would probably have fixed it if I'd been younger.

Ok great thanks purple I will definitely look into it further. She has already referred us to nhs ivf but because it's such a long wait I could say that I want to get these extra tests just to make sure that there's nothing which could be resolved in the meantime before starting ivf.

Yes blue, 3 hysteroscopies in 12 months does seem excessive! He seems to know what he's doing so he'll probably have some logical answer. Will check in again later to hear how you got on at your appointment.

lucie, I guess I am lucky that we already have one son as it tells me that I know I don't have any immune issues, yet still my last EC also produced two top quality embryos which were both transferred and I too got a BFN. IVF is the most frustrating thing as we just want a logical explanation for this so we can 'fix it' and have success next time, but there is just no way of knowing for sure what the issue was. As blue says, embryos that make it to day 5 and are 'top quality' according to their look does not mean they are genetically normal. I had a 37yo friend who had 3 great looking day five embryos tested and only 1 was normal. This study shows a study of 768 FET showed that live birth rates were 1.9 times lower in women with endometrial thickenss of 7-8mm compared to women with 10-14mm. This study showed that uterine contractions at time of embryo transfer hindered the outcome. A study was done on rats, who were given differing doses of estrogen which changed the time that their uterine lining wass receptive to an embryo from a number of days to just a matter of hours. So our uterine lining needs to be at the right stage at the same time the embryo is trying to implant as well. Finally, I am planning on taking estrogen in addition to progesterone for my final IVF after reading several studies like this one that shows this increased the pregnancy rate to 44%, compared to only 18% for the women in the study who took progesterone alone. This shows that there are obviously hormonal reasons for the embryo not implanting as well. So you can see, there are just so many reasons and no way of knowing which caused your issue.

As for the HSG, hysteroscopy, I would think it really needs to be done before the IVF cycle as the HSG involves dye being injected into your uterus and womb while the hysteroscopy involves doing the same under anaesthetic as well as scraping the lining of the womb so an embryo would have no lining to implant into 6 days after the procedure.

Finally, I don't think there's any harm in laying it on thick as blue suggests about painful periods. The NHS seems to be difficult to get things done under at the best of times, and I think you would more likely be referred if you had an actual medical reason rather than 'I'd just like to see how things look in there' before my IVF.

Hi all - I'm back from the hospital....and we've decided to have one more spin of the wheel with my own eggs. Maybe I'm daft - I don't know. Our insurance company is paying half so I guess we might as well make the most of that whilst it lasts (they will pay towards two more cycles).

Our consultant was very keen for us to try again. He said our last cycle was exemplary - 7 eggs, 7 fertilised, 7 blastocysts. If we can replicate similar success again he thinks we have about a 1 in 4 chance of it working. My DH got rather excited...I did not. I know our last cycle was great but it didn't work out. It's impossible to say the last cycle was 'exemplary' when it didn't work! Anyway, I need to stop thinking like that. If we're going to do this I need to think positive and upgrade the PMA. I guess a 1 in 4 chance is ok odds.

We're going away for the last 2 weeks in June so I'm going to wait until early July to start the next cycle. Same short protocol as last time....and I'm going to start taking DHEA too. I'm not sure it will make any difference in 7 weeks but I guess it's worth a try. I'm also still on CoQ10 and all the other stuff. I'm getting my AMH and FSH levels tested in a couple of weeks too.

Do I need my head testing? Possibly. Am I going to get my hopes up again? Definitely. Is this our very last time trying with our own eggs? HAS to be.

Not daft, Blue, just hopeful. There's nothing wrong with that. You know what you're entering into, and you've got a sensible amount of time to get your head in gear before you start again.

I had my down regging scan this morning and everything looks ok. Endometrium is at 2.2mm (which, apparently, is good) and I've been given the go ahead to drop down from two sniffs twice a day to only the one snif twice a day. Then Wednesday I start my Gonal F. It's been a stressful past few days with far too much time and money spent at the vet (sick ferret, cause unknown) so hearing my uterus is doing as it's been told is a bit of a much-needed boost.

Congratulations on your lining, karou, glad everything's on it's way.

Best wishes to all, and lots of positive thoughts x

Blue - I was feeling that kind of ennui after our last failed cycle....I just felt that I couldn't be bothered anymore...but we went away on holiday and I came back feeling so much more positive...I'm sure you will, too.

(Just one question though: is this what you want? Not, DH, not the consultant, but you? If it is, then I'm sure you'll get your PMA back xxxx)

I've booked in for my lining check on Friday and, all being well, I'm off to Prague for a very fleeting solo visit next Fri/Sat.

blue, while PMA might help, I don't think a 'whatever' attitude is necessarily a bad thing. There are lots of stories of women like cat who get their hopes up for their first IVF because they don't yet know IVF failure and it works. I also hear stories from women who are giving up and say that this IVF will be their last attempt and then it works.

You mention July and I get a shudder. That's when my IVF cycle will have finished and the thought pops into my head that I might be wallowing in a pit of sorrow and how will I cope. I've even put off booking my IVF appointment because I just don't want to think about it this cycle for some reason. While I am on this side of IVF, I have hope. But once I do the scans and see the usual poor response, followed by my embryos not fertilising and being left with nothing, my hope will be gone - forever - as I can't afford this anymore. Mmm, perhaps I need a dose of PMA too.

I hope all is well at your scan on Friday purple. You've seemed so calm up until now without all the scans and stress over egg numbers of a fresh cycle. That might all fly out the window after Saturday!

Glad things are starting of well for you Karou. So Wednesday you start Gonal F - and then when do you go back for your first scan to see what's cooking?

Hi sorry for lack of personals but just wanted to ask a quick question. I asked my doctor if there were any supplements that could help next time. She mentioned dhea amongst other things. I'm sure I remember shell taking it before? I haven't looked into it properly yet but I'm sure I've read some contraversial things about it. Has anyone got any experience of it? Not sure whether to give it a go or not?

My first scan, Shell, will be a week Wednesday (20th) then I have a day 10 scan on the 22nd. Then a weekend, and we're looking to do EC some time the following week. I'm not sure if the bank holiday will affect it. Will find out nearer the time.

I can't quite get my head around the fact that it's all going to kick off in 2 weeks.

So Wed 20th will be your first glimpse into how you're responding Karou. Have you had any previous day 2/3 ultrasounds or AMH text to give you an idea? Look forward to hearing your update

lucie, I started DHEA after my first IVF failure early 2013 where I produced only 3 follicles. I had repeated IVF cycles throughout 2013 and 2014 and I have had more follicles as time went on. After my failed IVF in Dec 14, I decided to stop it. Most studies report improvement over a period of 2-4 months and I thought my nearly 2 years of taking it might be overdosing. But then my last IVF in March 15 I had only 3 growing follicles again. So I got straight back on the DHEA. I'll see how I respond next IVF cycle which starts in 1 1/2 weeks and report back. This is just my experience and as you say their probably are controversies about it. However, I am a poor responder so perhaps my fertility hormones are low to begin with and hence the DHEA helps. You responded 'normally' to the IVF meds so I don't know if that makes a difference.

lucie, did you find your appointment helpful and get any insight into your failed cycle or get any helpful suggestions about how to improve things next time? Is it just up to you when you go ahead again now? I wish you all the best. This is a tough road!

Thanks shell, I had a response off the clinic today. I asked lots of questions and why in their opinion implantation failed. The blasts transferred were both grade 2 (grade 1 being top) so they weren't top grade but were still very good with minimal fragmentation. She said she thinks the success rate would have been around 35-40% with those so it was always more likely to fail than succeed. She said that perhaps egg quality is a little low because of age and / or sperm quality. I was looking through some studies of various things to do with sperm quality and came across this one which I thought might interest you Shell although I expect you have seen it anyway, basically one of the largest studies show that low morphology or even 0% didn't impact on success rates of embryos. I thought it might put your mind at ease a bit when your DH refuses to take vitamins etc

www.clevelandclinic.org/lab/pdfs/25_blastocyst_formation.pdf

So she says we have the same chance of success again next time (35-40%). I asked about doing a DNA fragmentation test for DH just because I am looking to cover all bases. She said it's not something they would normally recommend for someone with low motility / varying morphology but I could do it if I wanted to. It normally indicates if donor sperm is required which scared me a bit as I don't think DH could accept that so I'm not sure I would want to know. We have been using PICSI which means that only mature sperm is used which are a lot less likely to have fragmentation so hopefully that is ok. We had 100% fertilisation rate and 100% between 6-9 cells on day 3 so it can't be that bad surely. Admittedly a lot dropped off between day 3 and day 5 but from what I can see this is quite normal anyway.

I asked about having a hysteroscopy to check everything is ok inside. She said they don't normally do this until after 2 failed cycles but I could do it now if I wanted to but in her opinion it would be highly likely to be negative and not show up anything as the ultrasounds I've had during the course of the treatment did not show up anything at all. I really don't know what to do now as I'm thinking if my second cycle fails will I be kicking myself for not having had the hysteroscopy and wondering if it would have shown up anything?!

I asked her about my protocol, I was on short protocol, 225iu of Menopur the first time and asked if she would look to increase this next time with a view to maybe getting 2 or 3 more eggs (we got 7 first time one of which was immature). She said they would possibly increase to 250iu Menopur but otherwise keep everything else the same. I didn't think that this was very much of an increase and was expecting more like 300iu but I don't want to compromise quality either so I'm not sure what to say about that. I'm not even sure how I could do 250iu as the vials are 75iu each in tablet form. Would I just leave some over for the next day?

I asked about having the aCGH genetic testing and she said she didn't feel there was a need for it at the moment

She said she normally suggests to allow at least a month before starting again so said I could start when af arrives at the end of May if I wanted to. I'm not sure if I decide to have the hysteroscopy if that would still be the case as I would need to have that at the end of May also so the same time as starting stimms. I have emailed back to ask about that. I have also asked whether they will treat empirically with steroids and clexane incase of an immune issue as I have seen a lot of others have this even though they have not had testing but she will probably think I am a nutter and say no lol.

So that's that really, sorry for the me, me, me post. Not sure if any of that will help anyone else. Hopefully 2nd time lucky!

Lucie most of the drugs come in incremental doses so they will probably give you 3 x 75mg and a 50 or 2 x 25 - I don't imagine you would be expected to split a vial.

I also took DHEA when we were ttc naturally and waiting for IVF. My AMH appeared to improve but it was also a different testing lab so not necessarily the full story.

Blue swears by CQ10 too....

Thanks purple I'm already on the Cq10. Thanks for explaining the vials too. I didn't realise they came in different amounts x

I've not had a day 2/3 scan, Shell, or at least not one recently. Back in January I had a scan on day 15 - that time round I had 20 follicles in one ovary and 12 in the other. So, theoretically my ovaries are working slightly above requirement. I'm on a low dose of Gonal F because of this.

Hi ladies, hope you dont mind me joining your group. im new to mumsnet.

Im currently with ARGC and due to start ICSI/IVF soon (hopefully). they did immune testing and said my NK cells are high so ive just finished my course of 1st course of humeria and waiting for to take my blood test in 2 weeks time. hopefully all is ok for me to start my cycle!

it just seems like a waiting time all the time lol

really just looking to get any advice or support possible and people to talk to who know how it actually feels as this journey is sooo bloody emotial and mentally tiring! (sorry for ranting on) xxx

My gonal f pen is ok till 2016 I think and was just a 300 so hopefully not (although I'm hoping with a felt I won't ever need it but it's there in case)

Dh said its up to me to see how I feel ,he knows I'm not 100% I also have a stomach ulcer so am on omeprazole. I feel like I may start to rattle when I walk I on so many tablets ! Omeprazole, thyroxine, iron, folic acid and a vitamin tablet plus my Vit d spray !
Weirdly I woke up today with horrendous pmt, much as I do on about day 30 ish of my cycle which was odd...... Had a quick maths session and worked out last 'real' at was 12 April so if I disregard the ivf cycle I'm on what would have been my normal day 30??? It feels like my body has been running two sep cycles, my ivf one and my normal one. It's very odd

lucie, I totally understand you asking the Dr questions about every possible reason for implantation failure and trying to rectify all possible issues for why it may have failed. In my post to you on 11th May, I listed all the reasons I have studied for implantation failure - just so many - and IVF is frustrating because we can't get an answer as to which one it was. Thanks for your reassurance regarding the morphology not affecting IVF, although I've actually read another study saying the opposite! That too is always the way with IVF - so much conflicting info! We too are doing the PICSI so whatever the case with hubby's sperm, this is the best resolution available.

purple, your AMH improving also correlates with my experience of having more follicles at subsequent IVF cycles, since it's the follicles that produce AMH. But as you say, it was different labs for you and for me, I am on so many supplements and doing acupuncture so who knows what is causing what!

Sounds like you will respond well karou - I could only dream of my scans showing 32 follicles!

welcome aussie. I assume that means you are actually Aussie? Me too. So if your day 2 blood is okay, does that mean you will start IVF next cycle? I too am about to start my last IVF cycle in just under 2 weeks time. You sound like you've already been on this path a long time - how long have you been trying? Have you been given any diagnosis other than the NK cells? This is a fantastic place to rant with those who understand.