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

Shellster wow a true IVF soldier, you've massively been through the trenches and come out on the other side! Huge congrats

Thanks for sharing your experience of DHEA. I would have started taking it earlier if I hadn't been labouring under the (reasonable!) assumption that I still had PCOS - which is supposed to be incurable and not just disappear. And as PCOS is an endocrine condition with androgen excess, DHEA is def not to be messed with if you're PCOS. However as I'm clearly not presenting as PCOS and am obv being treated as a low responder / DOR, my consultant said he was v happy for me to start on DHEA.

Seeing him on 3rd September: if he agrees we should start ASAP then if I ovulate next month (which now I'm apparently no longer PCOS and have ovulated the last two months - when last time I came off the pill I had a nine month long anovulatory cycle - seems not to be an unrealistic hope) then hopefully I'd be looking at starting stimming at the end of Sept.

c. 6 weeks isn't likely to be long enough for DHEA to make any difference I'm guessing, but maybe it might have an effect by cycle #2 (she says in vain hope...!)

I'm going to ask him about aspirin as my lining is thin but my epilepsy medication has a slight blood thinning effect so not sure I should be buggering around with self medication in the mean time. But several friends are adamant it made a difference to their cycles, so def gonna ask the question

Annoying newbie question for you ladies. Is there any advice / do's / don'ts / things you wish you'd known before going in to your first cycle? Obv realise that's a massively open question, but am so grateful for all the experiences you've shared in this thread already, it's massively appreciated. X

banana not sure if this applies in your situation but we have mfi issue and I wish I'd known we would be asked to choose between ivf and icsi or a bit of both because dhs results for sample on the day were on normal ranges! we decided 50/50 so of 11 eggs we did 6 icsi (because one eggwas a bit immature so thought that icsi would give it better chance) and 5 ivf. we got 7 embryos of which 4 were icsi and 3 were ivf so 2 of each failed. 2made it to day2 for transfer.
one thing I did which I'm glad of was to wear my baggiest most comfortable clothes on ec day.
oh and I wish I'd known I could end up being put on oestrogen tablets and protein drinks! I still don't fully understand why and would like to have researched. think it was to do with thickness of lining (tablets) and follicles leaking protein (shakes).
ifi think of any more I'll let you know!

Hi all hope you don't mind me tagging on.

We're starting a frozen blast transfer around the end off the month. We've had one Dd who is now two and we're trying again with one of the three frozen blasts. I just have to wait till the first day of my cycle then I can start taking my meds. The consultant says its 50/50 chance so fingers crossed.

Hope you are all well

lil we had Icsi because of dp low sperm count but on the day it was fine I think he had left it too long for his tester sample !

Hi glittery, did they still do icsi or give you a choice? it literally floored me as GED had 2 duff samples and hadn't left it too long as I made sure he didn't . I was still groggy from the sedation and just panicked!

morning lildotty

well just before I went for egg retrieval the consultant cane and said that DP sperm was basically dead and that we had to use ICSI, going off the past sample. DP was at the abrupt way he had been told but he had left it too long as we had had a barny

So when the embryologist came up after the retrieval she said that actually dp new sample on the day was fine and to go ahead with the ICSI as it was paid for anyway. (NHS funded)

I had 13 fertilised eggs that wittled down to four day five blasts. So where are you in your treatment now ?

Glitterarse I love your name! I'm currently doing a FET cycle - had transfer on Monday with my one frozen blast so am in the dreaded 2ww! We had ICSI too on our fresh cycle which was successful but sadly ended in miscarriage at 9 weeks. Feeling sorry for our poor wee frostie, got all our hopes pinned on him/her! No pressure, lol!

Do you have 3 blasts in the freezer? I'm amazed at how much easier the FET cycle is compared to the fresh one. I am so chilled out this time! Do you know if you'll be injecting or just taking pills one your period comes?

Wow toes fingers crossed!!!! Sorry about the miscarrage

Yes we have three frosties ! Im just taking tablets at the start of my cycle then presseries after transfer.

I didn't mind the injecting as the needle was tiny bit I'm glad it's just tablets this time

I cheated last time when I was on 2WW, a week early and got a positive so obsessivly did tests everyday till it Was up. Won't be doing that again

Glitter I was/am on tablets too, so easy compared to last time. Have been struggling with the pessaries a bit but otherwise it's all good. I'm considering testing early too, but my clinic does a blood test on 14dp ec so there's not much point. I just hated having to hear from someone else, I'd rather find out in my own loo I think!

toes I couldn't either but wait till the day im due for a test then do one in morning before I go for blood test. Imagine if the consultant kept you in suspense like Jeremy Kyle ? I'd end up punching him

Here's to summer babies !

Hi all. I know this site is called 'Mumsnet' but I was hoping to mix things up a bit and add some male perspective - hope this may be helpful to you all, as it may provide a bit of an insight as to what my be going through those 'Venus' minds of your male partners. Anyway, this is my first post.

My wife is starting the surpressing hormone injections this evening, as we take our first tentative steps towards ICSI (male infertility relates :

finton im sorry to piss on your chips but there are loads of blokes on here

Welcome!

Welcome Finton as Glitter said loads of blokes on here, but you're welcome to joint our wee gang!

Glitter it's worse than that, you go in for the blood test at 9 am and then go away and call them after 1! I think I'd take Jezza over that!

There goes my USP Glitteryarse!! lol

toes when we had dd I'd already taken the test so when I got there they said they didn't need to bother. Did you leave it to them and not even do one yourself? Omg the suspense would have killed me!!

finton how is your wife feeling about the injections? After the initial 'shit I'm sticking a needle in myself' it's not too bad. There was this HUGE needle that I though was for injecting myself with and I nearly passed out!!

lildottie thanks so much. It's all happened so bloody fast we haven't even had the SA done yet - will be getting that done asap. The plan was supposed to be I'd come off the pill before the summer, have a couple of months to get that out of my system and then DH would get tested and we'd start Clomid as discussed. Then I unexpectedly ovulated 3 weeks after coming off the pill (as someone who didn't have periods - should have been my warning sign!!) and we got my day 3 bloods and AFC and it all came crashing down.

So don't yet know if we have MFI - but deffo got the IVF/ICSI question on my (long!) list of questions for the consultant

I think I'll prob be put on supplementary oestrogen too cos of my shitty lining, will see what he says about protein but as I'm trying to put on weight and have read loads here and elsewhere about high protein / low carb, I'm nailing the protein powder and full fat dairy (and my god is it vile!)

Desperately trying to get my weight up but not really succeeding as eating Low GL (for PCOS as we thought I was!) basically meant the weight I'd managed to put on to get my BMI into the healthy range has dropped off! Want to be minimum BMI 18.5 by the time I start stimming, ideally 19. Guess I need to be getting a lot more full fat dairy down my gob!

glitteryarse amazing username! Wishing you lots of luck

toesandfingers all mine are crossed for you!

finton love to hear more from your POV, welcome. I've just finished 'His and her's guide to IVF' and found thr different sides of the story both fascinating and really insightful

banana I've made muffins with protein powder in today but not tried it as a drunk yet. I think I may stick with muffins!

glittery it baffles me how some medical staff are so blaze (sp?!),your poor dh! I'm on pill waiting to start injecting a week Tuesday. nothing in the freezer so doing it all over again. I'm oddly looking forward to starting the needles!

finton welcome. it's refreshing to have you with us. I find it difficult to get my dh to talk about how he's feeling. so far I think the word to sum it up is angry,though I'm not sure if he's more angry at having to do it all again or angry we have to pay £4k this time! lol. I know he's freaking out about watching me go through egg collection again bless him. I've told him I don't remember a bloody thing!

Toes. I didn't realise your first ended in m/c at 9 weeks. I am so sorry. It's also put me in panic mode seeing as I am 8w 1d. Did they do any testing to find out what went wrong?

Hello I've been away for a bit as have been very busy (building work at home and stressing)!

Currently waiting for AF (day 34 now) then will be doing fet cycle ...I think. I will admit Ian petrified about the medications the progynova especially.

I have never been able to take the pill due to severe migraines so I'm panicking as to how the progynova will affect me. So much so that last week I wasn't even going to go through with the cycle.
The clinic said that i would have had higher oestrogen levels when stimming and if I got pg levels would be hugely higher than they will be on progynova but still I'm anxious

Shell please, please don't panic! Your 7 week scan went well and you saw a lovely healthy heartbeat so there is only a very small chance something might go wrong at this stage. When I went for my 7 week scan the embryo was only measuring 5 weeks and had an incredibly slow and weak heartbeat, so we knew something was terribly wrong from straight away. So please, please don't get worried, it is very different to your situation. We had to wait and keep going back for scans until I finally mc'd at 9 weeks, but I already knew I would at that point as there was no heartbeat at the next scan so we just had to wait.

They didn't do any testing because they said it was basically bad luck. They don't really do tests until after you have had 3 miscarriages on the NHS which is horrible really. They test after 2 if you are IVF because I guess there's little point continuing (very expensive for the NHS) treatment if it's not going to work unless you change something. As I have a small and non lifethreatening autoimmune illness the consultant definitely said they will pursue some extra tests if I have another miscarriage this time round. Hopefully we won't need to though!

Once you've heard a good heartbeat, the mc risk is less than 2% shell

toes how horrid they won't test. I had blood tests after 1 ivf mc on NHS and was offered another blood test to see if I met criteria for a clinical trial. all tests normal and didn't have what they were looking for for trial so seems mine really was just bad luck. fx for a much better outcome for you this time though.

shell please don't worry, the others are right, your risk is very low after a good 7wk scan.

Yes, I've heard that too cat - that the m/c rate is 1.5% at 8 weeks and .5% at 9 weeks. But I've heard so many 9 -10 week m/c stories lately that I started to wonder if these stats were true.

But you have definitely put my mind at ease Toes now knowing that your 7 week scan showed it was only measuring 5 weeks with a slow heart beat. Although that must have been absolutely awful for you. And I can only imagine the dragged out process of waiting for the next scan each time, desperately hoping things showed improvement until the m/c at 9 weeks... and then having to emotionally process that. What dragged out torture. Yes, hopefully you won't need to investigate the autoimmune disease... two days to go until OTD.

Waves to lil.

waves back 7 pills left!

Shell I do know what you mean. My DM had a miscarriage at 9 weeks so it felt like a particular milestone for me to get past that really. I got a bit addicted to this graph in the early days.

Toes hope you are bearing up in the 2ww and anyone else who is on that too, I can't remember sorry.

Waiting welcome back and sorry you've had a stressful time.