Infertility and trauma

[hippopotamuz]

3+ years of infertility treatments and still not pregnant. It's a male factor issue - apparently no issues with me. We've recently moved to a donor but IUI not working after 7 attempts.

I had horrible experiences with IVF (OHSS twice), and our clinic are awful too - they have given me the wrong meds, the wrong dosages, screwed up all kinds of admin stuff - are just generally terrible - but it's the only fertility clinic less than an hour's drive from us.

I am mid 30's and my DH is mid-40's so it does feel like time is ticking away for him at least.

We have talked about doing more rounds of donor IUI to see if it will work, or maybe going back to IVF, even though I got OHSS twice and am scared.

I just feel traumatised by the whole thing now. I hate our clinic. I desperately want a child but nothing seems to be working. 3 close friends/ family members have had their first baby this Summer alone and more are now pregnant. I feel torn apart and I don't know whether to just give up but we would both be devastated.

Anyone else similar, any advice?

Do you mind me asking what the specific male factor issue is ?
I'm assuming it's not something that can be overcome with icsi since you've opted for donor sperm?
I understand how frustrated you feel.
I'm 37 and I'm about to embark on my first icsi cycle. We have both male factor and me. We've tried for numerous years and done medicated OI cycles but that hasn't worked. It's so hard when everyone around you seemingly falls pregnant without effort. All I can really offer you is comfort. Your not alone in this journey and there's many of us in our 30s trying for their first

@MoonlightDreamer Thank you - It is so tough isn't it? I have been really struggling lately with other people's pregnancies/ babies, I had a bit of an emotional breakdown last weekend after visiting friends with their newborn.

I should have said, our IVF was with ICSI, twice. But it didn't work - my DH just does not have much sperm and what there is, is just not really good enough for a pregnancy. People often say 'oh have you tried X?' but to be honest we've let it go and are happy with the choice to use a donor. It was partly due to my bad experience with IVF and partly due to his age, we thought a donor would be better and quicker.

But it's still not happening even with donor, and I have so many negative feelings about treatment and the clinic now :(

I wish you all the best with the ICSI - it does work for many people so fingers crossed!

My advice would be see a urologist and change clinic, arrange counselling.
It is better to travel further than to return to a clinic you don't trust. I have done similar. Well in the end I travelled abroad but first I had treatment at a further away UK clinic.
It's horrible that the treatment has caused OHSS twice, ask new clinic their plan to prevent that.

@LongerthanMrTicklesarms Thank you for the post. Yes we are going to look into different clinics and definitely counselling.

I was wondering whether we should try going abroad as I hear lots of people talking about that. How did you find out about it all? I wouldn't even know where to start looking for information.

Hi @hippopotamuz. We have a heavy male factor and I ve had 2 rounds of IUI, 3 full stimming rounds (ICSI) with 9 transfers… Our first clinic was horrible and I am very happy we have switched to a new one. I still want some kind of closure with the first clinic, to file a formal complaint about so many things they had screwed up.
I definitely recommend to look into other clinics where you get a better feeling.
As for the donor material, IUI in general has quite a low success rate… How many rounds of it was recommended to you?

@Veluwe Hi, that sounds like a rough journey for you as well. I want to file a formal complaint too but I feel so exhausted I just don't know if I have the energy to follow through (and wouldn't do it until I'm pregnant or leave them!) I do wonder if others are in the same situation and just don't complain because they're so relieved to be out of there one they're pregnant/ move clinic.

I hope you do manage to make a complaint if you were treated poorly.

I will have a look around at other clinics too, but I'm really not keen on travelling an hour, especially if it's IVF/ ICSI :(

They didn't really recommend a number of rounds to me. To be honest I feel it was very much on me to decide what to do and I just feel lost with it! All this patient-led decision making makes me feel so confused. I don't know what's best.

Will you do more ICSI? Good luck with it if you do x

Hi @hippopotamuz you could look into doing IVF abroad. Generally you can do the baseline scan at a local clinic so you only need to be away 7 days for egg collection, and I guess 10-14 days if you're having a fresh transfer. And make a holiday out of it. May be a better option if there are no other local clinics for you. I'm doing this for the same reason x

@Veluwe that sounds very difficult 💐

@hippopotamuz i actually found a lot of information about travelling for IVF here on mumsnet and had made contact with a number of clinics in the Czech Republic and Spain, decided on Spain in the end.

For a fresh cycle the clinic were happy for most scans to be done in the UK but the one right before planned egg collection had to be in their clinic and then as @April623 says stay until day 5 if planning a fresh transfer.

Maybe you could contact some clinics with your history and see what they say.

@LongerthanMrTicklesarms How did you get on in Spain? I'm going to Alicante for duo stim. We should be there now but it's on hold as I had some cysts show up on my baseline scan so currently waiting for them to disappear or at least shrink 🙄

@hippopotamuz I'm sorry to hear about how tough things have been for you, I started ivf in 2020 and went through a lot of IVF cycles. I would encourage you to move away from IUI and onto IVF, what dose of stims were you given, if you've had OHSS twice then I expect you have a high AFC and they over stimulated you and this can easily be avoided.

I've had treatment abroad, the thing is even if it looks cheaper it doesn't tend to be when you factor in travel and hotels and getting drugs and scans here to start with.

I started seeing a psychologist quite early on in the journey and still have a session once every 2 weeks.