Pregnant (IVF) Worriers

[Dildals]

Hi everyone,

This thread is for all you incessant worriers out there, not necessarily limited to IVF-ers, although I get the feeling the people who have had trouble TTC are more prone to worrying than others!

A few of us graduated from the IVF thread (link below) and are having a go at our own thread to get out of the other IVF-ers hair! So get your roomy jogging bottoms on for some virtual hand holding, mutual symptom spotting and staying sane until the next scan date.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/conception/1691674-Excellent-Egg-Buddies-continued-Anyone-having-IVF-ICSI-in-Jan-Feb-and-March-2013-please-join-us

It's exciting isn't it expat? X

Agreed, Al, I think extended families are pretty good really (apart from the usual low level feuds and awkward bastards!). I have some great relationships with siblings, cousins, second cousins, aunties and so on. I like my daughter having a variety of 'aunties' and 'uncles' who are vaguely related to us. Plus we have almost nothing to do with DHs lot which will be awkward to explain when DDs are older.

Yes Shazza, you must feel like Shazzlet is an actual miracle! In my opinion all these hard won babies are that little bit more precious though.

Pink is rife for girls. I don't mind a bit of it but you get bombarded by pink clothes as gifts. Up to about 2.5 you can dress them how you like but once they can choose all the peer group pressure comes into play. I'm hoping they grow out of it eventually.

It is Shazza! We should all put doubts and fears to one side (I'm a big believer in self fulfilling prophecy) and enjoy!

I am a bit wary of having a doppler Gin. You wouldn't really know what you should be looking for anyway and so I'm not sure it would give you much assurance.

We are a big family Mariana. I'm one of 6, they all had kids and now those kids are having kids. My parents were one of 6, they all had kids and their kids have had kids who have had kids! DH's family has young kids so it really is all over the place.

Gosh expat that's crazy! Brilliant though. My mum is 1 of 6 so I've got loads of cousins and some of them have had kids. My bro and SIL from hell have 1 and 1 on the way. DP has a huge family all with kids so its great.

I feel more excited as each day passes. It is a miracle Mariana. And I'm so grateful.

Talking of miracles we haven't heard from blondebaby. I hope she is ok. Blondebaby if you are out there I hope things have sunk in and all is well.

gin I had the heartbeat thing...great for reassurance but it did sometimes take ten minutes to find which was terrifying.

shazza we are about fifteen grand down but still think its worth it! We sold our georgeous preteen vintage VW campervan to pay for this one last time (couldn't face getting into tons of debt again) but luckily the gamble has paid off so far. Am going to start looking for eBay maternity bargains...

mariana my Dd is exactly the same. I'm not a pink fan and made such an effort to buy lovely red, blue etc clothes and now she is head to toe pink!! Have I ever mentioned I love your name? I'm a geography teacher...have been teaching about the Marianas Trench today, made me think of you!

expat that's ace. Must be reassuring to know you have another chance. Glad your scan went week, I absolutely dread them, nice when they go well though!

sweetie how was the mw today? X

*pristeen, not sodding preteen. Fucking iPad

I think whatever it costs you financially will always be worth it if you get a baby at the end of it (or two of course!) What I can't really imagine is if you paid out £15k and were unsuccessful. When do you stop? And how does that make you feel? I feel desperately sorry for people in that situation.

Glad you like my name, Crisps, I know little of geography but it makes me smile. Similarly, all the baby stuff I chose was bright colours and very non gendered - I was asking for trouble really. I'm not ungrateful of course but out of all the gifts I've received for Tiny Trenchlet only two have not been pink - one notably from a French friend. (I wonder if the French even have the pink / blue tyranny. Does Belgium have it?)

I think the pink for girls thing is a (retrograde) fad. When I was a child in the seventies and eighties I did not ever have any pink clothes and my mother was far from a rabid feminist. You know it used to be (iebefore the 19th c) that pink was for boys because it was considered light red, which was a manly colour and blue for girls after the Virgin Mary.

Morning ladies

Fairy lets go back to that time . I wonder how many people will tell me that my son will 'turn out gay' if I dress him in a pink top.

Crisps it is so worth it. Every penny. Although we were lucky and didnt have to pay for treatment in the end, We spent a couple of £k on private appts and therapies, supplements, tests etc which has meant very lean living but it's definitely worth it now. Yes my friends carry designer handbags but I'm carrying my baby.

Definitely look at eBay. I've now got 1 pair of jeans, 2 dresses and 2 tops winging their way to me and I've spent less than £45 inc postage. Of course it might all be rubbish in which case ill have to resell everything. It is addictive though. I'm going to stop now until I get a better idea of what size I'm going to be.

This weekend I'm going to eBay lots of my old stuff to raise funds (for new stuff)!

Huge hello to everyone else. I hope you are all ok.

At least it's Friday and only a few hours of work til freedom.

X

Oh and I've signed up to the local freecycle as well. Being arty farty means that unfortunately funds are low but the upside is that hopefully we can be creative with what others throw away

Happy Friday everyone!
Has everyone seen the news from the Care group of clinics today, about IVF pregnancy rates of 78% using a new photo technology to spot the 'best' growing embies? Apparently it could be used to rule out chromosomal problems. I always take these things with a pinch of salt - it sounds encouraging but a lot more research is needed. Although clearly, if we decide to try for a sibling for this one (assuming this one goes to plan - I don't think I'm ever going to take that for granted) I wouldn't mind adding that on - it's going to be £750 apparently. We are very very lucky in that we could afford more IVF but the impact on us was much more than a financial one, I hated the constant feelings of impending failure mixed with hope, mixed with anger and a nice old dose of jealously. Gah.
11+2 today. For the past few days I've been feeling a little 'odd' when walking any distance/ staying on my feet for any length of time. Not quite faint, but more aware of my heart beating if that makes ANY kind of sense? Basically just 'a bit iffy'.
Have lovely weekends everyone. PS I just saw blondebaby on another thread and it sounded like she's doing OK so everything crossed.

MrsHY, maybe your bp is lowering slightly? And yes, it is far much more than financial costs. I never ever want to relive the stress of ttc.

On a cheerier note, I've just been ebaying too. I've bid on some drapey tops in a bigger size than usual so I can breastfeed without getting too much out in public, all my bids are 99p! I'll dig out stuff to sell on this weekend too.

MrsH we were at Care and used the embyscope, so I can not fault the results it had for us plus we got a copy of the time lapse recording of our embies, it is quite fascinating to be honest. We were sold on the fact that embies are kept in the optimum conditions and weren't been removed from the incubator. I thought it worth the £750, although DH did say at the time "if it is that good why isn't it offered as standard" - they couldn't really answer!

I am not sure I could emotionally cope with the IVF process again, and I found the donor IVF worse than my own. I felt more removed and not knowing what was going it. It was a real emotional roller coaster. We have a single frostie left if we need it in the future.

Been booked in this morning. The midwife was nice enough but pretty clueless on twin pregnancies, IVF pregnancies or donor egg pregnancies. So pretty useless for me then really. She has given me a few booklets on food etc and booked me to go back at 12 weeks. Dildals and Crisps did they mention nuchal screening in twin pregnancy to you? The midwife didn't know if it was different with twins. I will be classed as High Risk and be consultant led in the Twins Unit.

Hello everyone

I heard the news about the embyscope thingy. It sounds great. What a positive experience you had sweetie using it. We went to a talk by the care team at the fertility show and they talked about it then. Hopefully it will become standard practice.

I'm sorry your midwife didn't install lots of confidence sweetie. Maybe as time progresses and it sinks in you will feel more confident.

MrsH I guess try to rest when you can and try not to be on your feet for too long. Hope you feel ok soon.

I'm having to step away from eBay now! It's addictive isnt Mariana? I love a bargain. Can't wait to flog all my stuff although it is a faff and a half to list it all.

I'm so bored at work despite having tons to do. No managers in today so my colleagues are very chatty and driving me mad.

sweet It was the GP that gave me the leaflet on nuchal screening and asked whether I wanted it, not MW. My MW was pretty clueless too ...

There's an NHS leaflet on the net somewhere that explains nuchal screening for twins. Google it. The screening is a little less accurate than for singletons because they average out the blood results over 2 babies. They do the measurements for both separetely and both get their own risk assessment. The leaflet also talks about what happens if your risk assessment comes back bad, but let's not dwell on that for now! I found it answered all my questions.

I did read that article about IVF this morning. I also read something when I was doing IVF about videoing the embies continuously so they can pick out the best ones. Same thing. Fascinating.

fairy despite growing up in 70s as well I def remember trying to get me to wear this dusty rose pink dress with pink ribbon. I was not keen. Worst fashion faux pas my mum inflicted on me was a pair of velvet knickerbockers (burgundy) with a white dress shirt and matching velvet dickie bow and ribbons in my hair ... I mean ... Seriously ... I am totally going to do the same to my kids though!

Haha I had the same knickerbockers Dildals! Oh the glamour.

I totally agree about the cost. We would have paid it if we'd needed to.

I had burgundy velvet knickerbockers too! They must have been da bomb circa 1982.

I would expect a midwife to know about twin pregnancies, aren't they supposed to be experts on preggo things? What else do they study? My midwife said that the only thing that sets ivf pregnancies apart from any other in terms of NHS care is that you definitely know the date of conception.

Which make me wonder dildals if we had ET on the same day why do we have different due dates? Were yours blastocysts too?

I also had those knickerbockers and a cream blouse with a lacy frilly front. I must have looked like a small, gay, highwayman.

In my experience there is huge variety in the knowledge of midwives. I have found booking in midwives to be not very on the ball and community midwives can be fairly spectacularly ignorant, but usually the ones on the wards and those in specialist clinics are pretty good. What I have found is that NHS consultant obstetricians are always shit hot and pretty brilliant, although my hospital is a particularly good one so probably attracts good people..

Feeling seriously left out as pretty sure I was knickerbocker-less!!

That is amazing! I NEVER ever found people who ALSO were made to wear knickerbockers! I feel so much better about it now!

fairy I sort of thought (but never asked) that at the first dating scan they look at how big embie is and that they derive conception date from their size, which can differ because implantation might have happened later/earlier, but not sure if that stacks up.

Hi everyone
dildals don't they just date from the 'first day of your last period' (obviously made up for us IVF/FET-ers). So if ET is the same for two people, their DD will be too? I'm no expert though. Have just been told that my DD shouldn't now budget!
Girls - I had a maternity wear boon this morning. I posted something on our local community forum about needing maternity wear and had lots of offers from local people wanting to sell theirs, so I ended up with two nearly new Isabella Oliver dresses, one new pair of Isabella Oliver capri pants, and lord knows how many dresses, tunics, leggings and shirts for £150. Really pleased! Just need to get myself a couple of other bits for work and a couple of pairs of jeans (going to try the Topshop Leigh ones after the advice on here) and I'll be set. Don't even need any of it yet!! Just worried I might have peaked too soon!!
On the Topshop Leigh front - I almost always avoid Topshop jeans as I've been 'blessed' shall we say in the bum and thigh department. I'm normally quite confident in wearing a 10 anywhere else but wonder if I should plump, so to speak, for a size up? What do you think dildals?

Hi all. Dildals, MrsH, don't they calculate using the date of retrieval if it's a fresh IVF and for frozen the age of the embryo (no of days)?

I've been on a major shopping frenzy today and have lots of lovely loot, none of which I need. I was looking for a present for a friend's baby and kept on getting distracted by what I'd like for ours. Have never let myself think that before.

Expat yes, that sounds spot on. And good news about your loot!