The Trials and Tribulations of Trying to Conceive when its just not happening (12m+)

staffiecat

fluffnutter wrote: »

I didn't have an HSG as part of my fertility investigations. I had a laparoscopy and dye under general anaesthetic. Obviously it wasn't painful (bit tender afterwards) but I've been left with an ugly keloid scar in my tummy button plus I had the stress and anxiety of a GA (I'm not great with medical stuff!).

Anyone know why a consultant would suggest one procedure over another?

I think the main reason that I had the HSG done first was because I had had the mc so the consultant was convinced that it was a blockage issue and this would 'fix' me. It didn't and then I presented with other problems hence going in for the lap but because I had blocked tubes before they decided to test that again. TBH I think I would have rathered have the lap and everything done at once but I would say its a cost issue and they just weigh up pros and cons. My scars are quite good though, can barely notice them but touching my belly button feels very strange as I can feel the skin knitted together underneath. Yuck.

sarahs999

HI all

Feeling pretty gross - filthy cold, spent day in bed yesterdya but work is full on this week so had to come in. Bleargh.

We've got our appt with Dr Shehata tonight. Excited but a bit stressed too, not sure why. I guess it's because if he can't help that's probably it as far as a second child goes. It'll be either adoption or surrogacy, neither of which fills me with much joy. Anyway, hugs to all who need them. Fingers crossed for the Saturday testers!

Sx

Runnerduck

been talking to the clinic today, oh's results were similar to last time, and we can only have ICSI which i was expecting anyway, so it looks like now egg collection will be scheduled for the beginning of april as long as my Af arrives on time fingers crossed xx

hope all in 2ww still keeping there spirits up and hoping to see some good news on here at the weekend xx

we have got 2 weekends away planned for march so hopefully i will be fully relaxed by the time we get to our treatment.

sexki11en

Oh Ju, I'm so thrilled for you about the job! I know you've not been happy work wise for a long time. I have absolutely everything crossed for you for Saturday as well.

I'm not having a great week this week. It would have been my 20 week scan and all the girls in my IVF cycle (all 5 of us were lucky enough to fall) are posting pink or blue. I know I shouldn't look but I can't help it. I've burst into tears at work several times this week.

NHS has done all they can do for us, so now we save for self funded treatment. Which is going to take at least a year as we sadly don't have a spare £5k kicking around.

What annoys me about all this is the whole 'oh yes, you have MF - lets treat it with IVF instead of looking at what you can do to improve it'

I just feel so helpless not being able to do anything. We're back to TTC naturally of course but not holding out any hope. It'd be silly to put ourselves through that....

Sorry for the whinge guys, am struggling to cope with it all at the moment.

SK x

chickpea

That's really rough Sexkitten. I'd be the same though, about looking at everyone's 20 wk scan results. It hurts, but you have to know about other people at the same time.

Good luck with saving cash - are you young enough to do egg-sharing at all? Although, saying that I'm not sure it's something I'd be able to do, in case it didn't work for me, but did for someone else with one of my eggs.

Primmer

Sk - hugs, don't blame you for looking for the others even when you know it hurts. I hope you can save up to try again but I know it's a big amount to raise.

sexki11en

chickpea wrote: »

That's really rough Sexkitten. I'd be the same though, about looking at everyone's 20 wk scan results. It hurts, but you have to know about other people at the same time.

Good luck with saving cash - are you young enough to do egg-sharing at all? Although, saying that I'm not sure it's something I'd be able to do, in case it didn't work for me, but did for someone else with one of my eggs.

Hey Chickpea. Egg sharing's not an option for me. At the grand old age of 32, my FSH levels are high enough to indicate early menopause and I respond really poorly to stimms (4 eggs collected last time, only 3 of those mature at full dose of stimms)

Nope, saving is all we can do now.....

SK x

chickpea

Hi SK - Could you go abroad? I'm just thinking out loud, so sorry if this is a really stupid suggestion. I bet there are clinics in Prague or Nicosia that are a lot cheaper, but quite accessible/English speaking..?

Just a thought, maybe not practical for you.

Have you read 'Inconceivable' by Julia Indichova? She had similar issue with high FSH, and managed to conceive in the end. Although she had to take extreme measures re lifestyle. Including colonic irrigation, which I was tragic enough to try myself this summer. I didn't get pg and thinking back, I'm just happy I still have a functioning bowel..!

sarahs999

Morning all.

Had a good meeting with Dr Shehata last night. I liked him; found him very straightforward and to the point, though I can see why some may have found him a bit flash and gung-ho. He was very quick to get to the nub of my problems, and was utterly astonished that I have not been told to take aspirin every day for the rest of my life, given my double thrombophilia (I started taking it last night after I got home!). He said I was extremely lucky not to have had some sort of blood clotting emergency, especially given my history of longhaul flights several times a year (I used to live in Cambodia). He also said he would give me double the dose of clexane once I'm pregnant to combat the double thrombophilia.

We then talked about my miscarriages and natural killer cells, and he said he would expect to see that I have a higher than average count. We did the blood tests there and then (cheaper than I had thought - 'only' £395, because I have had so many tests done before - and kept the results - there was only the NKC left to test for!) and we will be going to see him again in about a month to talk about the results and the treatment that I can expect once I'm pregnant.

I found the meeting pretty much as I expected (nice swanky premises, helpful staff.... you get what you pay for!), but DH was a bit quiet on the way home. When I asked him why, he was full of woe about all the things we had gone through, and how difficult it's been and the challenges, all the scary pre-eclampsia stuff (the doc was again astonished that they didn't test for my thrombophilias straight after my pre-eclampsia - I was never told that that might be the cause, and in fact no one has ever made the connection out loud to me before, even though I have asked my usual consultant whether the blood clotting problems might have caused the pre-ec). He started saying that it might be too dangerous to try again (no one has ever said this to us), and that maybe he was coming to terms with just having one child. It made me realise how as women we live with these things day in dy out; we're always thinking about our cycles and our history, whether we're waiting to ov, waiting to test, waiting for AF, taking temperatures, eating the right food, filling ourselves with medication, blah blah. But the men just get on with their lives and all they have to do is BD when we tell them to! It made me a bit impatient actually and I realised how I've actually been feeling quite alone about this fertility journey. Also, you know, we were paying quite a lot for this consultation, wouldn't you think he might have looked up the website, found some information, thought of some questions? But when I asked him on the way there whether he'd read up on anything he looked astonished at the idea! I don't know where he thinks all my knowledge comes from - does it just appear to me in a dream? :mad: It's been who has made all the connections and pushed for all the appoitnments and found the next specialist down the line, for the past five years, and I just felt last night that it would kind of help if my husband was on the same bloody page!

Sorry. That became a bit of a rant. But a justified one I think.

fluffnutter

sexki11en wrote: »

Hey Chickpea. Egg sharing's not an option for me. At the grand old age of 32, my FSH levels are high enough to indicate early menopause and I respond really poorly to stimms (4 eggs collected last time, only 3 of those mature at full dose of stimms)

Nope, saving is all we can do now.....

SK x

Have you considered egg donation, sexki11en? I too had a poor response to stimulation resulting in poor embryo quality and a series of failed IVFs using my own eggs. I'm now 21 weeks pregnant with a donated egg (and OH's sperm) plus five more blastocysts in deep freeze! It was something I hadn't really considered, until my consultant mentioned it. Instantly I knew it was 'right'. The way it was couched to me was that I might fall pregnant using my own eggs but it was unlikely and each IVF attempt was likely to be throwing money down the drain (although it was put more sensitively than that!) Far better to spend the money on something that has a better chance of resulting in a pregnancy (80% at the clinic we went to as opposed to 5% using my own eggs). We had a couple of counselling sessions about it and I can honestly say it's the best decision we ever made.

It wasn't a lot more expensive than IVF using my own eggs. We went to Spain and the donors there are paid £750 so we obviously had this as an extra cost plus a small amount to help fund the clinic's advertising campaigns to attract donors.

If you want to talk about it some more, you can always PM me x