Fertility By Design Forums / Coping with Infertility / Infertility Forums

Second ivf attempt

JulieD — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 18:27:46 GMT

Hi everyone! This is my first post. May 22, I am starting my 2nd attempt at ivf. It has been almost 3 years since my 1st. In July of '06 I did follistim for 8 days and then had my cycle cancelled because my estradiol was over 7000. I was of course devastated. The raging hormones didn't help. In september I started again and we transferred 2 embryos. I had 19 eggs retrieved. 14 healthy- we ended up with 12 embryos. We did a day 3 transfer. 2 weeks later(my birthday- go figure!) I started my cycle the day before my blood test. I can't even put into words how I felt that day. I didn't have a plan b because I just knew it would work...Well, here we are 3 years and many anti-depressants later- my heart is finally ready to try again. I have a new dr. My old dr. retired. New dr discovered I have pcos. Why the other one didn't know this I'll never know. That makes me a cheap date with the follistim! Oh- our embryos ended up not healthy enough to freeze, which is possibly why it didn't work. This time he is adding menopur to the follistim and cutting my dose almost in half so I will stim a little longer. Trying to get those eggs healthy! I am so excited to get started again!! Has anyone had success with menopur?

How do you know when it is time to stop?

Amy Dale — Sun, 15 May 2011 20:28:07 GMT

My husband and I have been married and trying to conceive for 7 years now. For the first 5 years I was diagnosed with PCOS, even though in the beginning I was only about 15 pounds overweight. All my doctors could tell me was to lose weight, and so I struggled for years only to end up 75 pounds heavier, full of self hatred and disappointment. I could tell, even though he would never say it, that my husband blamed me. After all, doctor after doctor repeatedly told us that "all I had to do was lose weight". After visiting four different specialists who would not look at anything other than my size my primary care physician ran yet another random blood test. He had run LH and FSH levels every year as part of a baseline, but for some reason he thought to compare it with my first test taken years ago and felt that my results could not just be attributed to my weight gain, especially since there was no improvement when I would lose weight. He sent my for a CAT scan and saw a tiny tumor on my pituitary gland. Apparently this tumor, which could be a result of advanced PCOS, but could also have been the cause of PCOS symptoms, made my body think that I was already pregnant, or had just given birth. As a result - no ovulation, no baby & massive weight gain.Since then I have started Cabergoline for the tumor and started fertility treatment to increase ovulation. In two years we have done Clomid, Femara, timed intercourse with Follistim & Ovidrill, and 6 rounds of IUI with Follistim & Ovidrill. Now, our insurance has terminated the limited ART coverage they offered and my husband and I have to bear the financial burden of both the treatment and the drug therapies on our own. After two years, we are exhausted emotionally, and financially. We just had the most recent IUI, and our doctors have basically told us if IUI were going to work, it could have already. Our next step is IVF, which we have neither the money nor the emotional stamina for, so I don't know what we will do when this IUI fails. All I know, is that I am tired, but I also don't know when to say enough is enough. Every month I tell myself I can not go though it again. The disappointment is too much, and the impact on my marriage is extreme. Sex is no longer for any purpose other than a pending disappointment, and we seem to have lost the ability to talk about it. We can discuss anything else, but our fertility issues are completely off the table - both of us terrified at what the end of the discussion may bring. An end to the treatments? Acceptance of defeat and a life without a child of our own? Or something much worse - the end of the marriage? I don't know if I can spend the rest of my life looking at him, knowing that I am the reason he will never know what it is like to hold his child and I don't know that I want him to spend the rest of his life fighting the instinct to blame me. He says that just the two of us for ever is enough for him, but not only do I not believe it - I don't know if it is enough for me. Somedays I think that I can face life alone easier than life waking next to a constant reminder of what I can not give him.

A Second Try with IUI or on to IVF?

hopefulmostdays — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 08:01:54 GMT

Our first attempt with IUI was unsuccessful with one mature folical on insemination day. We were heart broken and have asked the doctor to be more aggressive with the next round. The plan? To start Follistim two days earlier. No increase in the dose though. I feel like this only slightly increases our chance for pregnancy and wonder if we should skip another IUI and move on to IVF? Thoughts/comments/recommendations from those who have been there? Many thanks and best of luck to you.

Early LH surge on Follistim

sal22 — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 10:38:42 GMT

I've done two cycles of Follistim with IUI and both times my LH surged naturally after just 6 days of injections. So even though I was getting lots of good follicles both times, the eggs released before they had time to get fully mature because of my LH surge so early in the cycle. Has anyone else had this problem?

Frustrated with my care

clbean — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 10:04:20 GMT

Hi everyone. I am new to this board, so here is my story. We tried for one year to conceive on our own. I am a marathon runner, and after I went off the pill, my period was very irregular. When I was training for my last marathon, it stopped altogether. We saw a RE and I was instructed to stop running and she started me on Follistim. I was converted to IVF because I responded so well, however, only 2 eggs fertilized and we did not get pregnant. I was VERY unhappy with the care I received- no one ever went over side effects on the injections, every time I called the office I felt like I got a different story or explanation. So we got a second opinion, but by the time I got the appointment I had already started the meds for my next round of IVF. However, the MD we did see was a bit shocked at my story and did not agree with my current MD's course of treatment. My insurance company would not let me transfer mid-cycle so we stayed with the same MD. I developed OHSS with this cycle, but did get pregnant. Unfortunately, I had no heartbeat at 8 weeks and had to have a D&C. Obviously, this has been overwhelming to us and we are trying to heal. We have 3 frozen D5 blasts left that we want to transfer. We were going to stay where we were for this last cycle, but I am again having second thoughts. When I spoke to the RN yesterday she told me my insurance approved a fresh cycle- she had no idea I was doing frozen. It just makes me nervous that there is such a lack of communication in this office and I am worried that we are not doing the right thing. Has anyone else changed doctors, and if so, at what point?? Sorry for such a long post!

First time IVF patient

babytoro — Fri, 13 May 2011 18:38:58 GMT

Hello,I am new at all of this. I have been married for almost seven years and haven't been able to conceive and it is getting depressing. I just cant wait to see my hubby holding our babies. It would be such a wonderful view being that my hubby has a baby face himself. Any advise, I am kind of scared about all of medications I have to take. I am not even used to take Tylenol for headaches, I just deal with it.

When do you stop?

HeatherinOhio — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 14:35:13 GMT

I have not spent as much time TTC as most of you but I'm tired. I waited 5 YEARS for my husband to want a child and the joy of TTC soon went to misery because of my unexplained infertility. 4 rounds of clomid resulted in follicles each month but all were BFN. I'm now on my 2nd round of Follistim in the 2WW and if this is a BFN I don't know to continue or not. I know that this decision is different for everyone but at this point I just want my old life back. I want the happiness I had before infertility invaded my life and took over. My RE will only do 4 cycles of injectables so I'm only at the halfway point. My husband and I are not interested in IVF so the road of TTC is almost over. The sad part is I am so beat down I don't care if I ever have a baby. I just want to be happy again.

Meditation helps with stress

wheresdrdebbie — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:22:48 GMT

Hi- I am just through my first cycle of IVF/ICSI. Our journey started back in April and we had one cycle that was aborted and I just had an embryo transfer a few days ago. I started meditating and learning a bit about buddhist philosophy a few years ago, and when I started this process, I increased my daily meditation to 15-30minutes/day during the cycle and am currently still doing it.As an OB/GYN- I knew how stressful the process could be, and when we started the process, I was totally stressed out. But it took us a long time to get off the launching pad, and then I started increasing my meditation, relaxed a bit more, and stopped trying to control a situation in which you have very little control over(except eating well and in general being healthy). One other thing I found very important - which may seem counter-intuitive- was to ask less questions than more. I tried never to ask questions I didn't want to know the answers to, like percentage success rates etc..... I just put my trust in the doctor. And even though I am an OB/GYN, I know very little about infertility as I practiced community medicine and international medicine before all this. Another bit of advice- at my ultrasound appointments, I did not count my follicles and did not follow their growth either. Now the transfer has happened, I am surprised how calm and happy I am, and I actually thought the whole process was amazing. It truly is a miracle to have these embryos inside even if they don't "stick". I feel privileged that I even had the opportunity to be able to give it a try.Maybe my point of view will change if I have to do this over and over again, but for now, it's working.

EGG RETRIEVAL

fiorellino — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 12:18:23 GMT

I am a few days away from it and I have a tons of questions popping through my mind. Does somebody have already had it? I will have a light full anesthesia... How long does it take to get fit again after?

first IVF

trying1 — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 17:21:21 GMT

After 4 years and 4 failed IUI's we've decided to take the plunge and spend our entire life savings on one try of IVF. It makes me tear up just writing that. I can't believe I'm 32 and have to deal with this! Who would have ever thought getting pregnant would be so hard. I feel like I've spent most of my adult life trying NOT to get pregnant and now that I WANT to get pregnant it's not as easy as I thought.We're dubbed as "unexplained infertility" which is frustrating in and of itself. The pressure of spending all this money on one try is killing me. All the information I read on the subject says make sure you're not stressed. I'm stressed just thinking about not being stressed. My day 1 is Nov. 2nd. I've started shots of Lupron, started birth control and I'm on thyroid meds. As the days go on my shots increase, my meds increase, appointments with doctors, acupuncturist, and massues double. I had to buy a white board just to keep it all straight! How is everyone else dealing with all this? Any helpful suggestions for de stressing?

my eggs were not big enough to do retrieval for ivf

bravo_george — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 23:44:24 GMT

after 11 days of medicine, menopur, gonal 300, lupron,& saizen my Dr told me he was going to stop the medicine and not go forward with the retrieval..i am devasted as you can imagine..i just turned 39 a week ago.has anyone had this experience? this is my first attempt..i have 4 eggs only 1 that is 10 m the other 3 were under 5..would love any info you may have or advice..we may try IU i go in for another ultrasound this weekend if it is growing on its own we are going to try IU

How sucessful is FET?

hoping2Bmommy — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:10:38 GMT

Hi ladies. I am new to post to this site, although I have read posts periodically over the last several months. Here's my story: I am 39 years old and have a 16 year old son. I always knew that I wanted children (not just child). I have been with my significant other for 14 years and do not know why I waited so long to try again. We started trying in November of 2007. I got pregnant in February on 2008, but it ended in disaster. I was rushed to surgery in March of 2008, bleeding internally with my right tube bursting. In June they tested my left tube and I was told it was completely clear. Since then I have had three rounds of IUI with clomid, two rounds of IUI with much stronger fertility meds. One of the rounds of IUI with stronger medication was an IVF attempt, but I could only produce three eggs, so we decided to switch to IUI. Since my ovaries were not responding well, we decided to use a donor. Everything went very well with the donor. We ended up with 8 embryos. Two being transferred and 6 frozen (although not all the best quality). I was thrilled on Tuesday (9/29) when I got the call that my HCG was 52 and one embryo had implanted. Just as quickly I received a call yesterday (10/1) that my chg. had declined to 28. They are keeping me on the meds until Monday, when they will retest just to be sure there was no lab error (not likely). I am devastated. If I cannot get pregnant with donor egg then I guess it is never going to happen. Each failed attempt just makes me that much older. I will be talking with my doctor about doing my next cycle with FE, but I wondered what my chances are. Has anyone experienced this and been successful? We have completely tapped out our finances to fund this donor cycle and do not have the money to try this again. I am wishing I would have decided to try adoption, but really wanted to experience pregnancy again, since I was so young the first time around. I also wonder why my body does not recognize pregnancy since I have been pregnant before. Please share your experiences. I can really use some support right now. I cannot stop crying and all I can think about is how I will be miscarrying in the next week (not something to look forward to). Sorry this is so long...

Frozen Embryo Cycle

Jhoppi — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 22:23:15 GMT

My DH and I have been ttc for four years. Due to male infertility, our only option was IVF as my husband won't consider donor sperm. Luckily we were able to do an aspiration and had 11 viles of his own sperm to try from. We did two fresh cyles last year. The first failed. The second ended in miscarriage after about 7 weeks. Luckily with our last cycle, we were able to freeze four embryos. I am very apprehensive about this cycle as I don't even know if any of the embryos will make it through the thaw process. Does anyone else have any experience with an FET? I just started on the Lupron with an April 15th transfer date...hey, thought it would be symbolic with how much we got to claim with two fresh cycles last year!! Thanks!

2nd IVF Cycle was cancelled

milkaymay09 — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 22:17:06 GMT

Hello everyone,My name is Gina and my hubby and I have been TTC for 2 years now. I have a 13 year old daughter from a previous relationship and my hubby doesn't have any other than he takes care of my daughter like she is his own. Well, both of my tubes are blocked and I have severe scar tissue which is attached to my colon which is sitting on top of my tubes making it impossible to repair due to the damage it can do to my colon. So we were advised that IVF is our only attempt. Our 1st IVF cycle we m/c at 8 weeks and after we transferred 3 frozen embies, it also resulted in a m/c at 8 weeks. That was so hard for the both of us (I know for me more than my hubby). I had to go to counseling because I became so depressed. Well, we started our 2nd attempt at IVF on Jan 2, 2009. Everything was going wonderful until I devolped hyperstimulation and was put on bed rest. My estrogen levels started off real high that they made me come down on the follistim (300 to 150 to 75 to coasting). I went in on a Saturday for a U/S and blood work and estrogen levels was 2846.....I had 20 follicles in the right ovary and 20 in the left. Well, I had to go back in on that Monday (Jan 26) for another U/S and blood work (this was suppose to be the week of reterival). U/S showed that some of the follicles that were good sizes had dropped in it size, but the Dr or the tech did not tell me this while I was there. The nurse always call at least 2-3 hours after I leave to give me the results and this time she would have been able to tell me when the retervial would be. 4 hours went by and no phone call, so about 3:30 that afternoon, I went ahead and called and the nurse said she had some bad news. My estergoen levels went from 2846 (Saturday) to 431 (Monday). The Dr say he could not give me a reason of why and how this happen. The nurse was like, the Dr made the lab check my blood 5 different times and then made them retest everyone that came in that day to see if it was something dealing with the lab (error or something). Well everyone came back fine and mines came back saying the same thing, 431. The Dr gave me 2 choices, come in that Wednesday for the retervial with the hopes of getting two eggs or cancel everything and start over. They advised that if I went ahead with the retervial there would be a strong chance that the two eggs made not be of good quality to get us pregnant. So my hubby and I decided to cancel it and try again. Who knew that it would be this hard to conceive. I mean, I have a daughter so why is it so hard to conceive agian.Well, if I don't know anything else, I do know this. God is a Good God and his is worthy to be praised. Even when we don't understand why things happen, especially things like loosing 2 pregnancy, but God's words says that he will not put no more on us than we can bare. I have Faith knowing that in Due Season, God is going to bless my hubby and I with a Happy, Healthy, Whole baby of our own. I trust God and right now trust and Faith is all I have to depend on.Right now, we were waiting for my cycle to come on so we can start IVF again. It never came and I starting hurting real bad so I went to see my RE and he did an U/S and found a 5 cm cyst on my right ovary. So right now I am taking provera to make me have a cycle and my RE say that it should make the cyst go away and depending on how things look then will determine when we can start again.So if anyone out there has had a ICF ccle cancelled due to Estrogen levels were high and then they dropped, please let me know.Thanks and I am sorry this email was so long.Best wishes to everyone trying to conceive.Gina

Frustrated

K.A.M. — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 17:18:12 GMT

Hi all,

It's been 5 years since I found out that I could not bear children. My emotions range from indifference to fits of crying. I've decided this year to try infertility treatments. Wish me luck!

What is your husband's attitude toward infertility treatment?

cygx1 — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 17:48:00 GMT

Your response is voluntary

Moving on to Adoption

GirlAtHeart — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 13:42:30 GMT

Hi Everyone,My heart was crushed on Monday. I got a call that my Beta level had dropped and to stop the meds. It was over just like that. I was five weeks pregnant.I am devastated, but not defeated. My heart is broken at the moment, but I just need to get back up and keep going, because no one is going to do it for me.I would like to thank all of you who posted comments, because even though we have different details, our stories are similar in that we all have the same goal - to be a mommy.We have pretty much used up all our money - about $50k. I'm hoping we can give motherhood one last try by looking into adoption. We don't really have the cash for it, but I hope we will find a way.It would give me great comfort for any of you in cycle to post your progress. I'm hoping to hear that some of you were successful.It's funny, because not long ago, I wouldn't be able to stand hearing anyone else's good news. Now, I am ready to hear it. I know that we have all struggled and it would just cheer my heart to hear something good. Even if you have bad news, just share it. It will help you, and actually, help me too.I have a request from two of you:WackyJacqui - You said you adopted...how long was the process? International or Domestic? How old was your child when you adopted?LbandBuggy - You wrote that you were going to move along in your China adoption. Does this mean you have previously applied and just put it into a hold status? I read 3-4 years and didn't know if that meant your waiting period or your time period for going through with it.Best of luck to everyone. P.S. ** I am posting this in several areas on this website to make sure I reach as many of you as possible. **