May/June Cycle Buddies

[souris]

Hello everyone and thank you all for your warm welcome!

Hope you all had a happy easter and did not eat too many chocolate!!
No egg hunting here in Dubai, because the eggs would not last long in the sun! It is already between 35-38C degres (I know that most of you are from the States, but I dont know the Farenheit ... sorry)

I got an email from my doc, saying that I might have some changes in my treatment this round... she did not say more, so I dont know if it has to do with my miscarriage or else...

I see most of you guys are on the BCP. I have had 3 IVF so far and never been on the pill...

Sophie, my 1st cycle was a short protocol : 8 days of stims and nothing else!! We were living in Azerbaijan at the time and went in a private clinic. I did not know at the time that IVF was free in France...
When I found out, I was so happy because we would not have been able to pay for another private cycle...
So that is why I am going to France!

Ok I better go, we are homeless at the end of the month as our landlord is selling the house we are in, and I need to find something quick! Housing is very expansive in Dubai and I cannot find anything we like for our budget!!

Take care
souris
xxx

[CarolynB]

Hi Ladies

Back at home after our trip to Devon to see my parents and youngest sister. We had a lovely weekend although made me sad today that they are not getting any younger and how much they would love us to be able to have a little person. I so wish there was more that we could do to make this happen.

Enough of that! Great to see so many of you are on your way. Feels miles away for me...............

Souris - welcome. You have been through such a lot hun. I have read your posts lots of times on the board. Don't think that we have cycled together before though looking at both our dates. Let's hope that it is 4th time lucky for both of us.

Shantala - hope that you are having an 'ivf break' but that you'll be back with us before too long. Miss you hun

Sophie - Glad that you got your meds. What they said to me about the baths was that I was prone to infection/thrush down there anyway. They give me antibiotics after EC and that always brings it on. They thought that showers therefore would risk aggrevating it less. Does that make any sense at all? I need them to keep a close eye on me lol Zita West has a web site if you are interested in checkingher out. I have not seem her but have read her book

http://www.zitawest.com/start/

Jenn - Hope that AF is not being too rough with you. At least the sooner she is here then the sooner that she will be gone It is great if you can move your cycle forward. I really shall be bring up the rear!

My2LnT - welcome. I am sorry that you have been through so much to get here. Hugs. Looking forward to getting to know you better. I was a Dec-Jan girl but right at the front of the thread. Then after my BFN, I had to take some time out so kind of fell by the wayside. It was also such a massive thread, it was hard to keep track of everyone It is great that your insurance will help you out with 2 more cycles.

Jen - I am sorry that they did not find out sooner for you but the really great news is that they think that know what happened and are able to do something about it. That is terrific. Let's hope that it does the job for you hun I read about the pineapple too and did for cycle 1. It is meant to have something in it - Selenium - in the centre - found in almonds too - that is thought to aid implantation. Lots of the April-May 06 girls drank it. Rather like other threads, it was of course a mix of BFP - BFNs. Sophie - help us - is there any medical evidence or is this just an old wife's tale????

Tanya - cannot believe that you are having Egg hunts in the snow. It has been really warm and sunny in the UK. We walked along the beach yesterday in Devon. Was so pretty and relaxing. We are meant to have a really hot summer in the UK. Time for me to lose some weight to get into all those summer clothes!!! Glad that you have finshed school. Timing seems to have worked out well with your cycle

Angela - Hope that your three course meal worked out well. I love lamb!! Could not have helped you with the menu as not much of a cook myself. Wish that I was better but never seems to work out quite as I plan!!! Hope that you enjoyed the long weekend

Hugs to everyone else.

So a question for some of your lovely ladies. I have not had a hysterscopy before. Had everything else See some of you talk about it. My new clinic wants to do before I start. Please can you tell me a little bit about what is involved please. Under general or sedation? Recovery time? When is it done in a cycle?

Have to call my new clinic this week and find out what other tests they will run over the next month. Usual bloods etc plus immunology testing (which goes to Chicago for analysis??) which I have not had done before. So hope that all these investigations will find something that my other clinic missed.

Anyone, a Monday off work beats being in the office. Especially with the sun shining. My dh is on the golf course as he was great all weekend at my parents doing what I wanted to do. A day of golf was the least that I could let him have with his mates. Trying to decide whether to go shoping................ Tough decision!

Have a great week.

Love to you all.
Carolyn
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[souris]

Hey Caroline,

to answer your question: my doctor told me that a hysteroscopy should be done after AF are finished, because then the cervix is open enough to do the procedure without sedation. I had mine done 1 week after Af, no sedation and I was very apprehensive... Well, it was fine ! no pain whatso ever, just discomfort. I was dreading when she was going to insert the "tube" with the camera at the end of it, but I did not feel it at all! It was quite funny to be able to see my inside on TV!
I am sure they can give you a little something to relax if you need, but dont worry, it is not bad at all

Hope it helps
Take care
Souris

[souris]

oh and i forgot to say that once it was finished (it lasted about 5 min) I was free to go home straight away.
I did have a bit of bleeding the following days, but I think it was because of the placenta I had left. I dont know if normally there are bleeding after...

[nimble]

morning - ok I'm being a little premature here but thought I would pop in and say hi as hopefully I will start my next cycle may/june time.

I was due to test on wednesday (11th) but the wicked cow has arrived today so has put a stop to all that. i will test just in case but it is so severe that I very much doubt that there much hope to hold onto.

One small blessing is that we have had a letter to say that our nhs funding has been approved which means that we get to have one final go. I'm going to check in with my clinic tomorrow to make sure that we can get going again asap.

I've seen some of you guys around on other threads and it will be great to cycle with you.

Souris - so nice to see you - i was wondering how you were doing.

Jackie

[TansRN]

Hello Everyone!


Jackie
That is great about your funding being approved! That does take some of the load off I am sure. Good to have you here. You are not too premature! Join right in it will make the wait go by quicker! Welcome!


Carolyn
Glad to hear that you walked on the beach and all while I dug out the deep winter clothes this weekend! LOL I wish I were on a beach somewhere!!! lol That sounds good for the soul.

Souris
Good luck finding a house. Nothing like a little stress eh?


Sophie
Yeah I am a POAS maniac. I can't help it. I am a freak about it. I just want to know so bad that I have to check like 20 times a day! LOL Anyhow have fun in egypt. I have never been there before.....Always wanted to see it. Maybe I will have to plan a trip there....hummm sounds good these days!

Jenn
I am excited about using the thinner PIO as well. In ethyl oleate. I called my doc to call it in for me and they were like what is it? I feel like shouldn't you know what the heck it is? You would think that they would be up on this stuff....oh well I am thanks to JEN!!!!!

I should be getting my meds tomorrow from Freedom. I will have to take a look at everything and see what they ended up sending me...I am so excited-Lupron on Thursday and then just awaiting AF to stop on over for a visit!!! I totally understand the date with a heating pad comment! I have cramps so bad..Hopefully I will only have one more month of dealing with her for the next 10 months!!!! Woo Hoo I hope that this works.

[jenn]

Welcome Souris!

Nimble- Welcome, sorry about your BFN, and Af showing up early. It sucks what can I say? Good news on your funding! I wish we had that here!

Carolyn- thank you for checking up. AF is behaving with the help of drugs!! Glad you had a nice trip.

Well girls I did it! I called and they said sure May was fine to do IVF, so I will start in a few weeks. I am relieved to start, but it still stresses me out. We have to pay for it and I HATE the debt. Does anyone else have these anxieties? I want it to work, but I am not letting myself get excited because I feel like it didn't work the first time so why would it work this time? I know I need to be positive, but it is SOOO hard! How do you girls do it? I wonder if we should give it more time and try naturally? Are we jumping into this too soon again? Even though we have been trying for almost 4 years, I still feel like sometimes we didn't give it enough time. I know that is ridiculous, right? I need to get over it right?

Ok freak out moment is up...for now. Sorry this was all about me. I'll write more later.
Take care,
Jenn

[PMApsy]

Good morning ladies!

Eeeeeek... I'm sick this morning! I've had the flu since Friday, but since yesterday it's gone to my sinuses... it's really going to be a pain to work with difficult clients tonight! I hope they behave!

Jen:
LOL and here I am, labelled as the "scientific data" person! Well, I don't mind at all! I've Googled your question and people do discuss that on IVF forums. But they are people like you and me. And when you add all the advice that people write on these websites... well, it does make that whole becoming pregnant process a very fragile thing if you MUST not eat this and MUST eat that to become pregnant, avoid OHSS, and so on. And even then, some talk about pineapple juice, canned pineapple, pineapple core, and so on! Someone's mother recommended bananas instead! I did a quick search on Medline, but found no studies about it. But still, here is an articulate answer that I found on fertilityfriends.uk:

"Pineapple is a very high natural source of an enzyme called Bromelain (apparently!!). Bromelain has all sort of prposed beneficial health effects - including an anti-inflammatory effect (so it could offer similar benefits to taking baby aspirin in IVF cycles for instance), and it has also been indicated as having a role in immunlogy and adhesion of cellular proteins - thus it might help in embryo implantation (which the scientists thinks is a complicated chemical signalling process between your uterine lining and the proteins on the surface of the blastocyst itself but really don't know much about!!).

All quite scientific - but I think most of it is 'unproven'. All I know is that being a bit of a hippy, I tried anything 'natural' on my first IVF cycle to help things along - ate fresh pineapple often, and got lucky first time....! I would imagine if you want to benefit from the Bromelain properties, being an enzyme - its got to be fresh pineapple - canning, pasteurising etc must lessen its actvity?"

This other post was very intelligent, too:

"By all means eat pineapple, it is in theory meant to help with implantation. Please remember that there is not a great deal you can do one way or another to help or hinder implantation.

One of the embryologists told me that if an embryo is viable it will implant and there is little you can do to stop it - if there were, we wouldn't need the morning after pill etc. If an embryo isn't viable there is very little you can do (or would want to do I suppose) to make it implant

I'm saying this not to make you feel helpless in the 2ww - you should definitely look after yourself and get DH to run around after you! - but more to encourage you to relax and not beat yourself up about what you should or shouldn't be doing - and in the meatime we will all keep everything crossed for you"

Bottom line is; do it if you want, but do keep in mind that it does not do miracles. There is a chance that it might help implantation, but if it's not meant to work this time, pineapple won't make it work. If it was that miraculous, doctors would recommend it. However, if grapefruits can interfere with BCP, than I'm ready to believe that pineapples might have an impact, even if only tiny. Hope that helps!

souris: yippee that you found a way to get more cycles! Let's hope this one brings you what you wish for! Wow, what a shock for your house! This certainly not a stress you needed at the moment! I hope you find something fast! Keep us posted about it! and good luck!

Carolyn: Oh, I thought your clinic recommended no baths to everybody; if you're a special case, it's much different! Sorry to hear about your proneness to infections, though, that must really be a pain! Thanks for the link, I checked it out... strikes me that she's not a doctor, not even a nurse, but a midwife and nutritional advisor. That means she received no training in research whatsoever. I just hope that her fame was not acquired at the profit of IVFers' need for reassurance and sometimes desperate need to feel that they have some control over their success rates... I understand what you say about seeing one's family members progress in age... I've been thinking the same about my grandparents each time I leave, and it makes me feel melancholic for a part of the trip... wishing we would live closer, see each other more, call each other more because there might not be a lot of time left. *hugs*

Hello Nimble! welcome! You're not premature at all, dear; I always admire people who do not dwell on the past and turn straight to the future! However, I'm truly sorry about the sad news you got... I got them the same way and, no matter how much that little voice inside tells you that there might still be a slim chance that, maybeeee... it keeps bleeding more and you just get more and more hopeless as the hours go by. *hugs* Let's hope the next cycle brings you joy! It will be great to cycle with you, and I'm happy that you got funding! yay! I understand that it will be a fresh cycle?

TansRN: POAS maniac? Hehehehe! Well, everybody has their own way of coping with the 2ww! I'm very excited that you're getting your meds today! yaaay! It's exciting to see them, isn't it? It just makes that process so real! And so... LOL seeing all that and think that it will ALL go inside your body, whew!

Jenn: YAY about starting your cycle soon! I know it means a debt; I'm sure not looking forward to fulling my credit card again... And having been through a BFN, I am aware that there is a possibility that it might fail again. However, think about a few things. Your doctors know your story, your body, and so on. They would not let you make another attempt right now if they thought that trying naturally would work. *hugs* Also think, however, that if they thought IVF was not for you, they would tell you so. My doc was always super honest with that. He said he knows it's a lot of money and he does not recommend IVF to people who have only slim chances of success. He only recommends it to people he believes do have an honest chance. And you're among these people, sweetheart. You have a fair chance to become pregnant with this cycle and that's exactly why you're willing to spend that much money on that chance and go through the IVF roller coaster again, with its physical and emotional pains and burdens. Even if it does not work this time, and we all wish it does , at least you can say you gave it a real try. And that's so important when you want to make peace with that whole infertility thing! The thing that helps me keep my hopes up for this cycle (meaning that I'm hoping for a BFP but I'm not taking anything for granted) is that, first, my doctors know more about my reactions to IVF from my first cycle and just that increases my chances and, second, that past cycles don't necessarily predict your future cycles. You start with a "clean slate" each time, so to speak. I really hope you can come to consider this cycle as a new journey; do not consider yourself an IVF failure because you had a BFN in the past. I hope that helps hunny... *HUGS*

Okay, time to update that list, shower and get going! ugh, my sinuses weigh 100 pounds! LOL!

Take care ladies!

Sophie

[PMApsy]

oops! the website was having problems and the post was there twice!

[TansRN]

Hello everyone!

Jenn
You are not crazy girl. We are spending a lot of money on this as well and I am hoping for a BFP!!! I mean I have just as much chance as anyone right? So do you. That is why we are trying to do it again. I think that 4 years is plenty of time and it is time to move forward!!! Lets hold hands and jump into IVF together!!! Woo Hoo!!! We do have to give it a try to make sure that we have tried what we can. That is all we can do isnt it? I do know what you mean about the expense but then I look at it like if it does work how much would I pay to be pg with my own baby? A lot....then it doesnt seem so bad. Have a wonderful day!!!!

[TansRN]

Hello everyone!

Jenn
You are not crazy girl. We are spending a lot of money on this as well and I am hoping for a BFP!!! I mean I have just as much chance as anyone right? So do you. That is why we are trying to do it again. I think that 4 years is plenty of time and it is time to move forward!!! Lets hold hands and jump into IVF together!!! Woo Hoo!!! We do have to give it a try to make sure that we have tried what we can. That is all we can do isnt it? I do know what you mean about the expense but then I look at it like if it does work how much would I pay to be pg with my own baby? A lot....then it doesnt seem so bad. Have a wonderful day!!!!

[CarolynB]

Souris - That is SO helpful. Many thanks for running me through what is involved and what to expect. The more that they can find out about me, the better chance that I fugure that I have of it possibly working. How are you doing?

Nimble/Jackie - I am sorry that you have to join us but glad that you are looking ahead already. It so helps me when I have a plan for the next steps. Sorry to say that I have never ever got to test day - always started bleeding on D11. Asked consultant whether it is the bleeding that is the issue. He said no. It is just our bodies letting us know that sadly it has not worked. Big hugs. Take good care of yourself. I have no firm plan yet as I am changing clinics and have to have more tests done. We can wait together So pleased that you are going to get an nhs cycle

Jenn -Well done you on calling the clinic. 4 years is a long time to try. Ivf is a lot of money but I try to think of it in the context of what a child costs over a life time. It is still a lot of $$$$$ but seems more in context for me.

Sophie - sorry that you have been poorly. Hugs. Hope that you are feeling better soon and not too many difficult patients this evening

Tanya - 2 days until you start. WOW. Almost there girl

Hugs to everyone else. Off to acupuncture this evening. 1st time that I have seen my acu guy (Daniel) since the day of ET. Saw him after most of our embies had died and none had made blast so was in a right state. I shall be more together this evening!!!! I am becoming one of his harder cases to crack. He is always good for a chat as well as the needle therapy!

Look after yourselves lovely ladies.

Love
Carolyn
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[PMApsy]

Ovarian vacation
TansRN.... starts Lupron April 12th
Jul1e.... injection on April 19th, scan May 16th
My2LnT.... starts Lupron April 18th
souris.... starts downregging April 28th
Literatriz.... starts Lupron May 16th
hrobinson.... starts Lupron May 22nd

Birth control pill
arizonakiwi.... Fresh cycle started April 5th
My2LnT.... Fresh cycle started April1st WELCOME!
Jul1e.... Fresh cycle has begun!
hrobinson.... Fresh cycle

Waiting for AF
Jenn.... Fresh cycle (flare protocol)
TansRN.... Fresh ICSI cycle
PMApsy.... Fresh cycle

Eagerly waiting for cycle to begin
Souris.... short protocol again? WELCOME!
Nimble.... Fresh cycle in May/June WELCOME!
Shantala.... Fresh ICSI cycle
Literatriz.... Fresh cycle starts May 1st, donor embie(s)
Jen779.... FET cycle starts May 16th or 17th
CarolynB....Fresh cycle starts in May or June

[jen779]

My goodness...you guys have been busy! It has taken me 30 minutes to catch up on everything!

I see everyone using the abbreviation POAS...what does that mean?

Sophie...I should have known you would have come through for me. Once again...a plethra of knowledge! Thanks for all the information. I knew it wouldn't work miracles...but if it might help, then I guess I'll try it. I like your reference to grapefruits...

Jen...YEAH on starting your cycle ealy!!! You should be excited! One step closer to that BFP!!! Tanya is right, you have to think positive and not look back, only forward. We obviously would do anything to have a baby of our own and while sometimes it is easier to think negative...you have to think POSITIVE!!!

Carolyn...I had a hysteroscopy with a laproscopic procedure, so I was under anethesia. I am sure yours will not be as invasive.

Tanya...I bet you are getting EXCITED!!! Well not too excited about the shots, but everything else! MOVING FORWARD!!!

I saw my Acupuncturist today and I felt like a wet noodle after my treatment...SOOOOO relaxed it was amazing. She said that I was really responding well to the treatment (indicated by the response to my body at the injection site of the needles). So I am glad about that!

Well, gotta run...hope everyone else is doing well!

[Literatriz]

Hi May/June crowd!
I love to check PMApsy dancing Emoticons - it really makes our group shine. Sorry to read about the set backs and hopeful with the ones in the waiting room ( 9 days for PMApsy!).

CarolynB, sorry about your disapppointment. Last year my doctor in Brazil told me not to use my eggs - chances were mininal and I just wanted to try. It did not work and I do understand now why. New eggs are simply better. Doctors respect what we want, especially if it involves us paying it forward for our lessons and treatments. This time, I will listen to him and have embies donated in exchance for treatment. Don't loose your hopes! There are alternatives for us, the 40+s!

Speaking of money, just checking for international variation in medical costs: how much do you pay on average for the meds (only meds) in one IVF cycle? I know medical procedures vary a great deal.

The pinneaple question: there is a lot going on during the first weeks of pregnancy - we get tired, sleepy, drowsy...hormons are just going crazy orchestrating celular divisions and the delicate achitecture of the nourishing placenta. Instinct did play a great role in the past 40 thousand years (otherwise we wouldnt' be here). Women do eat a lot of different foods and start disliking others...we should follow our instincts. Reducing junk food and large intakes of sugar a few weeks before does help us with fine-tuning our appetyte. If we feel like pinneaples...let's peel them!
By the way, we can blend them with mint and make a great alchohol-free coktainl, very refreshing.

Help! Any thoughts about coffee? Should I give up my Starbucks expressos and home-made, high-caffeine beverages?

Best wishes to all!