Starting first injections of Buserelin, anyone else?

[Wispin]

Did my first needle tonight was so nervous was about to inject myself when I dropped the needle, had to get it ready again, then I just paused when I had to inject myself hovering the needle over my stomach, I couldn't mentally do it, it was like being in a dream where you cant run any faster, I held my breath and did it, I didnt feel a thing, not even when I pushed the liquid in. Will keep posting how it all goes, would love to hear from other people..

ha ha in the bum, i'm pleased i dont have them as other half doesnt really like needles.

I have patches for frozen cycle to continue taking and also pessaries twice a day up the bum :(

I hate the wait after wanting is sooo badly but knowing it nay not work.

Im a bit stressed coz if work hoping they're going forget about target this month.

Thinking i will probably have the week off.

Nurse at my clinic said the Cyclogest worked equally effectively up either the front or the back, said 'why not swap around to mix it up!!'

Taking some time out during the 2ww sounds like a really good idea if you have a really stressful job. Wishing you tonnes of luck and keeping everything crossed for you!

bananafish: cyclogest got quite messy up the front, with wax leakage all over my knickers, especially with the added sticky mucus that we have going on with the other drugs.

The back does mean no leakage but i was worried about the need, to go no 2 lol and it not doing its job. I have read it only takes 20 mins to work.

I dont think time off is really needed ordinarily. But getting a decent amount of sleep is always needed. Not getting hyper with work stuff and just being able to chill.

Hopefully this is the difference between this cycle and the last failed cycle.

Exactly - I think everyone's circumstances are different. If you have a really stressful job then sounds like a week off would be really good for your general mental and physical wellbeing regardless of the 2ww, hoping it's a restful one (with a lovely BFP at the end of it!)

Hope transfer went well today Hyland xx

All three survived the thawing process

I had two transferred quality grade C, definitely not as pretty as grade B that i had before.

Here's hoping that my bubbly eggs implant sucessfully.

The speculum kinda hurt this time maybe my cervix was in the way or something as i was fine last time!

What is next for you BANANFISH?

Cor Hyland - two blasts, you might end up with twins! Hope you have a super chilled 2ww, and a lovely BFP. When is your test day?

Sorry for being dim, but if you thawed three and transferred two, have you re-frozen the third?

Keeping everything crossed for you!

I had my first tracking scan today (day 8) and consultant was ‘over the moon’ with my response (and a little gobsmacked), as I have……drumroll….Only bloody 14 follies !!!

Absolutely stoked - not too shabby for someone who had an AFC of 5 in September, and AMH of 1.5. And FSH of 17.6 back in July!!

Dr has halved my Gonal-F, and then I’m to drop it again on Thu - next scan is on Friday, he thinks prob trigger Sat and EC Monday. We will batch together whatever we get this time with the 6 eggs in the freezer for last time, and fertilise the lot together. Hoping we will get a decent fert rate and have enough embryos to go to blast.

Oh, and Dr was also pretty astonished by my spectacularly swollen belly - his eyes nearly fell out of his head. I look 4-5 months pregnant, I am the size of a frigging house (and it is really, really obvious on a size 8 frame). So I think that means I must be pretty bloated if I’m surprising the top fertility Dr!!!

We could end up with twins and we're happy with that. On our fresh cycle we had two transferred and neither survived..... oh dear look at me with my positivity!

We have not re-frozen the 3rd as i it was not doing so well since being thawed.

The quality was such that they advised it probably wasnt worth it.

14 yay well done you x

Have they given any idea on sizes and what to expect with numbers on what is likely to be mature?

I have forgotten what AFC means!!!

I think i was on 225 gonal on fresh cyvle which was reduced to 150 but they did feel i was borderline OHSS.

Are you doing this privately?

One thing with a swollen tummy is everyone will think you're pregnant lol

Keeping everything crossed for you Hyland! How are you feeling?

The follies ranged from 10mm-15mm but most were around the 12-14mm mark - that was on Day 8. Last time I had a couple of follies that were 15mm at my last scan on Day 12, that ended up yielding mature eggs at collection on Day 15. So size wise, they’re all looking promising, at least! Cautiously optimistic that we’ll get some eggs at least.

AFC is antral follicle count - i.e. the number of resting follicles at baseline :)

We don’t know what kind of impact my high FSH will have on quality, so no idea what kind of fertilisation rate we may get - just have to see. I’ve been doing everything I can to support egg quality (rattling with supplements!), and Dr says age is on my side, but it’s a crap shoot really.

Yes, we are private. We haven’t been TTC for the necessary 2 years for NHS funding - we rushed to IVF when we found out I was crashing towards premature ovarian failure, as the tests all suggested if we waited, I might be in early menopause before we were eligible for funding. In any case, I prob wouldn’t have been eligible for NHS funding even if I had, because they wouldn’t fund someone with the high FSH / low AMH that my bloods showed (although I might squeak past now based on my antral follicle count)

Annoyingly, I’m in one of the better London boroughs for IVF - they’ll fund two fresh cycles where I live.

Are you private or NHS?

Yes, unfortunately I do look several months pregnant, I’ve had to wear floaty tops to try and hide it. Cruel joke!!

Hope you’re able to have a restful one and chill out a bit. xx

Ignore me, hormonal brain. I know you're private cos we talked about bloody costs! Doh!

Ha ha you see my brain must be scrambled coz i forgot we had discussed and was too lazy to check.

I ask because it seems a waste to unfreeze the eggs u have in storage.

When I assume they'll then charge you again to refreeze £900.

If you get a bountyful off mature eggs on this cycle, it sounds like you have the figures to play around with.

Perhaps I'm missing something!

Maybe you was reccommended to put both lots together because they were not expecting you to produce such good numbers.

May be worth asking the question again, get the nurse to put the question to the doctor.

Haha, we’re in good company!! What clinic are you with, if you don’t mind my asking?

It's a good question - Dr and I discussed this very issue (I don’t see a nurse, I just see the same consultant) yesterday, and we both agreed that we should def thaw the eggs for a few reasons.

It’s frozen eggs, not embryos, so at some point they’ll have to be fertilised, so it makes more sense to thaw them now, and fertilise the whole lot together.

We have to ICSI thawed eggs cos the shells are harder (makes me sound like a broody hen!!), so it makes sense to do two lots of eggs together - we don't have male factor, so would be doing standard IVF otherwise, but if we have to pay the extra £1000 for ICSI for one lot of eggs, might as well do two lots together.

We’ll get useful learnings from comparing the development of embryos from both batches of eggs, so we can see what impact the different protocols (and any other factors, like DHEA or CoQ10 supplements) had on egg quality - which will be really useful info for the next fresh cycle. And as we don’t know what impact my FSH will have had on my quality, the more eggs we have to fertilise, hopefully the more chance we have of ending up with something going to blast.

Does that make sense?!!

I’m certainly not expecting to have any spare embryos left over for the freezer, so I don’t expect there to be another freezing bill to pay - if we did, I’d be over the moon, if that meant we had a frostie!!

Boston Place in London and you ?

So you have to inject the frozen eggs because if the harder shell from freezing.

I wonder if that means the harder shell also makes it harder for them to implant and break through the shell.

Perhaps with this thinking, I should have gone for assisted hatching for my two frosties!

Ours was ICSI as well because they thought the little guys weren't great in numbers etc but by the time we had the fresh cycle and he had taken supplements. The numbers were all great again, makes me wonder if they should have let them fertilise in the dish and refunded us back the £1,000 extra we paid!

I have read that injecting the egg is quite harsh and so some don't survive for this reason.

Seeing as the sperm was ok in the end i may have opted for the more natural approach in hope of loosing less.

I previously thought ICSI meant it was a sure thing that all those injected would obviously fertilise. I believe out of the 11 we had at the start, 7 were successfully fertilised. THIS quickly dropped off to only Two reaching nice blastocyst on day 5 (grade b) and they waited an extra day and got two/three more to blasto (grade c) which were my frosties now inside me.

I was quite disappointed with numbers in the end.

Makes me sound ungrateful but none of it makes sense, they always tell me i have the perfect this that and the other!

AMH egg reserve they told me it was very good and what they would expect for a women who was 26 and I'm 36 :)

Yet we have been trying for 4 years and 2 months and it is quite heartbreaking.

& we now have one FAILED fresh cycle under our belt :(

I’m with an individual consultant for treatment - so I see him for all my scans, he does the protocol, EC and ET himself, working with CRM Care as a satellite clinic. So I see him at his consulting rooms for all my appointments and go to CRM for EC and ET, it’s their facilities and embryology team & lab. Nurse at CRM said 60% of their patients were satellite patients - most of the Harley St private consultant’s who offer IVF treatment seem to work with CRM, as does Zita West’s clinic.

Re: hard shells, that’s for eggs not embryos. A thawed frostie is no different at all to a fresh embryo - makes no difference at all to its ability to hatch, it’s not got a hard shell like an egg has, they’re completely different structures. So no reason your blasts should have needed assisted hatching at all - I think the evidence for it is pretty flimsy at best, so just as well to have saved your cash!

An egg being damaged by ICSI is only likely to be damaged if its a particularly fragile (and prob poorer quality) egg, or in the hands of an inexperienced embryologist - though it is, as you say, a possibility, it is very rare.

As far as I’m aware, all ICSI does is to level the playing field to IVF if there are sperm issues (or hard zona pellucida issues for thawed eggs) that would make standard fertilisation difficult - I don’t think it increases fertilisation otherwise, as that’s mostly down to egg quality.

And similarly, the drop off of embryos to blast is also down mostly to egg quality - so if I have a higher incidence of chromosomally abnormal eggs due to high FSH (as in, higher than would be expected for my age), I’ll get a lower fert rate, and a bigger drop off. I didn’t ever expect to have enough eggs to be able to even consider being allowed to go to blast (Dr says they say 3 good embryos at day 3 for extended culture). I might get loads of eggs but hardly any embryos if I have crappy eggs! I’ve been absolutely nailing all the supplements for egg quality, but who knows…

My egg reserves were spectacular when I was 28 and was diagnosed with PCOS, but then when I came off the pill to start TTC aged 33 and we discovered my AMH had declined 93% in 5 years, ugh. That was absolutely devastating.

We were advised to go pretty much straight to IVF as it looked like I wasn’t far off early menopause. Although Dr says my response isn’t that of someone with borderline POF, so the picture doesn’t seem to be quite as bleak as it was 6 months ago.

Can you believe I’ve never taken a pregnancy test?! Wish I had at least had a practice run, as it’s gonna be gutting when I do take my first ever HPT and see a BFN, when there’s £16,000 of treatment riding on it! :(

I hope you only ever need to take the one test to get your lovely news.

Maybe you need to take the AMH test again, may relief some stress/tension if things arent as bad.

Fingers crossed that egg quality is really good and you can shock them all with it :)

We used embryo glue for fresh cycle but not for this frozen cycle. Figured that because it was unproven voo doo as the consultant put it. That we decided we didnt know if it actually does more harm than good, plus it's another £250.

The consultant (Stuart Lavery) we saw is just for the initial appointment. Discussing the options and prescribing the drugs. Saw him twice before starting first go and once before frozen. He is the director at Boston Place & 92 Harley Street and Hammersmith.

After that its been another guy/doctor who did all my scans.

This doctor also did EC & ET. Frozen cycle i thought would be the same but the ET was done by someone i have never seen before.

We see Mr S. Lavery at Harley street and have all test/peocedures at Boston Place.

Aaaah, can but hope! Dr says egg quality is primarily determined by age and I have that on my side (either side of 34 last time / this time), so hopefully it's not totally abysmal. Been nailing the DHEA, CoQ10, melatonin and resveratrol to do whatever I can to try and help my egg quality along. And eaten soooo much protein whilst stimming - god, I'm so fed up of eating eggs for my eggs, haha

Funnily enough I'm seeing my consultant for my next scan this afternoon and embryoglue is on my list of questions to ask him about!

I had three separate AMH tests done and all were identical. Not had one since October admittedly, but June, July and Oct were all ridiculously low, so unlikely to have changed much. The FSH did bounce around - it was a completely horrific 17.6 in July, then 9.5 the following month. But you're only considered as good as your worst FSH so we have to assume the worst. However clearly bloods don't tell the whole story as women with almost undetectable AMH aren't supposed to get 14 follies!! Consultant says he's had pregnancies from women with AMH as low as 0.4 so it's still only a measure of quantity (and it only takes one!)

Bricking it about my scan this afternoon - desperately hoping the lining will have come on a bit and will be triple line, and that we can start the oestrogen tablets. If I don't make it to transfer again I will be absolutely GUTTED.

Who recommended you take DHEA & CoQ10 and what do they do?

Good luck for this afternoon x

Let me know how you get on.

Thanks hyland - hope you're having a restful one

I read a lot about DHEA and CoQ10 as lots of clinics recommend them for women with diminished ovarian reserves, as well as in the book 'It starts with the egg' about supplements for egg quality. DHEA is actually a hormone, although it's sold as a dietary supplement, it's actually an anabolic steroid (team GB's Rio hopes are dashed now I'm banned from Olympic competition!) It's a precursor to testosterone, and it's been found to increase quantity and quality in women with very diminished reserves, who often have very low testosterone levels. Mine were almost undetectable before starting the DHEA, and now they're still only in low normal range - no idea if it has made a difference to my response, but I have responded much much better than expected. So who knows??!!

CoQ10 is an antioxidant that helps with egg quality by improving mitochondrial function, ie giving the egg more energy to divide when it becomes an embryo. Clinics like the Lister recommend both of these for poor responders.

I asked my Dr who was happy for me to take them - he told me stop it before we started down regging, and after this cycle fails I'll ask him about restarting it, in case we have to check my testosterone levels again.

One side effect of essentially taking testosterone was that I got mega greasy hair, oily skin and spots like a teenage boy!!!

Think a few people have mentioned the book.

Tempting to take more time off until test day.

Hoping these few days are enough to give the two embryos the foundation to implant successfully.

Such a small change like making sure I get 9 hours sleep. Usually I'm not in bed until 12.30 or 1am and then I'm up for work at 7.20.

...or an hour earlier if on the early shift.

Hyland gosh yes, those are tough hours. Some more time off if you can take it , sounds like it'll be really restorative. Really glad you're getting some decent sleep

Update from from my scan - EC is all confirmed for Monday, I trigger tomorrow.

Cannot believe that with my barely detectable AMH I have 15 follicles!

14 good ones (most @ 18mm, a few @ 16mm, and one big fella @ 20mm), plus one 12mm tiddler.

Consultant is reasonably confident that with 14 decent follies - plus the 6 frozen eggs from last time - that we will have enough embryos to get something to blast.

Lining is looking significantly less spectacular - triple line, but only 7.2mm, so am to start the Progynova tomorrow. He will obv measure the lining on Monday, and then wants to scan me again towards the end of the week. If he’s not happy with it, we’ll have to freeze-all and try to build up the lining in a medicated FET.

Absolutely thrilled with the eggs, though will be gutted if we don’t make it to transfer again - desperately hoping the Progynova works its magic

Thinking thickening thoughts!!!

What has the lining got to be at, as a minimum 10?

Did he seem confident that two days of the additional drugs would be sufficient.

I really hope you get your long awaited transfer on Monday.

His absolute minimum is 7mm - however last time my lining regressed massively over the weekend (was 7.6mm on the Friday, then 6.4mm on Monday @ EC), so we don't have much wiggle room.

Preferably would get to 8mm, and ideally really want to get to 9mm - but 7mm is the cut off point. If we're borderline, we'd need to have a serious chat about the pros and cons of transfer vs freeze.

I'll start taking Cyclogest on Tues morning - and it's after that point that the lining changes appearance, in order to become receptive to implantation. So we have Sat, Sun and Mon for the oestrogen to give the lining a boost, before the progesterone kicks in.

I'm not sure how much difference the oestrogen makes once I've started the progesterone - so I'm not sure if we have just that three day window, or if we have the full week until a day 5 transfer next Day.

It's a case of wait and see! The priority is getting embryos. Which we didn't think we would get many of at all. And now it's looking like we might be looking at going to blast!!

God, that would be incredible. The thought of even having something left over for the freezer would be too much to even dream of!

Oh of course, I'm forgetting that its EC you're having first.

So should be plenty of time to get you back on track and make sure you don't regress.

I believe you'll get some great eggs to day 5 blastocyst and the best goody bag leftovers ever :)

You certainly deserve it after everything x

Have a good feeling about it all for you.