Scared to start the journey

[roxy88]

Hi all, after a full year of TTC and having zero success, we've made the decision to seek medical support with trying for a baby and I am just so overwhelmed by having to make that decision. Partly due to the fear of finding out serious problems and the other part having the stress of this on myself mainly as I am quite an anxious person!! TTC has become all I can think about now and I'm just feeling so despondent. My DH already has two girls from his previous marriage, all his siblings have children and so does my sister and I just feel like this will never happen for us. I feel so "different" to the family members without having my own. I feel like a bit of a failure and the expectation that we should have had a child now after being married for two years. I feel like I have to explain myself to his family as to why we don't have a baby and it breaks my heart.

I was sent for a scan a few months ago to check for PCOS and they said everything looked fine but the scan was over in about 2 mins! My cycles have been getting shorter and shorter over the last year and today AF has arrived making it a 21 day cycle - 5 days earlier than predicted.
Does anyone have any advice about where we should start? Shall we go straight to private tests or try via the NHS? I'm 34 and my husband is 40
Where will they start? Blood tests? Sperm analysis? Sorry for all the questions! Any advice would be greatly appreciated x

Hi @roxy88 I think some baseline investigations sound like a good idea. It's good that you have the scan, did they tell you what your antral follicle count was, they add up the follicles on each of your ovaries to count this, this is important to indicate how you would respond if you had IVF.

You will need day 3 bloods for: LH, FSH, TFT, testosterone, DHEA, sex hormone binding globulin, PRL

Day 21 progesterone (7 days prior to menstruation on cycles that are longer/shorter than average)

You will also benefit from an AMH.

Your partner will need a sperm analysis.

It's unlikely you will qualify for funding as your partner has children. So while your gp should be able to do the tests (they might not do the AMH) you will then need to pay a private clinic for a consultation on the next steps. There may be a bit of a wait for the sperm analysis. So you might want to consider getting it all done privately, most clinics charge around £500 for the his and her fertility work up.

Unless you have these baseline tests the next steps won't be able to be determined. I hope you get some clarity on everything soon, I would definitely investigate sooner rather than later.

@Gardenlady543 thank you so much for your detailed reply! Yes I was swaying more to just going privately rather than the NHS route as I doubt we would ever be considered for IVF if that's the route we would need to take.

The scan was just an internal scan to check for PCOS rathe than any follicle counting. They just said my tubes/ovaries looked normal- no cysts or anything

I will contact a clinic tomorrow to get things going for his/her tests. Thank you so much x

@roxy88 ah it doesn't sound like a very detailed scan so the clinic will probably want to repeat it anyway.

Do come back and update, and don't ever feel that you're alone, there's loads of us on here having fertility treatment.

I gave it a year of ttc before seeking out the tests and seeing a specialist, I'd never has a BFP and I was keen to move onto IVF to try someone different, no luck as yet for me but I have found out some things and had treatment and everything is a bit of a step forward.

There's usually a monthly thread that you can join if you have an IVF cycle and that is really helpful, I was completely new to this in my fresh cycle back on November and had so many questions and concerns and the other people in the thread really helped.

@Gardenlady543 no it defo wasn't! There's just so much to understand with all this fertility stuff! Will defo come back to update once we've gone through the basic testing- hopefully that will explain where our problem is! Thank you so much for the advice x