Multiple failures, a place to chat

[Zippybear]

Anyone else out there with multiple failures wondering what to do next? We've just had our fourth embryo transfer fail. Issues on both sides. In the last year I've had two surgeries, dh has had one and we are still no further forward. We haven't had a holiday that wasn't time off for ivf since 2015. We feel battered and bruised and stuck on a hellish infertility rollercoaster that we can't get off unless we want to accept childlessness we have another nhs cycle but I'm not sure I can cope with it (or if there is any point). I don't know whether to give up, think of donor, adoption or just accept our lot. Anyone else wondering the same?

Also, I am so sorry to read about your struggle- you really have been through hell, by the sounds of it. How are you feeling?

Hi patiently, I think I posted on your other thread. I'm sorry this cycle wasn't successful. It's just so gutting and then the thought of trying again is exhausting. When is your debrief? Are you taking a bit of a break before going again? I have my appointment at the rmc clinic at the start of May, so I am giving myself April and May to have a bit of a break after doing IVF, and then being pregnant or miscarrying for over six months. We've booked a lazy sunshine holiday and a couple of lovely weekends away. I really need a break. I thought I was doing ok but had a very sad day today. There is no way to sugar coat the bleak shitness of it all. To add insult to injury, my skin has gone to shit. Thanks hormones.

How are you doing again?

How's everyone else - angelica, sanfran, banana? Anything good planned for the weekend? Quiet one for us, I have a poorly dog who has copped for all my anxiety this week - I think if anything happened to her it would tip me over the edge.

Hi ladies, I don't quality for this thread but I hope it's ok as per icy 's interjection upthread to delurk and say firstly how fucking amazing you all are, secondly what a crock of shit the whole infertility merry-go-round is, thirdly what total idiots the well meaning advice givers can be, and finally that although I don't belong here, the tone of this thread and the insight and understanding into the underlying big black pit of fear that It Might Not EVER Happen For Me resonates here like nowhere else I've found. I'll be lurking, and rooting for you all.

... And fifthly I'll attempt punctuation and paragraphs next time

It doesn't take much to rip open the old wounds does it bigger? That must be really hard. I find the pregnancies harder than the babies. Yes, pathologically over attached to the dog sums it up here too. We refer to ourselves as a family - we are still three beating hearts, as someone beautifully put it on another thread a while ago. Tdog is actually much better, bandages off and a good recovery according to the vet today. I am about to celebrate this with a !

Waves at potatoes!

Waving back!

Also waving at potatoes!

Hi everyone! Well in regards to what i'm doing this weekend... it's my birthday tomorrow. We'll go out for supper but apart from that I honestly have nothing to celebrate. My life has been on hold for 3 years, I have hardly any friends these days because I've been completely off the social scene so a party is out of the question, I don't fit in to any of my old figure-hugging dresses as IVF drugs have made me fat and consta-bloated + I haven't been exercising while I was pregnant or miscarrying, and we've just sold our beautiful big car yesterday for a smaller one to fund future rounds of IVF, more tests etc, so yeh - happy fucking birthday. Yippee!

I'm turning 29 but I feel 65. Just so drained and quite possibly depressed. How do you ladies find pleasure in things? I'm really struggling at the moment. I think the emotional exhaustion is catching up with me.

I love that lots of us on here have dogs to help us through the seriously shit times. Here's a pic of my little love - we also refer to him as part of our family and often call him our "dog-child".

Gorgeous furbaby!

So sorry that you've been struggling Again. I think it's entirely possible to be depressed after going to hell and back again. I think you're doing well in really tough circumstances - don't feel you have to be strong or are doing something wrong. Hope your birthday wasn't too bad in the end. I'm dreading mine in a few months time. I'll be 37, which is old. I have been ready for a baby since I turned 30, took a while to convince DH to ttc as he wanted all the sensible stuff sorted first, so we both had family friendly jobs, bought the family house and then got cracking at 32. So many years of waiting and disappointment since then. After my mc in December, I wished I was dead. Very slowly I have been finding the scraps of joy in life again. I generally try to be positive but it isn't easy, and I often feel low and sometimes just get that awful pit of my stomach anxiety feeling that won't shift.

I'm exactly the same bigger, I suspect more than one person refers to me as the mad dog lady. I realised that I have probably kissed my dog more than I have kissed my husband this week but I have been so worried about her! The vet referred to her as an old dog the other day, which didn't help my anxiety in the slightest.

Hi everyone, hope you're all bearing up. Have been feeling like a particularly pointless waste of life lately so haven't even felt like coming on this forum. We are investigating greyhounds though, met some last week who were very sweet so hoping we'll find a lovely one, hoping we don't make it depressed!

Hope your dog is feeling better Tigerdog and Again I know how you feel, I hardly have any friends anymore and have been stuck in a job I hate for years because of ivf and the inevitable shit fallout of ivf. It's all really knocked my confidence in myself and I feel like nothing will ever go well for me in life generally. I'm taking a big break from ivf now and working part time which is kind of helping. I am also 37 this year having tried since I was 32, can't believe it.

Hey everyone, just wanted to check in. Have been lurking for a bit, and lurking over on the adoption boards as my initial "woo-hoo, no more IVF" euphoria has worn off and the reality hit. Doesn't help having 2 pregnant colleagues at work as a daily reminder of my failure. I've somehow ended up having to organise the baby shower for one of them, which is just fucking awful. And then on top of it all it's Mother's Day on Sunday...

Hi everyone,
Special shout outs to Banana, Again, Tiger, Angelica (and to everyone else).

Have been on holiday which allows for loads of thinking time. Terrified of starting ivf again soon, but my counsellor tells me it is important to have to right balance of hope and fear. My default position is to think from the start it is unlikely to work, so I won't feel let down in the end. But I need to try to be a bit more positive generally.

A good friend is currently having a miscarriage. I am really sorry about it, it is a horrible event for anyone, but I can't help it if my sympathy finishes there. She can just try again next month. It only took her 2 this time. I feel like such a cruel bitch. Miscarriages are just different when you have needed fertility treatment. They just are.

Hi all!

user how is your greyhound hunting going? Hope you find a lovely furbaby to join your family. A friend of mine has a rescue greyhound who is adorable. And by the way she is one of the few people I speak to because she's gone through 12 rounds of IVF. I can't deal with my 'normal' friends yet.

It is worrying the older you get isn't it tiger and user? I'm not going to say "don't worry" because it's all you're worrying about and you think back to when you were 32 and think if you were a non-barren you'd have a 4 or 5 years old child by now. Well that's how I tend to think anyway.

If it makes you feel any better my H is 44! 45 if we managed to get me pregnant and carry to term any time soon. I'm glad that the area where we live loads and loads of men in their early and mid 40s are still having babies.

cinnamontwirl that's exciting about adoption and starting the process. Are you getting counselling to help you through it?

SanFran 100% agree!!! Whilst any miscarriage is sad, it's no where near as painful as for a barren. What people tend to forget is that when I say we will be doing our 4th IVF transfer soon people say oh well you haven't been trying that long then. NO. That's ON TOP OF almost 2 years trying to conceive naturally. So what takes you only 2 months, took me 3 Y.E.A.R.S. Also when I miscarry I then have to think "do we have another £7k lying around for a fresh round of IVF. Can I handle doing it again? / Quick, let's find £1600 for an FET / How many frosties do we have left / What grade and quality are the frosties / When should I call the clinic / Let me take some time off so I can go to all my appointments at the clinic" and so on.

Yes to greyhounds user, I am excited on your behalf! I hope you find a lovely one. I'm afraid most greyhounds appear depressed at least some of the time - those big brown eyes and all the sleeping and sighing! Keep us posted. Ours took a few weeks to settle and the early days were harder than I expected - when you do get a pup, and if you have any challenges in the early days few free to PM me! We have fostered a couple of times too - I really want another one but I feel like that would cement me into the role of crazy dog lady forever! I felt like that about my job too, but I took the plunge and changed to something completely unsuitable. It really helped me feel alive again. I also did a period of counselling because I started to get into a horrible mindset where I convinced myself that I didn't deserve to be happy and I was destined to be unhappy and a failure. It did help.

sanfran i hope your holiday was lovely and restful. I am also with you 100%. It is heartbreaking but to know that they can try again is a comfort that we don't have. Although I did get a shock natural bfp after my mc and four years ttc. It wasn't my miracle though, just more heartache, and now I have a recurrent miscarriage problem, even trying again via IVF holds no promise. I do feel like I'm fucked, to be honest.

How are you feeling about adoption cinnamon? I think about it often, but I am very nervous of the reality.

There are so many children in my life who give me a measure of where we should be - again - two close friends and I started ttc at the same time - their kids have celebrated their third birthdays. They also tried to empathise with me for ages because it took them 5-6 months. then there's my nephew who is the same age as our child would have been if my first IVF hadn't ended in mc. Another friend shares my June due date and my SIL will be two weeks after my October one. It's constantly gutting.

My hound is doing much better, another week of the reduced walking regime and she should be ok. I'm missing the walks more than she is! I am also doing much better, I felt horribly low but I can feel a little bit of bounce coming back. I'm dreading next weekend though. A big family birthday (in-laws) where we will all be crammed into a small space for a whole day, trapped. One pregnant, who will be due a couple of weeks after I should have been, and two siblings who can be utter dicks. I'm doing it for DH and for his lovely parents but I'd rather stab myself in the eye than go. I may yet get ill and stay at home with the dog.

Oh and the joy of Mother's Day. It's a day designed to give anyone a kick in the guts that has lost their mum or a baby or is struggling to conceive. And even those people who haven't suffered will be on MN whinging endlessly about the lack of gifts, MiL taking over the day, DH didn't get a card from the kids, why did I get just a box of crappy chocolates etc. I will probably have to spend my time posting angry - "be grateful for what you fucking have" posts on all the inevitable threads! Urgh.

How is everyone else bigger, banana, zippy and others?

What ho barren army

Got chastised for using the word barren on a thread in the infertility section by a load of secondary infertiles who had IVF for their first child, whinging about those of us who disliked their precious bubbas in the waiting room at infertility clinics. Because oh the lack of empathy towards the needs of mothers with childcare difficulties!! What selfish arseholes we are.

As Angelica kindly pointed out, it's easy for us to forget that some people who've done IVF actually succeed (and lose all memory of what it was like to be there in the first place)

Sorry for lack of personals, will reply properly when not on phone. Thank fuck for the ninth battalion barrens army is all I can say

It's weird being simultaneously at the end of treatment, trying to come to terms with it being the end of the road, with also doing one final last hurrah at a mock cycle (and the sliver of hope that there might be one actual final go at a FET before closing the book)

Scans weren't a COMPLETE disaster this week, although Dr and I agreed it was not looking optimistic. Injections and scans and bloods and two endometrial biopsies and a uterine wash this week doesn't feel like the end of treatment. Although quite weird giving myself my trigger shot last night thinking it was probably my last ever injection

Back for scan and second wash on Monday, then ERA biopsy (yes more stapling of my womb) on Fri. In theory if I got a not-disastrous result from yesterday's biopsy showing proliferative endometrium, and receptive result on ERA then we'd try next month. But I'd have to also get an actual period. And then my lining thicken up enough for a transfer. So, y'know, pigs might fly.

Twatting mother's day tomorrow to boot. If u hated it after I lost my mum, I really hate it now...

Hey bananafish
I think someone actually wrote on that thread 'no other mother would judge you for that'
must be so great if your ivf actually works eh.
tigerdog I think faking an illness and staying home with the dog is more than reasonable in that situation, please do it!
Afm woke up to AF one day early this morning. DH gutted as he's been on clomid and felt it was making a big difference. We are barren barren barren.

Also I think we need some sort of barren grading system. This needs work but my thoughts so far...
Uber barren = end of road looking very unlikely to ever work out. Platinum barren = unlikely to have nieces/nephews either.
Gold plated barren = long term barren it eventually worked out for but remembers the misery well
Fools gold barren = long term barren who succeeded against all the odds who goes around spreading fake hope online

Zippy> Yeah, I saw that particularly crass comment and vowed never to post on that thread, even though I have some sympathy for those who can't get childcare I only have so much sympathy, and in my experience that courtesy is rarely returned. I do wish that my clinic, even though they allow children in the waiting room, would have a sign for people to be courteous and aware that the presence of small children (and especially infants) can be upsetting to some people.

Love the classification for barrens, although I would perhaps change the term fools gold barren to mean someone who succeeded once but now thinks that their situation is so much worse than having primary infertility (actually saw this on an AIBU thread a few weeks ago - their rationale was it was worse because now they had a child they truly knew what they were missing out on by not having a second. FFS!) and to add dodgy salesman barren to mean someone who succeeded after a long time trying and now just goes round telling everyone to keep trying because it worked for them on their 20th try (because everyone else surely has the time, emotional energy and money to do this! It worked for me and IT CAN WORK FOR YOU!)

Ha ha tammy loving your updates! Dodgy salesman is soooooo right. We also need something for never even had a bfp

Hello, just de-lurking to give you all a wave and propose a wooden spoon barren: been trying 3-6 months and thinks they can empathise with you because "it's so awful, I know just how you feel".

No, you don't.

As you were

Potatoes yes!

Also delurking to add a few-

Turncoat barren: went through IVF, had a baby first try and tells everyone online that ivf is "fine and not that bad" and refuses to acknowledge that it can be difficult physically/emotionally after a few failures.

Also Golden ticket barren: went through IVF, baby first time, second baby through FET on first FET try..hopelessly optimistic about chances of success.

Bananafish I also saw that horrible waiting room thread, the arsehole quota was quite high. I couldn't post a reply because I'm stimming at the moment and very hormonal and likely to be very upset. Which obviously a lot of waiting room women are hence why would you bring your kids if you could help it??