Failure stories

[BipBippadotta]

I'm far past the point where I'm interested in fertility success stories. Tales of lucky couples who triumphed over impossible biological odds to have their miracle baby make me want to self-immolate. Help me feel less alone in my utter irreversible barrenness by telling me about all the fertility treatments, supplements, folk remedies, voodoo, etc you've tried, that work for every other fucker on the Internet, but did bugger all for you.

I'll start!

Things that didn't work for us:
Grapefruit juice
Guaifeneisin
COQ10
Acupuncture
Vitamin E
Royal jelly
Wheatgrass
Pycnogenol
Low carbing
Inositol & melatonin
Cutting caffeine and alcohol
L-Arginine
Baby aspirin
Maca
B6
Starflower oil
Soy isoflavones
Clomid for DH (to increase sperm count)
Clomid for me
Clomid & injectables
High doses of antibiotics
Prednisone
IVF with ICSI

Ha, yes! I got the miracle bfp just before IVF! So pleased with myself. Then I miscarried at 9 weeks. Then I miscarried after IVF as well.

I never thought I would have tried all these ridiculous things - I kept thinking, women in refugee camps have babies, and I'm sure they're not having acupuncture & eating high protein diets & being serene and mindful all day long. But eventually I began to feel so ashamed that I wasn't trying everything - there's a peer pressure element to it. People think you don't want it enough if you're not subsisting on protein balls and spirulina. Once I gave up the hardcore supplement regime I actually felt guilty for not feeling guilty.

I think my worst nightmare is managing to have a baby after everything and still feeling driven to go through all this bollocks again to have another one, so I think I can grasp the pain of secondary infertility. IME the desire for a child can easily override your gratitude about all the good things you already have. Though I will admit being driven to rage by the thread by the woman who was so disappointed not to be able to have a 4th baby, after conceiving her first 3 so easily.

Someone I know posted something on Facebook about how sad she was that her third child was the last baby she would ever have, which got my hackles up. She doesn't know me that well so has no idea about how traumatic infertility is and she wouldn't have imagined she was upsetting anyone. She had three under three, as planned, so clearly fell pregnant quickly and easily. With my first being the last baby I will ever have I didn't feel sorry for her.

Again please, please know that I understand that having just one baby seems an impossible dream for so many of you and how much pain you are going through.

Oh, and I get the off kilter arguments and fights you end up having with your DP while you're suffering infertility / going through IVF. My DH once accused me of only staying with him because I wanted a baby. I pointed out that as I had no known fertility issues I could probably go out and get pregnant by almost any man I met in the street. So the fact that I was going through everything I was going through in order to have a baby with him was proof of how much he meant to me. He admitted he hadn't thought about it like that.

Love this thread - is it terrible that I’m picking up ideas for ‘things to try’?

What we’ve tried over the last 3 years and have unexplained fertility:

Charting, temps, OPKs
BDing during EWCM days
EMS plan
Not charting and just relaxing, ‘not thinking about it’
Blood tests every few months to try and diagnose something, anything that could explain the infertility
Conceive plus
having sex in the 3 days preceding ovulation
Acupuncture
Guanefsin (cough syrup)
Low carbing
Drinking decaf tea
Fertility Yoga
Castor Oil packs
Clomid
HSG
Sticking viagra pellets up my nether
Progesterone cream

Supplements and food:
maca
gingko biloba
garlic
coQ10
Royal Jelly and propolis
Expensive Zita West supplements for me and DH
Vit C
Baby aspirin
Vit B complex
Agnis Castus
Raspberry leaf tea
Ginger tea
Green tea
Brazil nuts
Pumpkin seeds
Fig
Dates
Eggs
Pomegranate juice

We had our one and only round of ICSI in 2000 so maybe the procedure has changed but for some reason t was decided that I would take all the drugs etc and that dH would have his TESA done the day before the egg collection. I don't know why they did it this day rather than try the TESA and freeze the sperm.

Anyway, I did the whole drugs, injections, scans etc and was in the clinic, robed up waiting for the egg collection to take place when the Doc came in a told us that they hadn't collected any sperm in the TESA.

We had to just go home and Poor DH was in so much pain.

However it was the best thing to happen because although it was brutal, it was the end and we had to give up the thoughts of ever having a child biologically.
We put all our energies into adoption and we have 2 children now.

Oh my God, Gab that sounds horrible. What a wasteful, painful fuck up. Insult & injury all at once.

I'm pleased you had your family in the end though. I do like to hear the success stories that involve people getting off the IVF treadmill and having a happy family life without a pregnancy.

Re: various fertility teas. Have just remembered that I went through a phase of being convinced I must have PCOS even though I have no symptoms, and there has never been anything in my hormone profile or on the ultrasound to suggest this might be the case. I read somewhere on the internet that drinking gallons of spearmint tea would help with PCOS, so I bulk-bought several boxes. Which are still stinking out the cupboard. Because - surprise surprise! - they did nothing.

Wooty how'd your hysteroscopy go?

Gabs how hard is adoption? In trying to convince DH we should consider it.

DH and I've been out drinking tonight. He has reminded me that I also...
Put on almost 2 stone (am naturally slim) in the hopes it would make me ovulate. No luck.
Gave up nearly all exercise, same hope. Nope.
Hugged any pg woman or newborn as apparently that makes you more fertile. Something about the hormones. Nope.
Sought out fertility statues/fountains to touch/drink from.
Went to an aromatherapy fertility workshop.

It looks so bad listed in black and white!

Thank you ladies so much for this thread! 2 + years of TTC, currently waiting on husbands TESE result to see whether we can continue on to ICSI. Hubby in so much pain right now, and we don't even know it it's worth it. These lists feel so familiar, diet, no diet, alcohol, no alcohol, timing sex, relaxed not thinking about yet (yeah, like that's possible!), holidays, working out, yoga, green juice (yuck) and of course, lighting of candles, incense at random God-ly sites while being atheist!
Nice to know I'm not the only one!

This is possibly one of my favourite threads of all time

I'm officially laying this month's FET woo to bed, as cycle has been an unadulterated washout, so all my 'someone on the Internet said this turned their lining from tissue paper into a mattress ' woo suggestions did absolutely fuck all

Obviously now we are trying plan Q or R (fuck knows where we are up to, plan A,B, C are long gone) I am still going to carry on the woo as a form of emotional blackmail. I'm such a dick

(Although I am still not steaming my yoni vagina. I'm too busy shoving viagra up there in any case...)

How hard is adoption?

Well in a nutshell it is very hard. We are in Ireland so the process is a bit different here but It's long and intrusive and stressful and parenting an adopted child is parenting plus. Often there are challenges and issues arising from their early years
However it's been the best thing we've ever done. We have had some amazing experiences and met some great people and made really good friends and obviously our kids are wonderful.
Do look into it. The adoption board here is a good place to start.

I'm loving this thread and being reminded of things I'd forgotten too. Yes to lighting candles and touching fertility statues/phallic symbols at every opportunity. Despite being an atheist I also prayed nightly for a while, on my knees by my bed. Until I got a grip (hey it worked for a 47 year old after years of infertility. The internet said so).

Lol at the sock choosing Zippy that really appeals to me. I too put on weight Robberbride just to be in the bmi of most ivf success. Less bony, more mumsy was my thinking. Didn't work.

I also really really want to cuddle a baby for the day! Apparently this worked for Iman, Bowie's wife, after years of infertility. (I will leave no stone unturned in my quest for ridiculous infertility cures, ha). Unfortunately I get all weird around babies, like I'm worried my barren beacon will start flashing if I get too close to them.

Onto the stranger things I haven't heard of....eh Tiger steaming your vagina with herbs hey?? Me and DH had a good belly laugh at that one and Bip a fucking sperm microscope?? What utter genius!! DH was straight on Amazon when I told him

The hysteroscopy went ok Bip, thank you for asking. I made it to the Czech Republic, had a GA and didn't die. Hurrah. The only thing mentioned was a tight cervix which had to be dilated. So what does a crazy infertile do when her impenetrable cervix has been cranked open? Yes, go against post operative advice and have sex! I'm a slave to a clearblue smiley face

Oh, man, Banana - so sorry about FET washout. Why are some problems so intractable? Why can't doctors figure this shit out yet? Very glad you're still resisting the vag-steaming, though - it's a sign that the bastards haven't got you down yet.

Wooty I'm so pleased the hysteroscopy went well. I have done the post-cervical dilation shagging in the hope that a couple hundred thousand more make it to the tubes. (Yes, at one point I did a rough calculation of how many sperm can pass through a cervix dilated to x, y or z mm diameter and reckoned it would totally increase my chances). And isn't it weird how it can be nice to get away, even if it involves having teams of strangers rootling around in your nethers.

Re: putting on weight - this was the only upside of having baby weight lingering around after the stillbirth. I'd expanded exponentially in pregnancy; everyone assured me it would all come off again quickly when I was breastfeeding... obviously that never happened. So for a couple of months after the birth I was about 3 sizes larger - but the ideal fertility bmi, as it happens! And I did get pregnant during that time - but miscarried. Of course.

I only drank full-fat milk - that was another thing that didn't work. Pint of milk a day during stims: also didn't work.

Did anyone else inject actual raw egg whites up their parts, having heard that's the closest thing to EWCM and far better than Pre-Seed? I remember one desolate weekend away when we drove all around rural Yorkshire at midnight looking for a supermarket that was still open so we could buy an egg because I'd had a positive OPK.

Here's another one - has anyone else got really hung up on the idea that you're more likely to conceive if you have simultaneous orgasms? I'm sure some barren-hating sadist put this on the internet for kicks, to ruin whatever is left of the spontaneity in our sex lives after years of ttc.

Bip and Wooty your posts have made me cry with laughter. Love the egg white one. I'm not trying that one, it might put DH off forever.

Banana can I ask a stupid question? Have you ever taken norethisterone? I have to take it as provera doesn't work for me. Anyway, my stupid lining would never thicken up til after I induced a bleed with norethisterone followed by long protocol clomid (unusual in the UK, common treatment in US). I had a post clomid bleed and since then, my lining seems to have remembered what to do. I know you've got a fab dr and everyone is different, but didn't know if it was worth a bash? Cheap at least.

Ah yes, the orgasm ordering. I read the ideal order is him then you within the next 45 seconds (if, ahem, natural) or second choice option of him then you within 20 minutes. I won't go into details of how we've achieved this but it was just one extra unromantic bit of stress.

Gabs thank you. I've told DH if we've not conceived in another year I want us to seriously look at it.

bip I see you looking at the swimmers under the microscope, and I raise you DH proudly showing the consultant the video of his swimmers. I was quietly dying of embarrassment. But, hey, at least only one of us two is broken

wooty my consultant told me he'd also jacked open my cervix a bit extra after my hysteroscopy, as apparently my cervix snapped shut very easily, and after retained products post ERPC, he wanted to make sure any bleeding could come out properly. (I don't think he used the exact terminology 'jacked open'). Still. Not sure whether to be proud or not of having a tight cervix.

I too put on weight to try and improve my fertility. Dr said he wouldn't start treatment until I'd got my BMI up to minimum of 18. The irony was that post pregnancy I now am a BMI of 19. So I had to put on weight to try and get pregnant, turned out all I needed to put on weight was to be pregnant

I did the full fat milk thing too. Because I loathe milk the only way I could get it down was to have it with nesquik like a child

I also tracked everything I ate during stims on MyFitnessPal as I'd read you needed at least 40-60g of protein a day. As well as eating shitloads of eggs for my eggs (as if chronic constipation from long term opioid therapy wasn't bad enough) I also bought some high protein ice cream called, I shit you not, 'Whey-hey'. I think adding that to my Ocado order was a new low

RE the orgasms thing, the 'upsuck theory' (that the contractions of orgasm make the cervix 'suck up' the swimmers) is apparently bollocks, but I read a fertility Dr say the likely reason women who have orgasms have higher pregnancy rates is that if they're having less crap sex they're probably shagging more often. Because as we all know. Shagging more often gets you a baby!! Oh no. Wait.

Thanks for the norethisterone tip Robber - my lining issues are pretty straightforward, it's an oestrogen thing for me. Years of the pill basically knackered my lining. So the oestrogen receptors in my lining ('antennae' as my Dr called them) were basically switched off. Dr said cumulative exposure to oestrogen would hopefully upregulate them and get the bastard to switch on. True enough that was indeed the case, as 2 months of progynova tablets while I was pregnant seemed to do exactly that. In my most recent fresh cycle in May my lining grew all by itself. To 11mm!!! The FET washout was not entirely unexpected. Dr said he's had some women who simply don't respond to artificial oestrogen on its own - there needs to be natural oestrogen in the mix too. Given my lining has responded in my fresh cycles, but didn't to the oestrogen pills or patches, that makes logical sense. Hence why we're stimming me - not to get the eggs, but to get the by product of the eggs, ie the oestrogen the follicles will produce. Feel pretty lucky to have a Dr that thinks outside the box. Obv having read most of the Internet on thin lining, see so many forum posts from women having FET after FET after FET cancelled because their lining hasn't responded. Many of whom say 'but my lining was great in my fresh cycle'. Yet their Drs just keep throwing more and more artificial oestrogen at them, when clearly it isn't working. And yet they know their lining thickens up when stimmed. Seems bloody obvious to me but apparently not. Anyway, I'm now back on the stims and hoping that ovaries like cantaloupes will thicken up the bastard lining

Even though I know fertility woo isn't going to make any difference, and if I get pregnant it's going to be down to science and luck, I'm obviously still booked in for acupuncture and mayan massage this week just in case

That's the awful thing about the woo - you can never get free of it, because even when it's thoroughly disproven, it just goes from being a positive superstition to a negative one. You start off wishing on stars and throwing coins in the fountain in a quest for good luck, and when that doesn't work, you resort to dodging ladders and black cats and cracks in the pavement, to fend off worse luck. You start by thinking acupuncture will definitely help you get pregnant, and once it's clear that it won't, you worry that if you stop acupuncture, you are throwing away your last chance. It stops being something extra you do to increase your chances and becomes the one symbolic thing standing between you and eternal barrenness. That's what it was like for me, at any rate.

Good luck with the stims. God it's so disheartening the number of points in the process where things can fuck up.

...so I guess I'm the only one with the egg whites, huh?

It's so hard with the woo, I think humans are by nature superstitious and have an inbuilt need to believe/trust in something other worldly which is very hard as an infertile atheist. wooty We have also bought fertility statues and used to light a candle in front of one every night (felt just about as useful as everything else we were doing) until a friend suggested we had joined some strange cult so we stopped. I also read the being around babies thing and I think I freaked out my friend by sniffing her newborn too much - I think she thought I might run off with him so I had to stop as I was too mortified to explain why I was doing it. Even more desperate measures - my dh had a thing about seeing a cat before arriving at the ivf clinic each day. And one day we walked past a homeless person and I said let's go back and give them our change and dh said 'is this so the ivf works?'
I also tried and failed at the my fitness pal thing bananafish and bip I really really seriously considered the egg white thing but couldn't quite bring myself to do it... never say never though! Did anyone use soft cups? That's on my list of desperate measures to try next...

I asked my Dr about the soft cups. And legs up the wall

He said it made absolutely no difference because the strongest swimmers were in the first ejaculate, and got through the cervix within seconds of ejaculation, and any, er, back flow, was seminal fluid. And that any swimmers hanging around in a soft cup weren't gonna be the strong ones who'd already be making their way up the side of the uterus

All that said DH still insisted on swinging me round by the ankles to lie with my legs up the wall even though the Dr had said it didn't make any difference: "in my head it does - gravity!'

I can't do that pose in yoga without thinking of soulless TTC shagging

The funniest was when he learned that the Fertility Friend app referred to sex on the chart as BD. Baby dancing my feckin' arse. Anyway, he'd hand me my phone proudly announcing 'BD!!' so I could update the chart.

The idea that you could get pregnant from sex seems such a crazy idea

I totted up in my head over three IVF cycles (in the last 9 months)
52 eggs
45 mature eggs
35 embryos
14 blastocysts
Of which a total of 7 were chromosomally normal (1 of which I miscarried)

I dunno how anyone has a baby! Although those twats on Jeremy Kyle seem to breed like rabbits

Maybe a crack addiction would do the trick....

Oh and I never tried the egg white but we did get stuck together with conceive plus, which ended up the texture of PVA glue. That was a highlight!

(bip you've summed up the woo perfectly. It's emotional blackmail. Because if I don't go, and it doesn't work, I'll look back and think 'well you could have tried harder'. I expected the second cycle to fail and then I could be released from all the acupuncture bollocks because I'd done it all and the cycle had failed, so wouldn't feel I had to do it next time. Except the cycle did work (even if the pregnancy didn't). So now I have to keep throwing money at the woo fairies...)

Crack addiction is the one thing I haven't yet tried as a potential fertility aid. Though I have often thought of it as a good alternative to IVF, in that it's a cheaper and presumably far more enjoyable way to wreck my marriage and waste my life.

I stopped the acupuncture when I couldn't face going back and telling my needlist that I'd miscarried again. I was fairly sure that if I did, she would want me to spend yet more money on revolting herbal mixtures (already £150 a month by that point), and have 2 needling sessions a week (£400 a month). And as far as I was concerned I needed that money for actual fertility drugs and scans and things. And I was sick of her inane fucking woo chat. And I'm fairly sure being taken for a mug increases stress levels, and as we all know, the only way to get pregnant is to avoid stress. So that was that.

But...I haven't conceived again since. Though to be fair it's only been 3.5 months. And nobody my age conceives in 3.5 months. Unless they're a crack addict on Jeremy Kyle.

PS - loving 'Whey-hey' & lucky IVF cats. Interesting about snap-shut cervixes. You know when you do various fertility woo-meditations, and they advise you to visualise your bits? Your uterus is welcoming your baby in a warm embrace, your vagina opens gently and easily in labour, like a dewy fragrant rose in a summer garden, etc? Well, because I've had the world and his wife elbow-deep in my reproductive tract so many times over the past 5 years, any time I think about my cervix I picture a calamari ring. Wide and sad and kind of baggy. And chewy.

Also, Banana just got my head around your stats. So many eggs! And such fucking shitty luck. I cannot imagine what a weird and tantalising and maddening thing it must be to know that you have the beginnings of 6 genetically healthy offspring in suspended animation. Total headfuck. Everything crossed that this time works out.

Bip I imagine my uterus like a field where the crop failed, and all the dead plants are rotting and turning into stinking compost. And until the field is ploughed and the old dead crop and soil churned up, so there's new healthy soil, the six little seedlings in the greenhouse can't be planted

I went for months and months without having had a clear out after the miscarriage, even after the cycle where I grew 11mm of lining I still didn't have a bleed. I was like 'where the hell does it GO?!' Apparently you can absorb it all

Because I haven't actually had a bleed since the miscarriage, I sort of feel like I haven't finished miscarrying, and that the soil is still all rotten. Even though I know all the tests showed it's all sorted itself out, even if it didn't come out.

If the scan shows we have a nice juicy lining I'll feel like maybe the soil is a bit better.

But last time the soil looked good, but turned out to be crap and couldn't nourish the nice healthy seedling,

So just waiting for the crop to fail again, as it were

Nothing like over labouring an analogy?!!!

Ha banana love how involved your dh is, lol over BD!
As for the strong swimmers all racing off through the cervix - I had read that when I looked into it before, but I worry that everything would have to be perfectly aligned (and open enough) for that to happen, maybe for fully fertile couples but I worry theres no racing off going on through my cervix. Anyway I can see that the swimmers having a pool party in a soft cup will be just as ineffective Impressive but frustrating egg/embryo stats, makes mine seem pathetic - 3 attempts, 5 eggs, 3 embryos, 1 bfn and I think 2 chemicals. Oh and 2 surgeries (in less than 6 months. I am all ready for a melt down). Fingers crossed you can get the soil sorted out and get those frosties back where they belong
Bip I'm imagining some woo fertility instructor teaching you to meditate on a polo mint cervix. I also stopped the acupuncture as it was getting embarrassing (hello, me again!), and also he kept telling me all my energies were in line and everything was perfect whilst I was getting more and more bad news diagnostically so it all started to feel a bit of a con. I did have lovely relaxing acupuncture around ET though
Just remembered another woo thing I tried that didn't work - I struggled through zita wests meditation cds and then found a different meditation one on youtube called fertility meditation through the chakras that seemed just about short enough for my attention span.
Ahh this thread is so therapeutic, admitting the depths to which we've sunk is probably better than counselling

"The idea that you could get pregnant from sex seems such a crazy idea".

Totally agree Banana. It seems completely ridiculous that all most people have to do is have a quick shag and they're pregnant. We could have sex every day, or even every hour, for the rest of eternity and I still wouldn't get pregnant.

Ahahahaha! Bloody hilarious all.

My personal fave has been the nightmare that is proseed lube and a moon cup, how that fits up there I have no idea but it did and it was gross!

I also fed hubby all sorts of pills including Chinese herbs of the internet, lol! And I have a half used bag in the freezer of frozen oysters and sea food, for...you know!

And finally having a surgeon slice open hubbys Bollocks and remove the sperm making tubes to look for sperm under a microscope......only to find none! Not one!

Fucking awesome 2 years, good times. Am now reading Jody Day's book on dealing with being childless and can honestly recommend it to gain a bit of sanity. Thanks for the laughs all :)

I love this thread!

Let me see...

Inositol
Agnus Castus (or momething like that)
Preseed
All the OPK in the world

6 months of Clomid
2 IUI, the second one resulting in a chemical pregnancy
IVF, 3 embryios, one in, didn't catch. 2 in the freezer

While waiting 2 cycles for the FET I fall pregnant naturally for the first time in my life (9 months after the chemical preganancy, rainbow baby blah blah bla?)
We found out 3 days before our wedding, ends up in an ectopic pregnancy diagnosed during our honeymoon.

I guess I should be thankful it didn't end up in rupture and they were able to treat it with methotrexate, but now my fertility center says I have to wait 6 months to try to get pregnant again I'm sorry, but I don't feel thankful!