ERA EMMA ALICE testing thread 10

[Gardenlady543]

Last thread is maxed out... happy for anyone new to join to chat about anything ERA EMMA ALICE or pretty much anything else fertility investigations and treatment related

@2021ivfagain @Enfys23 @clhiu @CailinInUK @Loz2467 @Mybabydream @ChickenT2b @kerrym87 @Sar1010 @thislittlebird @APSR @VenusStarr
@Dochas12111 @SallyLovelady @Lyrabee @Lauralozzle @Sera9 @Twigg12 @Wren123 @Summerishere83 @Vicky81B

@2021ivfagain thank you for your message.
I'm afraid I don't know the answer to your questions. I hope someone else can help you. Did you get your bleed? Are you preparing for a transfer cycle? Are you also with crgh?

Things are slow for me. I am awaiting results from vaginal microbiome through screenme. I have only ever done them with invivo. So I will see what shows up, hopefully deal with it and hopefully get on with final transfer. I am trying to book up weekends with plans to make the time go faster. In the meantime I am taking far too many supplements from nutritionist and using the balance activ with probiofem at night and using vagibiom every morning. I hope its not all a waste if time if I need more antibiotics.

Thankfully my smear test came back clear so one less thing to worry about.

@Dochas12111 @2021ivfagain thank you. I’m not really sure how things are going. Had scan day 8 but follicles seem small. But there are more than I’ve had before. I’ve put a photo of the follicle sizes. Waiting for call from clinic with plan. Nervous.

Clinic are saying look okay, a little slow but they will scan me Friday and see how we do. I’ve always been ready for trigger by day 9-10 in past but then it is a different protocol and I’m guessing positive there are more follicles and not too disparate in size. Just have to hope for the best…

@Enfys23 I think they look for uniform growth, you do seem to have a leading follicle but with slow and steady stims the rest should hopefully catch up. Fingers crossed! X

Hi @Enfys23 how are you getting on? I hope the egg collection went well and the follicles evened out. Sorry I didn’t see your previous post until now!

Thanks for thinking of me @Dochas12111 hope you’re doing okay?
It’s not going very well. I had to stim for 13 days due to slow growth and don’t know if that’s affected quality.
We got 7 eggs which is way more than I’ve had before and 6 fertilised. But the day 3 report yesterday was not good. There’s one that looks potentially okay at 6 cells. But rest very fragmented, or haven’t reached 6 cells, and one has fully arrested already. I literally could not do more for my egg quality. Don’t know if it’s just that I’m now 1-2 yrs older than my original rounds or whether it’s the stim protocol this time that hasn’t been favourable.
We were hoping to get a few for PGTA. But if one makes it can be PGTA biopsied then not sure whether to PGTA or not at this point. I am so anxious to reduce risk of miscarriage or TFMR after this past year’s surgical procedures and emotional hell though that I am erring on side of still doing PGTA despite the cost for 1. But if we only get one that is poor and can’t be biopsied and frozen we will probably go ahead with fresh transfer for fear of always wondering what if.
On top of that our friends messaged us their birth announcement yesterday not long after the embryologist called. Baby came early but would have been a week apart in due date to the pregnancy we lost. So just felt really heartbroken by it all.

@Enfys23 I’m so sorry. I know how I have felt about pregnancy announcements. It can be triggering.

As for PGT, if you are under 35, you have a greater chance of more eggs being normal. I was always advised if there were less blastocysts it might be better not to PGS. But it’s up to you. I’m sure you’re doing everything possible.

Are you doing assisted hatching at day 3? The fact that you can get pregnant naturally is a good sign so that is already in your favour.

My transfer is tomorrow. Sorry for not updating much but been so stressed this time with clinic.

@Prayformiracles Hope you’re doing ok. I planned a trip away before transfer. Sometimes that’s good to do. What stage are you at?

@Enfys23 The slower growth can be due to oestrogen priming. I had no oestrogen this time and my growth was faster. I triggered on day 10, but I’m not doing a fresh transfer. The slow growth is not to do with egg quality. What medication are you on?

@2021ivfagain just wanted to wish you all the best luck for tomorrow. Hope you have some good support at home for the 2ww.

@Enfys23 i am so sorry. You are really going through it. So sorry this is all so close to the due date for the baby you lost. I completely understand wanting to test even if it’s just one embryo. Re survival my clinic said that generally if it’s a strong embryo it will survive the testing defrosting etc and if not it was unlikely to survive anyway so if you want to test I would test.

did you get a day 5 update?

was this your first round with oestrogen priming? It could be that is just not suited to you. If you do another round it could be worth asking about the letrozole instead as I had my best response on that as a poor responder with low AMH. What age are you now?

sending you strength x

@2021ivfagain best of luck with the TWW. Hope the transfer wasn’t stressful on the day.

@2021ivfagain one week down, hope you are doing okay. I found my last 2ww really tough. When I hopefully get there, I want to keep occupied but also want to keep rested. What do you do to keep sane?
Can I also ask anyone, do you socially restrict (or isolate) so as to not catch colds, covid, chicken pox etc, once you are on the three weeks of medications for the fet? And even during the 2ww?

@Prayformiracles Sorry for not coming on here but was quite stressed. My son from nursery was not well for the second week. Luckily my husband was around to help out. To be honest, I had so much work to do, I felt overwhelmed at times. I teach online. I made sure I did less work 1 and 2 days after transfer.

I had moments of stress. I felt playing games helped and going for walks but most of the time I was busy working.

I did get positive test today but I am worried. Some tests did not work as well so I had to take 7! I had a pink dye test that was close to expiring which was faint but blue dye were better. The Ovum from Sainsbury’s was good. I am cautiously optimistic as my symptoms come and go. I did have a lot of cramping this time and one night I was worried as it went on for 2 hours!

Is your child in nursery? I would say in summer it’s more easy to protect yourself against colds. My consultant said I can still take 1000iu vitamin D plus pregnacare as constantly exposed. I would say be careful up until transfer. Then you might want to wear masks if going to ivf clinic etc.

Tentative congrats @2021ivfagain will you get a HCG test to check levels? I always got two - one day of testing and one 3 days later to check levels were rising.

@Dochas12111 Yes. I did hcg on 4 weeks 5 days, progesterone and tsh. Hcg was 3000.4, progesterone was 186.5 and tsh was 1.867. Is the hcg very high.

@Dochas12111 My clinic do not want repeat hcg if high. When I got pregnant with my son in 2020 during the pandemic, there were no hcg blood tests. I just had to wait for scan.

Wow the HCG is super high! Mine was 119 on first test (12 days post 5 day transfer), had more than doubled three days later to around 400 I think so clinic were happy with that. Always find it odd some clinics don’t do a repeat test as I always understood that the increase in HCG was very important! But 3,000 is super high so maybe there is no need! Congrats @2021ivfagain isn’t a high Hcg indicative of twins?

@Dochas12111 It can. I had two day 5 frozen blastocysts transfers but they were not tested. One was 6B+B- and the other was 6B-B-. I started feeling car sick yesterday at 14 days past transfer. I never even knew what my hcg was in early pregnancy with my son. I just felt sick all the time until end of second trimester. I have googled other explanations of high hcg. I did feel implantation the evening after transfer so it was quite quick. Then I had cramping pretty much daily for 2 weeks. I’m very very nervous. I carried a bag today when walking my son to nursery. I made it a a light as possible. It was a plastic carrier bag with just some clothes in and his lunch and bottle. I’ve been really anxious due to last year and get worried about every little thing. My clinic are reviewing my results. I had them done at a place which was closer as Plymouth to London and back can take 10 hours or more. So just went to Exeter to an accredited blood clinic. I hope they don’t insist I keep repeating more blood tests.

My hcg last year with my pregnancy was 179 on 14dpt. So I was so shocked by it being over 3000 this time at 14dpt.

@Prayformiracles How are you getting on? Hope you’re ok. I’m occasionally taking vaginal probiotics.

@2021ivfagain wow so it could well be twins with two embryos transferred! When can you do a first scan? My rule for weight is I won’t lift anything heavy to me. So if a shopping bag is heavy when I try lift it I won’t. But if it’s not heavy to me I will. My understanding is that it’s putting strain on your body that can cause an issue so it sounds unlikely that the bag you carried caused any strain. Same reason I’m still lifting my daughter as I’m used to her weight. I am 20 weeks next week and still horribly sick!!! So it can be sickness despite HCG levels. Hopefully it won’t hit you too badly, and take it as a good sign too 😃

@Dochas12111 My scan is in two weeks. I’m a bit worried due to last year. I’m not sure if it’s possible to have a scan at 6 weeks as waiting 2 weeks is a lot. I’m mostly sick when I’m hungry or in the car. I did feel sick this morning but feel ok at present. It comes and goes but only 5 weeks at present. When was your first scan? I’m so nervous. I’m not even telling people because I have so many hurdles. I was 40 when I did the egg collection.

My clinic were happy with my results so I don’t need more blood tests.

I’m pretty sure I had a private scan at 6 and half weeks! Could be worth booking one for reassurance! I’ve had scans at 6,8,10,12,14,16 and next up 20 weeks. There is no harm from what I’ve read.

@Enfys23 I hope you are doing ok x

Congrats @2021ivfagain I did my first scan with ultrasound direct at 6+3, you can go earlier but I've seen people go before this and the heart beat isn't there yet, they get themselves worked up and it ends up fine.

@Dochas12111 this is great, it sounds like you are doing really well.

Our surrogate is pregnant, we had the 7 week scan which went well.

Thanks @Gardenlady543 hoping the 20 week scan will go ok next week 🤞

how are you feeling about the surrogate being pregnant? Had you tried yourself? Hope you are doing ok.

@Dochas12111 there's been quite a lot of stress with it, but hopefully things will be smooth now. We tried unassisted but I have a short luteal phase, most likely because of breast feeding. I didn't want to stop breast feeding, my supply has gone down and I'm on domperidone, as I'd like to be able to feed the surrogate baby. Hopefully everything goes well and there are 5 euploids left (we've used 10 so far, 6 in me and 4 through surrogacy), so I'm hoping I can deal with the documents to try and get them all in one place and could then try in me in the future if that's the way we want to go. But everything is so expensive!

Congrats @2021ivfagain @Gardenlady543

@Dochas12111 thinking of you and hope all well on the scan next week.
thanks for checking in. We had no embryos as they all arrested by day 4. It came as a shock having always had great progression and quality blasts despite low egg numbers. Clinic are bascially laying blame at my egg quality (can it really have crashed in 12 months?) and have no ideas or suggestions at all. Just said we could do same protocol and hope for different result. We’ve paid for this cycle in the package so feel financially we should carry on and do it with them but feel really lost.

@Enfys23 I’m so sorry. I can only tell you that I’ve been there. I had one cycle when fsh was too high where nothing actually fertilised. I had another cycle where I had blastocysts that were discarded as they were not good enough to freeze or transfer. It’s awful but I believe a lot can be due to protocol. The fact you were pregnant naturally is good. What dosage of drugs were you on? Are you with Access Fertility? If the growth was slower, it could be the oestrogen priming went on for too long. If fsh is very low from oestrogen priming, it needs more fsh to grow follicles. I found my best cycle was when I did not stim for too long.

I would ask your ivf clinic what changes they will make to improve things. Have they tested the sperm for dna fragmentation issues?