Can’t stop comparing myself

[eastofeden86]

Hello, mumsnet newbie here waves

Husband and I have been TTC since Christmas 2018. Classed as having unexplained fertility and not candidates for Clomid etc given I ovulate regularly, we did our first round of IVF/ICSI last September. We got 6 good quality blasts from it, but sadly no implantation (I had OHSS and felt like shite so while sad it hadn’t worked, I was also glad it was over).

Just did our first FET in Jan and no luck again. I’ve taken this one much harder. I guess up until now I’d been thinking ‘it’s just a blip, science will sort us out’. Now I’m starting to realise this might not actually happen for us. We will keep trying with FET, but the waiting is hard. Our next TIA isn’t until mid April.

Anyway, while both my husband and I are ok and keeping going and by no means depressed, this latest blow has really affected me. I can’t stop comparing myself to other women who are mums. All my female friends are now parents, including my best friend who’d never wanted children and gave birth a couple of days after I’d found out our FET had failed. Celebrities seem to be announcing pregnancies left right and centre. My local park is full of lockdown babies in their prams!

I don’t want to be this sad, bitter person but I’m frustrated that life isn’t looking how I’d hoped right now. Does anyone have any tips on how to get through this part?

Massive hugs @eastofeden86 I’m in exactly the same situation, me and DH has a fresh cycle in November- unsuccessful and our recent frozen transfer was also unsuccessful. After the first cycle I was sad but you know it doesn’t work first time for everyone do I told myself it didn’t mean anything, but with two unsuccessful cycles I’m starting to feel as I did when we were trying naturally.

I totally understand where you’re coming from, it isn’t fair, nothing about this is fair I never thought I’d be infertile, I thought that is a distinct group of people that I’d never be a part of. But fertility doesn’t discriminate. It makes me annoyed that I’ve always done everything right: no alcohol, no smoking, no caffeine, super healthy diet, regular exercise and yet here I am. But then I remind myself that if I didn’t do all of those things I’d be in a worse position.

I have shut down social media and I ignore the news as much as I can. This week a colleague that I barely know text me to tell me his “good news” (pregnancy announcement). I replied and told him I’m having fertility treatment and said I’d appreciate it if he didn’t mention pregnancy or birth to me. I’m actually quite glad I did, I don’t want to worry about all kinds of announcements coming my way from him.

I have decided to pause before my next cycle, I’m waiting on PGT-A testing now and I’m going to discuss a scratch and maybe an ERA. I’m hoping to put myself in a better position to succeed next time.

I’m really hoping this can be overcome and that me and DH can have a child, at my worst point I was researching about surrogates and when I mentioned this to one of my best friends she automatically said without thinking too much about it, if needed in the future she wouldn’t be against helping. And it just made me realise how much close friends are rooting for me, which helped a lot.

My plan is to look ahead and give myself a bit of a break, I probably won’t have another transfer until May now so I’m going to look into doing things I enjoy inbetween. Hopefully you can do the same and get a plan together with your consultant to increase your chances moving forward?

Thank you @Gardenlady543 for replying. We are in such a similar situation I’ve felt really alone lately so while I’m sorry you’re dealing with this too, it helps to hear about it.

I totally understand about asking people to keep their news to themselves. Sometimes you just need to protect yourself.

Consultant has been lovely but doesn’t have a lot more to suggest. They doubled my progesterone after fresh cycle (I had spotting before test day so knew it had failed), which I think helped. I had a scratch before our fresh cycle. It hurt! Didn’t go for it for first FET and have provisionally said no to it for next one, but might reconsider. I don’t know if my clinic offers ERA.

I’ve also looked into surrogacy. I must admit I hadn’t realised how complicated or expensive it was, but then you don’t really think about any of this until you have to.

Can I ask about your exercise? I freak myself out thinking I shouldn’t do anything too strenuous in the tww and end up doing nothing, even though I know being active makes me feel better. What do you do?

I here you op and @Gardenlady543
It's bloody awful. I feel like a failure when a pregnancy announcement comes, like why can't my body just do what it was made for ?
Recently had a cancelled fet due to lining not responding AT ALL. I was devastated enough by that. So if this try doesn't work I dread to think how i'll feel.
I'm sending you both hugs and love and rooting for all of us 💕💕

Thanks @elsaesmeralda I’m sorry to hear about the lining, was that a medicated cycle? Sometimes the body doesn’t respond that well to the medications, you could see how you get on with a natural FET? That’s what I’ll be emphasizing moving forward, often natural cycles are emphasized for women with regular cycles.

@eastofeden86 I’m sending you such big hugs, I also had early bleeding from day 8dp5dt in my fresh cycle, maybe we are twins?! This time I insisted on a progesterone level the day before transfer it came back at 46.6 and this was on a higher dose, my specialist likes it above 50 so increased me up further. I react to progesterone which isn’t good and saw an immunologist yesterday who diagnosed me with progesterone dermatitis, but reassuringly she feels I’ll be fine if I have an antihistamine. Interestingly I spoke with a specialist who said an 8dp bleed in a fresh cycle is normal as it’s 13dpo. Re: improving the situation, so you have 4 blasts left, people remind me that I could have been unlucky with the blasts picked, at my age (35), 50% could be aneuploid, that’s why I’ve gone with the PGT-A, to try and help with selection and reduce the number of cycles needed. You could also ask if they’ll be willing to try a double transfer next time?
And re: exercise, I’m like you and put everything on hold but I spoke with my friend yesterday who’s also done this and so far it’s done her no good whatsoever and she misses exercise and all the mental health benefits that come with it. I will probably do what I want exercisewise for now, I have a cross trainer at home so I will use that. I’ll probably ease off for the 2ww and stick to walking but that’s a while off anyway.

@Gardenlady543 yeah it was medicated, 6mg oestrogen a day without down reg. So this time I am down regulating, then will have 12mg oestrogen tablets along with patches.
If this still doesn't work I will ask for a natural fet! I have pcos but it is controlled with metformin so I know I ovulate each month.
I was so shocked after doing so well regarding egg collection etc just didn't see this becoming an issue yet it was !

@elsaesmeralda that sounds like a good plan, I had to increase my estradiol from 6mg a day up for 10mg a day because the lining wasn’t getting as thick as they wanted, unfortunately it made me really nauseated on the lower dose so I felt awful for the whole cycle. I think your plan sounds like a good one, transdermal estradiol is well tolerated and can get the lining there quicker than other routes of estradiol from what I’ve read. Ergg so many bumps in the road!!

@Gardenlady543 only thing I'm worrying about now is getting mixed up with the medications. I'm going to write it down in my diary this time what I've taken, how much and when! Can I ask did the extra oestrogen help with your lining ?

Sorry forgot to say mine didn't get past 6mm and I was taking it for nearly three weeks! @Gardenlady543

@elsaesmeralda I didn’t think my lining was doing that badly to be honest, but it wasn’t where they wanted it to be. I think the main issue was the oral estradiol made me vomit so they said put the tablets in my vagina which reduced the dose my body was getting. After they increased the dose I sucked it up and took them all orally, I carried a bucket with me (Luckily the vomiting eased but the nausea continued) and ate only crackers.

After Day 10 of estradiol 2mg three times a day I was at 7.4mm (2 days of this were vaginally). I was then increased to estradiol 2mg x5/day orally and on day 13 I was at 8.1mm.

My big tip, make a table in word, put the date and day of the cycle and write all the medications you need to take each day. Print it off and cross them off as you take them. Keep the piece of paper with your medications somewhere you’ll see it often through the day, I keep mine on the kitchen worktop.

Really hope this new regime works for you, but if it doesn’t and your cycles are regular then that’s good, because natural FET could work for you still, so try not to worry.

@Gardenlady543 - I know it's such a hard time, especially when it seems to be so easy for everyone else around you! We have been doing IVF for 2 years, with a year before that of timed intercourse and a failed IUI. I've had 3 miscarriages and a chemical pregnancy, and my first fresh transfer didn't work either - like you, I think I mild OHSS, my body felt like it was under way too much stress and I wasn't that surprised when it didn't work.

After the second failed attempt I got angry - I had gone into it (perhaps naively) thinking that we would be the lucky ones that it worked for first time. I thought my Dr would just 'know' how to fix everything and when we got good day 5 blasts I assumed it would be plain sailing from there on! Our only issue as far as we know is a slightly low sperm count.

My advice, and this is heartfelt, is not to give up. Just keep going. The women that I've seen who've gone on to be successful are the ones that just kept persevering. They (and anyone going through IVF) are total warriors.

After the chemical and given my two natural miscarriages, my Dr put me on Clexane injections for the next transfer, and we made it to 6 weeks before I miscarried again - this time we did a D&C and found that the embryo was abnormal - nothing we could have done to control it. Although it's expensive, we did PGS testing on the rest of our embryos because I couldn't face another loss - I'm currently almost 8 weeks along with one of our healthy embryos, but pretty anxious. Trying to stay positive!

It's a journey, that's for sure, but stick with it! There are forum posts on here with other MNs doing IVF and I found one that coincided with my transfer month which has been a huge source of support. Friends are well-meaning but no-one really understands infertility like those who have experienced it.

It's a bit corny, but I found a quote online after my second FET, which said "to being is easy, to persist is art". And that has kind of stuck with me.

Very best of luck to you!

*begin is easy!

@eastofeden86 - so sorry, I should have addressed that whole message to you as OP!!

@loulamay your message brought a tear to my eye! Thank you for writing it.

I’m so sorry for the losses you’ve experienced, and I’m SO hoping that everything continues to go well for you now. You deserve this.

I think I needed to hear that - that we don’t just give up because it’s hard. Thank you x

@elsaesmeralda everything crossed for you. Big hugs. It sounds like you’ve got a good plan for next time.

@Gardenlady543 genuinely I think we are twins! Same age as well!

It can be very isolating @eastofeden86 because you can never fully escape from baby announcements, whether friends, family, celebrities. One of my IVF consultants got pregnant, and her assistant said to me very excitedly what good news it was and I just did my poker face and nodded instead of saying "yes, fucking marvellous now I have to look at her bump while she does my dildocam" which was pretty much the first thing that I thought.

In the TWW I tend to walk and walk a lot and preferably in a big park away from people.
In a freeze all cycle I went for a run the day after EC thinking it would clear my head and it totally wiped me out, though that could have been the emotional strain too.

@Gardenlady543 your reaction to the estradiol sounds awful, poor you. I also print out my medication table and tick them off and set alarms in my phone.

@elsaesmeralda it is crap when other unforeseen issues crop up, you think once you've got the embryos you're on the home run, it really is so many hoops for some of us to jump through.

@loulamay congratulations, hope you have an uneventful rest of your pregnancy. You have been through a lot.

I will say though about the 'never give up' message that my fertility counsellor (another expense but at this point I need it!) has talked about giving yourself permission to pause or stop at any point and we've talked about the whole narrative of never give up and you just need to try enough and I feel like it's just more pressure.
My goal posts have moved a lot, I've started many cycles, some were cancelled before EC which is galling, I've spent an absolute fortune at the expense of other things, so it's not the case that I don't want this enough, but there might come a time when I have had enough and stop without ever achieving the prize at the end of all this. I hope not but that scenario is a bit of a taboo in the infertility world and I think it needs to be broken down.

💐 for all.

@Gardenlady543 thanks for the tip! I might just do that! I hope you have more success, you do sound like you've been through it with medication side effects aswell ! 

@LongerthanMrTicklesarms that's very true about thinking you're there but then some other issue rears it's head. Onwards and upwards now though 🤞🏻🤞🏻

@eastofeden86 wishing you all the luck too. It's so nice to have others to talk to about this. My friends irl don't really get it and I know it makes them feel awkward sometimes

Hey everyone, I haven't posted before but your thread resonated with me. I've just had freeze all second cycle as got OHSS. Waiting on PGS testing now. Last cycle had a miscarriage, then during the second 2ww my brother announced his wife's pregnancy. It floored me because it was exactly the same timings as our miscarried pregnancy. Now feel like I can't ever seem sad around my family in case it takes away from their joy.

It's so tough as no one really understands how painful infertility and ivf is. I can handle all the physical stuff but the mix of hope and extreme disappointment is so hard to manage.

I'm so sorry you're all going through this too. I just try and be thankful that at least there is some hope and were we born in a different time we wouldn't have this chance (as awful as it is sometimes!!)