The mind numbing boredom of infertility II

[PotatoesPastaAndBread]

This is a thread for peole who really want to get pregnant but can't, who have tried pretty much everything, and are really fucked off about it.

Have you ever nearly punched someone for advising you to "relax", "go on holiday" or "just get drunk - that's what we did"? Well then this is the thread for you.

You won't find much sentimentality here and there's no baby dust, but there is empathy, a lot of swearing and a surpirsing amount of glittery dog shit.

Link to the original thread
original thread

That story terrifies me right now. I can't not be a mum. I can't. X

inthis I am really sorry to read about your Mum. I have no words that will make you feel better. Just hope you have people in RL who can give you a lot of love and support at this difficult time.
Please pop back in and rant away if it helps you xxx

laura how did I miss your post!! Double trouble for you!! Hope everything continues as it is. Keep us posted X
icy your glass of processo made my mouth water. R you sick of herbal tea? I know I fucking am! We are being funded for 2 cycles so we may consider taking part in the trial if this 1st attempt is a fail.
grumpel you must be so fed up thinking about how far you would of been by know. It's all just shit!

Hello to all the lovely ladies who de-lurked to show their still out there rooting for us.

Hope the week a head goes easy on all of us. The sunshine really does help things.

Haha pebbles tbh no not really. I think before all this I was problem drinking (almost every day, would regret it sort of). A couple of years ago I cut back but really I don't like myself after drinking. I enjoy having wine and don't necessarily drink too much and I generally have an off switch. However the next day even after 1 or 2 glasses I get The Fear bad, and hate myself. Must be the toxins in my system fucking with my brain. So I prefer sober icy. We popped in to see friends post BBQ lunch; about 8 people there all swilling rose. Really didn't want any, was more than happy with my coffee tea and water! The friends had a new puppy and I basically fell in love. WANT!

Scan 2 first thing tomorrow. Still working towards EC on Friday. Dreading taking a sick day, I find lying to work so stressful. I go way OTT and overheard a load of made up details. Once I lied about having food poisoning with my killer detail being "I got sick in my hair and felt too ill to wash it so I just tied my hair up and went back to bed". That's never happened.

Overshare not overheard

p.s icy I forgot to mention earlier my DH is after a Golf Mark 1 he's always banging on about how he's going to buy one and do it up.
I agree about the booze, it's basically a drug. Makes you feel like crap the next day, but delicious at the time. If I was still drinking I would have blabbed my gob off to all my friends about how barren and miserable I actually am.
Hope you can beat your food poisoning lie for Friday, that's a bloody good fib

Lining up to 8 and about 16 follicles between 8-12. What do they need to be by Friday? 18+? Is that achievable?

Hate this.

Icy round about 18 is what my clinic liked. If they don't have a good number of follicles as big as they need to be by Friday they may give you an extra day or 2 of stims, or have you coast until Monday. Mine were slow growing and they ended up doing EC 2 days later than planned. Might be worth asking them if they think this is likely so you don't get your food poisoning prematurely.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3580084/First-baby-born-UK-thanks-IVF-screening-breakthrough-New-method-allows-doctors-select-healthy-embryo-sparing-couples-agony-repeated-attempts.html

Dammit, doing IVF 6 months too early 😡

bip hey - yes I'll ask later when they call to confirm Menopur dosage.

Hey fiends

Hope you all enjoyed some sunshine and the stabbers are stabbing well

icy that sounds like a bloody load of follies - general consensus seems to be that an excellent crop is around 8-15 eggs, although obv it’s all academic as it only takes one good embryo ’n’ all that

Oh and ignore that Daily Mail article. All it’s referencing is a new type of genetic testing - it’s not as groundbreaking as it/s making out.

We already have the ability to do genetic screening (PGS - pre implantation genetic screening) to identify which embryos are chromosomally normal - this is just a new technique.

We’re aiming to do PGS for this next round, so we’re looking to do exactly what these guys did, it’s just a different kind of magic sciencey lab technique

laura congrats!

inthis so sorry to hear about your mum. I remember thinking much the same when I lost my mum 3.5 years ago - broke my heart knowing she’d never see her children get married or become a grandmother. I find times like Mother’s Day especially shit as it’s like, ok so I don’t have a Mum and there’s a good chance I’ll never become a Mum myself. You are very much not alone. Much love and strength xxx

Pebbles as you have PCOS it is very very very likely you would need to have a freeze-all cycle and transfer in a FET anyway - I would deffo consider the FET trial if possible.

AFM, I had the hysteroscopy went well, bloods last week showed although my hCG is still very much not yet zero (even 7 weeks post miscarriage and after 2 operations), my system has apparently got bored with waiting and decided to kick back into gear. Hilariously, I was simultaneously both a little bit pregnant AND about to ovulate!!

Going back on Weds for more bloods & scans - depending on how things look, will hopefully start stimming in the next couple of weeks!

icy glad your appointment went ok.

Mine was also fine. Lining great, follicles were also a decent size 'a few' above 1.6cm (no exact figure mentioned and i didnt ask as don't want to be disappointed in the day) so EC planned for Thursday.
Shitting it now.
I was talking to a women in the waiting room she told me she's got about 40 follicles at the moment ( that proper put me on a downer!) my handful v's her lorry load!

Karla more isn't better - you don't want quantity at the expense of quality

With 40 follies she's v likely at risk of OHSS, lots of immature eggs and potentially poor quality embryos. Girl on another forum I'm on got 29 eggs but 2 blasts. Quality over quantity every time

Fucking hell, FORTY follies? Good lord. Agree with Dr banana, not one to envy, karla!
For context, I had 8 extracted on fairly low-dose stimms and was still waddling very gently around before EC feeling like my ovaries were dragging on the ground! That poor lady must be feeling rough.
Good luck for Thurs- fx you'll get a good number of high quality bad boys.

Nice work too, icy. 16 with potential is great.

Hooray for getting things sorted, banana. Finally! Let us know how you get on on Weds.

GS to all.

Oooh 40 sounds awful. They can't all be "full sized" surely?! They should be halving the stimms at that rate surely?!

The nurses at the Nuffield told me about some woman 10 years ago who grew 50. Mad. When I went in for my implications there was actually a woman in the hospital for OHSS. Dreadful.

Seriously hoping mine ripen in time for Friday. Friend of mine said 2 or 3 of hers went to 20+ which was over mature?

This is such a shit field to become knowledgable in. Fuckity fuck.

My other issue is weight loss. I'm on high protein low carb due to pcos, following a type 2 diabetes type programme. I've lost half a stone and (depending on whether I'm 5'8" or 5'9" - can't remember) am pushing into underweight. I don't know what's worse, carbs or being too thin?

De lurking - I have been following you lot and am in awe of your strength and humour (and ability to string a coherent sentence together, and lack of fucking baby dust etcetc) in the face of some pretty shitty things. Have not posted before as have had a fairly "easy" ride so far via an all-encompassing US insurance policy that allowed me to go from coming off the pill to pregnancy via a FET of a PGS-tested embryo in just over a year. Currently 6 weeks upduffed and shitting myself that I'm carrying around a dead sack of cells rather than a growing baby.

ANYWAY, just wanted to give you my tale of woe from the frontline - I was one of those egg factory women who had 37 eggs from 37 follies at EC, and it was fucking horrendous. (I have severe PCOS and was on a v v low dose of stims, I ended up stimming for 20 days to avoid overstimulation.) I was so sick, and felt like one of those nursing pigs you see walking around with their teats dragging on the floor. Could barely move by EC and had to take a week off after to recover (didn't do a fresh transfer as the risk of proper hospital OHSS was too high). So icy feel good about your 18 - that is pretty much the perfect number!

Good luck to everyone, I am willing you on to success and might come back if I have bad news at my scan next week as no doubt then it'll be 2 months of drawn out, soul destroying miscarriage management

Thanks banana I think I new that deep down but just feeling greedy! Thought a few extra follies wouldn't hurt. I hope your plodding on ok with your cycle- good luck for Wednesday.

Hey to everyone else.

Sorry meant karla and icy. You don't want to be a follie machine!

Hooray! Baby bomb number 20 - yes, fucking 20- of the year achieved!
Ok, I'm exaggerating, to be strictly accurate a couple of them announced their pregnancies in Nov and Dec 2015.

This is the thing I find the hardest by far. Stabbing? Fine. Having my ovaries raided under anaesthetic? Fine. Spending loads of money on frankly some quite unfun things for no guaranteed return? Fine. MC? Ok, not fine. But I've sobbed just as hard about the baby bombs as for the mc both pre and since. I am evilly bitter and jealous and frankly just disbelieving as to how easy it seems every single other person I am acquainted with finds it.

I have one non-pg friend left who has a two year old already and I am terrified to look her in the eye in case she tells me she's up the duff too as per the life plans they've made for an ideal sibling gap.
It. Is. Fucking. Relentless.

Grumpel - I feel your pain, I really do. The worst thing is I just expect it now. It's never a surprise and I'm suspicious of EVERYONE!
Not drinking = pregnant, doctors appointment = pregnant, well done steak at dinner = pregnant or insane .... You see where I'm going here.
Thank god for you lot! X

in this I'm so sorry to hear about your mum. Thinking of you in the coming weeks.

So shit gets REAL this week! Egg collections, transfers etc. Good luck all!

Oh and icy my clinic told be "two units of alcohol a week counts as not drinking" because it's so little. So no worries about a bit if prosecco.

Good morning

I hope the sun is shining with you all today.

Soooooo, I would like someone to terrify/reassure me.

Had hospital Friday. We are good to go. So dummy transfer will be about 31st May, injections from 9th June(ish). Can someone please be brutally honest re pain level for dummy, removal and transfer. I have an old thread somewhere about my failings at HSG. Long story short, they got the shit into me and i collapsed and ended up in A&E. It took me about 2 hours before i could stop throwing up. There appears to be some gland/nerve which they touched and it was quite frankly the most horrendous experience of my life. Dull pain, not a problem. This was like someone was piercing through a nerve ending.

I am geared up for the process but these three parts are making me want to be sick. I had a smear 2 weeks ago and nearly cowped. Not because it was sore, just because I seemed to think it might be.

They have said gas and air for dummy, sedation for removal and see how we go for transfer.......HELP.

What is it really like. Am i going to manage? The stupid thing is I am quite tough (ha) normally. Well you know, never off sick, hurtled around on crutches with a broken foot doing court every day. Made my dad drive me into work when i could not even stand up with sciatica. But that pain was not even close.

GS to all.

Barren fiends, morning!

grumple oh man it must be awful being surrounded by people who make it so easy. I don't have so much if it (as my friends aren't at this stage yet, OH friends all nearly 50 so past it, all male workplace etc). 20 in 6 months ffs though. It's just rubbing salt in the wound. And it's so immediate. All of OHfriends have kids (no one seems to have had to resort to fucking IVF the bastard cunts), much less offensive to talk about teenagers than having babies handed round and smug women simpering away. Just ugh. Just try to remember that it's not a reflection of you - although it's impossible not to feel like a fucking pathetic failure at times, you're not. Hugs and strength concealed in a glittery shit to you.

potatoes haha thanks for that, feeling v virtuous again 😇.... No excuses to say no then, eh 🍾. Tbh it's the approach I was taking anyway, drinking less than a handful of units on rare occasions can't do anything surely. I had half a glass of fizz last Thursday at some engagement drinks, which I'd forgotten about, so little does it count! Then I switched to soda water & glad I did; funny going out with drinkers and seeing properly what booze does to the conversation. Normally it's me slurring away! More food for thought.

banana did the clinic say anything about how often it happens after mc that people can be both "pregnant" and ovulating? Why the fuck is the collective knowledge about MC so bloody scant?! will you need to downreg or can to go straight to stimming?

Had a shag last night. Could feel it pushing against right ovary and this AM feeling both pushing against stomach. No different to a normal cycle tbh, this whole process is highlighting how fucked my pcos ravaged ovaries are! Swelling up to orange size every month, good god.

Right, getting on a tube. Glitter shit to all and also the lurkios!

Got a baby bomb via fb this morning from a colleague who only got married in the autumn. Luckily there was an office birthday yesterday so plenty of leftover cake to ease the news... Crossing everything for those growing follicles at present.

Fourpaws - will your clinic sedate you? Mine did for an extra fee (£200). I think if you've had a previous shit experience & could find it traumatic it might be worth considering. Good luck.

Ugh fucking baby bombs. My cousin who was pregnant at the same time as me (pregnancy before last) had her baby 2 weeks ago. Found out this morning when my mother let it slip by accident, having been too scared to tell me at the time. My job involves working with writers, and the manuscript I'm reading at the moment has gone on for 150 pages about the miracle of motherhood and how women who don't have children can never know the true meaning of life. Feeling frantic with rage & sick with the effort of not crying. And somehow need to make nicey nicey with this fucking novelist. Ugh.

Oh fuck me, bip do you have a colleague you can fob it off onto who knows and can be sympathetic? Or could you shame the novelist? When you see/talk to her bring it up? Make her feel really really uncomfortable by explaining all the shit you've dealt with and been through and suggest that in your professional opinion she's alienating all non-mothers, half of the reviewers don't have and don't like kids, and as such her book won't sell so best cut all that crap. Fucking cunt bitch. Seething for you.

Sadly this author is mine & mine alone. It's better now, though. I'm near the end of the story & the main character is done having her babies and they've grown into adults who hate her. Hurrah.

Willing all your follicles to grow, fiends. InThis I'm hoping you're OK out there.