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

bip I'm whispering congrats. No hopes are being raised. Yet. No advice. What could possibly help? But good luck.

AFM today I calculated today that (if you exclude the six months of ivf/miscarriage) I've had sex for FORTY consecutive cycles and failed to EVER get pregnant. Not ever a second line. Not once.

Are we doing it wrong?

Front hole, right?

Potatoes right. Although always good to check, I had a newbie nurse on my last menopur cycle and she nearly tried the dildocam on the wrong one. I requested a new nurse after that!

at wrong entrance dildocam! Oh my GOD.

Potatoes it is so, so confusing and frustrating not to get a positive test, and not to know at which stage of the process things are getting stuck. It's all such an opaque and incomprehensible process. 40 cycles. Jesus.

Thinking of you bip

Hope you're recovering owls, and not feeling too crap post lap

OMG at "wrong hole"

I looked at my Kindara chart and I'm only on day 28 and I have had 7 dates with dildocam this cycle

Never mind it buying me dinner. I seem to lavish hundreds of pounds on the bastard

My consultant uses this blue lube for dildocam - nearly shat myself the first time when I wiped myself down and saw this blue jelly.

Nothing like a little frisson of excitement

Saw the Dr yesterday (ah dildocam be still my beating heart) and cos we are obviously really optimistic about my body being uncharacteristically cooperative, we are assuming that I won't get a proper period, and we've already scheduled the hysteroscopy for 31st Aug, when I'll also have an IUD put in. If there's any scarring Dr will remove adhesions with microscissors. Which just makes me think of Lilliputian garden shears .

Obvs if I were to get an actual bleed when my period rocks up next week, we'll start stims instead of HRT.

Hahaha. Like THAT'S going to happen!!

Thanks to another MN poster, I've tracked down a pharmacy in the UK that will make up vaginal viagra pessaries. Consultant said he would get his secretary on the case to try and order them in. Fuck knows what these specially made boner pill fanjo bullets are gonna cost. That you have to insert a whopping four times a day.

I did fess up to having already tried oral viagra and having pretended to be a bloke with a limp dick to get the pills. Think it sort of says it all that my consultant didn't even roll his eyes or think this anything out of the ordinary for me.

I also shoved a wodge of medical papers in front of him for another relatively experimental treatment for estrogen resistant thin lining. He agreed that as long as my other consultants were happy there were no interactions with my other medications, that we could add it in.

I joked that he was now allowed to come round to my house and sever our Internet connection He was so lovely - said if he was in my shoes he would be doing exactly the same as me, and we should do everything we could to try and get this to work

The thought that I'm going to be on contraception when my due date rolls around in early October is too depressing for words.

The irony is not lost on me that I spent 2.5 years working with the department of health on the national teen pregnancy and sexual health strategy. Funnily enough, the coil being used as part of fertility treatment never came up....

Banana I'm so glad you've got a consultant who doesn't feel threatened by your far superior medical expertise! He sounds brilliant. As do you. Enjoy your special time with the dildocam.

I am staring into the fridge at a bag full of drugs we got in June when we went to Serum, trying to remember what they said I should start taking in the event of a pregnancy. I wasn't listening because it didn't seem likely to be relevant. Looks like I have some Clexane and Prednisolone, but I can't find the bit of paper she gave me with dosages. And they're closed for all of August. Probably best not to improvise my own random cocktail of steroids and blood thinners. Oh well. Auto-immune stuff and blood clotting were never my particular issues, just shitty eggs - any further miscarriage will be the result of chromosomal manglement and can't really be prevented. Just letting it all wash over me passively, with moments of terror at the thought of what new fucking disaster will befall us this time.

Bip, email Serum they may well reply - I emailed them last week and they replied the next day. I hope this one sticks.

Deffo email Serum and see if you get a response

Not that I'm advocating self medication, but my dosages will be (for no known issues, prescribed empirically for belt and braces) 20mg clexane daily, 20mg prednisolone once daily. FYI.

Really hoping this one sticks xx

Bip I'm not sure how I missed your news, but tentative finger crossing and whispered congrats. Serum's website does say they will answer urgent emails.

To be fair to my newbie nurse, she did say (after realising she was going in the wrong direction by my outraged yelp) that apparently all women have differently spaced undercarriages. Which makes me think of the motorway sign 'stay two chevrons behind the car in front'.

Thanks, Banana. Tentatively popping my roids & hoping they might also clear up the massive explosion of eczema all over my face, brought on by stress of house move & the promise of some as yet unknown form of reproductive tragedy.

Variation in undercarriage spacing is a new one on me...! I bet (/hope) that nurse was mortified.

Apparently undercarriage spacing (or lack of) is why some women are prone to thrush and/or cystitis. That was her reasoning anyway, and she was sticking to it!

I can totally buy the variation in undercarriage spacing affecting likelihood of infections. I can't buy the nurse not bring able to get the right hole!

It is the easiest one to get. You'd hope.

I did have to laugh however when one of my medic friends was doing a urology rotation when they were first qualified. She had to put in a urinary catheter and after getting increasingly hot and bothered had to get her senior and admit she was having trouble finding the urethra, and she'd spent the last 10 mins basically trying to catheterise this poor woman's clitoris, and she thought the patient had suffered enough and could they please come and help her

"diffetently space undercarriages"

LOL!

Suddenly have more respect for men trying to work it what's what down there

Not medical professionals though. They should know.

Horrified by the clitoral catheter! Though hidden urethras can't be that uncommon - I have had 2 doctors fail to catheterise me because they couldn't find mine (after jabbing at my soft tissues for about half an hour). One eventually managed, so presumably it can't have been too far afield. It doesn't do wonders for your confidence though to think you have some big indistinguishable jungle of an undercarriage where important things get lost.

Orange is the new black: 'there's a THIRD hole??!' scene

m.youtube.com/watch?v=nW1A1M3lgPc

bip how are you doing? Think of you often

Well it turns out we can take off the G-CSF wash from the failure list, as it appears it actually did do something to my lining - seems to have improved it enough that I had an actual period (of sorts) and therefore my hysteroscopy is CANCELLED. No IUD going in - starting stims tomorrow.

Oh and my vag is getting the gold star treatment. We have managed to find a pharmacy who will make up the vaginal viagra pessaries - cannot believe how much they charge for crushing up some boner pills and smushing them into vag bullets.

I fessed up to my consultant about having pretended to be a bloke with a limp dick to get viagra pills. He didn't even bat an eyelid. Clearly he realises I am completely batshit, and is now utterly unphased by whatever I spring on him...

Hey, glad your rinse-out seems to have done the trick! Great news that you won't have to have an IUD, that was such a gutting thought. Good luck with stims! How many rounds of stims is that for you this year?

I'm still pregnant. 5 weeks today. HCG doubling every 37 hours, so things are at least looking non-ectopic. Nothing for it now but to sit tight and see if I make it to 10 weeks for the Harmony test (fucked if I'm doing early scans anymore - all they can tell you is that the embryo does or doesn't seem to be alive at that particular moment, and then send you home to obsess for another 2 weeks).

I am feeling very, very ill and knackered. And fairly miserable, if I'm honest. I thought about joining a pregnancy after miscarriage/infertility thread, and had a look on them, but there didn't seem to be anyone where who felt anywhere near as apocalyptically dismal about their prospects as I feel about mine; seems bad manners to barge in and piss on their chips when they're trying to keep the faith. And I don't have the energy / generosity of spirit right now to cheer on other people's successful passing of gestational milestones when I'm just waiting to see which hurdle I'll fall at this time.

In happier news, the roids have cleared up my eczema! So I no longer have scabrous dandruff of the face. And we exchanged on our house sale today! Move is next week, so I'll have plenty to keep me busy.

Bip that is amazing news! When was the last time you got to five weeks?

Banana also great to hear from you, that's brilliant. Out of curiosity, how much are those pills?!

I've got to 5 weeks every time except for after IVF and one negligible chemical. My other failed pregnancies have lasted 8 weeks, 9 weeks, 9 weeks and 40.5 weeks. So there is really no point in a pregnancy after which I will be able to feel safe or excited. It just feels like waiting for something horrible to happen, all day long. In between dry heaving.

Oh my goodness Bip I'm just catching up - I have everything crossed for you. How unbelievably stressful. It's a shame they couldn't knock you out for the duration and just wake you up when they had good news

LOL at 'outraged yelp' and 'differently spaced undercarriages'

bip everything tightly crossed for you. I won't offer any platitudes because this bit is horrific, as you know only far too well.

I'm sorry you're feeling physically so rough as well - I so, so, so hope this is your time

I started the original pregnancy after infertility thread because I couldn't deal with all the normal preggos outside the barren ghetto planning their mat leave while they were just 6 weeks upduffed. Felt I needed to be more among 'my people'. Obvs I then bowed out of the thread when I mc - and came to join the glitter shit army. Good to hear the thread is still going, albeit alarmingly chirpy. Hmm.

Brilliant news about the house!! That's absolutely terrific. Are you moving out of town or just to a different area?

And hurrah for the roids!!

This is my 4th fresh IVF cycle in 11 months, 5th round of stims overall - 4th round of stims this year. Adding in my cancelled IVF cycle (17 days of stabbing but cycle cancelled due to failure to down reg) in Nov, I totted up that in the last 11 months I have given myself 111 injections.

Including this morning's that's now 112

Note to self : order new sharps bucket

robber how's the stabbing going?

OK so my vag is getting the royal treatment. The pessaries are...

..... Drumroll

...... Wait for it

....£147 for 6

I will be shoving 4 a day up my foof

That's £100 a day just on my fanny

But fuck it. In for a penny, in for (thousands) of pounds

Consultant said 'er, they're very expensive'

I said 'look considering where we are, at last chance saloon, and that we are doing a whole fresh IVF cycle with a sodding egg collection just to grow my lining, don't you think we should be throwing absolutely everything at this?'

He agreed yes we should and he'd get his secretary to order them in.

These better be magic boner pill vag bullets

£147 for 6 would be bad enough if you only needed 6. But four a day??? Fucking hell. Let us know if they're worth it - any chance they have any fun side effects (viagra-wise)???

I wrote a post last night and lost in on my phone when we went through a tunnel. But along the lines of - Bip and Banana, thinking fo you. Bip, so stressful. So awful not to be able to enjoy something that for most women is the most exciting time of their life. Banana, I love hearing you getting excited about having a period. It's a bit Judy Blume and the excitement of teenagers getting their first period! (Not sure I ever had that personally...) It's just the idea that it's great to get somethign you've been trying to avoid for years!!!

You ladies keep me going, if you can find the energy than I can too. And you make it ok to feel like the whole thing is shit and unfair and have a bit of a wallow.

Oh and I've bought "it starts with the egg" so I'm about to add a load of bullshit from the thread above to my list of things I've tried. Just taking the polish off my toenails Not really. But am having a glass of full fat milk.

Happy weekends all.

Hello Bip - I keep checking back to this thread to see how you are doing. You were very kind to me in March when you were having a horrible time.

I suppose you could simply accept that you will be miserable for the coming weeks; if you do make it to 12 weeks with a good Harmony result, perhaps that might change? After that point a glimmer of hope and optimism could start flickering and grow - as it should. Maybe just let these shitty days pass in a haze of pukey, misery.

Have you always suffered from morning sickness like this with all your pregnancies?