Anyone starting IVF? Join me (5)

[waitingimpatient]

I don't think anyone has started the new thread yet? Apologies if so and ignore this one if its already been done

I'm hoping by the end of this thread I'll be waiting and impatient for a new arrival fingers crossed

Thanks waiting yes I find everything I have ended up eating things with tons of sugar, which gives me a terrible itchy scalp and is also shit for fertility. Will try hummous and greek yoghurt.

Thanks waiting yes I find everything I have ended up eating things with tons of sugar, which gives me a terrible itchy scalp and is also shit for fertility. Will try hummous and greek yoghurt.

I mix chia seeds with Greek yogurt then put nuts and sunflower seeds on top with strawberries blueberries and raspberries. Sometimes a banana too but not ones that are too ripe.
I have a lot of protein too and have been eating more eggs, chicken and tons of fish especially salmon
I've found that snacking more has helped as if I let myself get hungry I lose weight

Shameless bump for my last post

Has anyone got any advice for coping with this? I'd really appreciate it.

banana thanks that's good to hear, yes I was on the long protocol before and they said I was a poor responder. I don't know if I have low ovarian reserve as I asked this of my Dr but he just said something like 'it's about what we'd expect for your age' (I'm 40, so I guess it is fairly low).

TapDancing sorry I can't really help with your question about whether Drs can tell if the endo affected your IVF result - although a friend of mine with severe endo (underwent multiple surgeries over the years) had twins at the 3rd time of trying IVF. Anyway bumping so someone else more knowledgeable can help...

tap argh I’m so sorry to have missed replying to you

So sorry for your BFN, gutted for you

I don’t have endo myself, but my consultant literally wrote the book on endo (well one of the major textbooks on endo) - he doesn’t recommend starting a cycle until after a therapeutic lap, to treat endo and optimise the uterine environment before putting anything back

I know that other endo sufferers have also done well on a long prostap protocol, with 3 months of down regging to calm the endo before starting stims

So I don’t know about whether they can tell whether the endo is why the cycle failed, but it could certainly have played a factor, and there may be interventions and different approaches to consider

I don’t know what your infertility diagnosis is, but my Dr has said he has seen lots of women come to him with endo, he’s done a lap and treated the endo, and once everything has been cleaned out, many go on to conceive naturally

Apols if you’ve already done all this, but that’s about the limit of my endo knowledge

xx

Thanks for the replies 😊

Yes, Banana unfortunately that's all been done 😥 Lap' last May, down-reg with Prostap for 7 months then straight onto IVF.

I know there can be links to endo even after treatment, immunology problems, fluid in tubes etc. I really hope they're able to identify the problem. I honestly don't even think I could go through it again, my world is just dark and depressing now 😥

Argh bugger tap, I assumed that was prob the case as no decent clinic would just chuck you onto a cycle without addressing the issues

Well, I can recommend my consultant if you want to see an endo specialist who does IVF, or even just for a second opinion.

It's so gutting to just be back on the merry go round

I got my sodding clearblue fertility monitor out - opened it up to it blaring out 'PREGNANT'

I reset the fucker. Back to pissing on sticks until we cycle again, oh joy and rapture

Hoping for that 'you're more fertile after a miscarriage' thing to kick in and get magically upduffed before starting our next round. Urgh.

Thank you

Can any one tell me if following a frozen transfer if it failed do you still get your Af or will it only come after stopping oestrogen and progesterone ?? Mine has not shown yet I'm due to test on Friday. X

It's unusual to get a full AF if you're on progesterone

Normally it won't come until you stop

Some women do bleed before OTD but usually the progesterone holds AF away

No difference really between a fresh or frozen cycle in that regard.

So not getting my Af could still mean it's failed. That sucks. My fresh cycle was a chemical pregnancy I got my period before stopping the meds that's why I asked. Just really want this to have worked. Driving me crazy. I know when I tested over the weekend it was 2 early.

There's a clinic over here (NI) offering a 100% money back guarantee (sounds awful in relation to babies!) but basically you pay £8800 up front (if under 37) and you get three fresh cycles and free subsequent FETs, if at the end you don't have a baby you get the full fee returned.

Seems too good to be true but I think that's our next step. Just to scrape together £8k now 🤔

tap I have endo as well as pcos, I also have areas where the endometrium grows into the uterine wall so a whole host of things. My failures were due to embryo quality and thyroid issues we think

I've had operations in the past but the endo always came back. I particularly suffer with horrific pain each month when I have af going to the toilet. It's crippling. I worried that it may affect the IVF somehow but the failures I've had don't seem to have anything to do with it.

H2016 after my failed cycle af arrived two days after stopping the cyclogest

H2016 lovely to hear from you. You were definitely too early to test last weekend but it sounds like you haven't again which is good. So sorry you feel low at the moment - like me you are probably terrible with uncertainty. The uncertainty will be over soon.

Banana what a week you have had. I am so sorry for the way communications have been managed. You must have gone cold to read those words, and of course they should offer you different levels of detail like that. I also so understand the physical and emotional relief to start bleeding. It must be a critical part of the actual process to allow the realisation sink in that this pregnancy is not to be, and to see a road ahead. I wish you all the best for this part to conclude smoothly and without pain.

Ellbob I am having my first egg collection (to freeze all) tomorrow morning (Wednesday) on the short antagonist cycle (Gonal F and Cetrotide), same as bananafish's I believe. She knows far far far more about the all this than me but I have found the protocol really quite ok. Certainly very fast!! Only started injecting last Monday!

I shall let you know how I get on tomorrow but I am 40 with low AMH so it seemed to be the obvious cycle for me. As banana says - if they down regulate my ovaries they might never start then again!

AFM:

Shellster, Banana, and Waiting - to my rescue again - thank you all so much. I cannot tell you how valuable all your points are. Because what you say makes actual sense - not just positive noises - I believe you. It does make sense that the best quality eggs will mature fastest. And at least yesterday I had 6 follicles that were all at very similar, mature size.

Question: do follicles change much in the last two days after trigger injection etc? Even though my follicles looked good on Monday morning, is there a chance this picture could have changed negatively (or positively?) by tomorrow morning?

Thank you so much....it is so hard not to get wildly invested in all this (not just my story, all your stories too).

I am so exhausted today - I think my body has had enough of all this. Been only 9 days of injections but I have been on a very high dose of Gonal F and I feel and look pale and knackered. No specific terrible side effects just a feeling of being totally off colour.

I also managed to fall down some stairs today and bent my finger right back. It is now like a big fat blue sausage and looks awful. It is very painful, and not really what I wanted the day before egg collection!

Another question: do you think I could make all my ripe eggs pop out through such a fall, with and enormous shock and adrenalin rush? It was quite bad and I was very shaken up for a while afterwards....I know this sounds like a ludicrous question but I have been very wobbly all day that I have wrecked the whole thing.

Thank you again all!

And I have ordered my DHEA and CoQ10 now so if all goes badly this week I have a positive next step to take to prep for the next go in the summer!

I don't know how much follicles could grow between trigger and EC as I wasn't scanned again, o had huge amounts of follicles all varying sizes (prob 50+ follicles) and I got 16 eggs. My ec took about an hour as obviously they had to drain each follicle and they were such a wide range of sizes on the last scan of had so most had nothing in.

Yours sound very promising given that the sizes are so similar. Fingers crossed for you that it all goes well!

And in relation to your fall. I don't think it would have made any pop. Sounds like your finger is sore though :( hope it's better soon x

LH I don’t know how much my follies grew specifically from trigger, but my last scan was the day before trigger on both cycles, and both times my consultant said my ovaries had had ‘a productive weekend’ as some of the laggards appeared to have put their foot on the gas pedal

It doesn’t sound like any of them are in danger of over maturing, sounds like they’re at a terrific size where they are

And you absolutely can’t make your eggs pop out. The Cetrotide has blocked the pituitary. A fall isn’t going to make the Cetrotide suddenly inactive and your pituitary suddenly wake up and start pumping out LH, LH

tap is that through Access Fertility? A friend bought a multi cycle package, I think it’s an interesting set up and def one worth pursuing

It’s desperately ironic that I am now willing a BFN to appear, and finding BFPs painful, as it’s intuitively the wrong way round. But seeing the BFP come up so quickly shows my body is a way off un-pregnant-ing itself and the levels of hCG are definitely still very much hanging around…

LH good luck with your EC tomorrow, I'm glad it's a short protocol as the first time I seemed to be injecting for weeks. I haven't started the progynova yet - 8 days to go before I start. Had all the meds delivered today though...

LH, I do know that they like your eggs to be mature at the time of trigger rather than predicting their size for egg collection, because one you have the trigger then the chromosomes in the egg half in preparation for receiving half from the sperm. So it is the size at the time of trigger that is important. From what I have also read, during a natural cycle 14mm would be too small for a mature egg, but in an IVF cycle where you have bigger follicles as well, anything from 14mm and up can contain a mature egg. And that seems to fit with banana's and my experience. I guess not too long now and you will know yourself how many you get... can't wait to hear. I guess no harm to have the CoQ10 and DHEA either way as even if all goes well and you get to freeze stage, it makes sense as your Dr suggests that if you are going to go through the process of another IVF cycle anyway to do a transfer, that you may as well make it a fresh cycle and do another egg collection before your transfer to up your chances of success with more eggs in your basket (well, in the freezer!).

Good luck today lh

Thank you and good morning banana! Here at the Lister in my special disposable pants.

Firstly thought you all might like to see what I did to my finger yesterday. A big purple throbbing THING...quite rude looking.

Just had a good chat with Marie Wren the deputy director here. She is excellent.

The plan is that we are going to freeze ALL fertilised eggs at the one cell stage tomorrow, whatever they look like. The thinking behind this is that if we wait to blastocyst stage, and say we get one but it is only average looking, then average blasts do not survive thaw well. However if we freeze all tomorrow (likely to be few as we know as only 6 follicles anyway), then when it comes time for transfer we will thaw them all, grow them at that stage, and the best performer or two will be put back.

This makes sense to me - happy with that and means I don't sweat through Easter (or suffer now knowing that none have developed).

I asked if her plan would be different if I had double the mature follicles - she said absolutely not. Whenever she is not doing a fresh transfer this is always her approach. The growing now rather than later is only relevant when a fresh transfer is also happening.

We also discussed under what conditions I should do another fresh round to maximise my chances earlier rather than later. She said if we have an embryo to put back in the summer I should definitely try that first as if it doesn't stick I can start stimming immediately afterwards the day that period starts signalling it hasn't worked. So that is reassuring - I wouldn't lose a lot of time in that instance.

Waiting now....with my big purple finger.

And we got 5 eggs! Feel pretty good about that!

Amazing! The famous five!!

Hoping for a fab fert rate so you can get them on ice asap, chilling out for you after your wedding

Rest up while your eggs have a hot date with your DP's sperm in the love lab