The Over 40 Crowd

[ceriberi]

Hi Jasmina

thanks for the hello and welcome.
Congrats on the pregnancy, wow 19 eggs ...was that from one single collection? If so you must be one healthy grrl. Did they use any growth hormone to achieve this, if it was from one cycle? I have just heard about it recently, and am wondering if you have heard anything about its use. apparently good for old boilers like us ( LOL, just kidding) in terms of enhancing egg quality/quantity. Not that you seem to have any problems there!!

And hope im not seeming nosey, more curious than anything, I think..What did you mean by cycle cancelled..dominant egg?

ceriberi

[Kiwi expat]

Hi all - just a quick one as I've just got back from work and it's past 9pm already!

Thanks Yasmina for all your advice. Am seeing my doc tomorrow and will discuss with him. The clinic supplies all our drugs but many thanks for your offer anyway

Ceriberi - Welcome to the madness!

Hope everyone's week's going well

Andrea

[children]

Hi ceriberi,

Don't worry about being nosy or anything, that is why we are here!

Yes, I was over-stimulated during my first and the only fresh IVF cycle. I had low FSH and responded to stimulation too well and produced 24 eggs with 20 of which fertilized by ICSI, but only 19 made it to cleavage stage and they were all frozen. All my two pregnancies are from the same batch of embryos through FET.

No, they did not use growth hormone, they used standard mini-dose flare protocol which involves taking birth control pill (BCP) for 14-21 days, and then low dose lupron during stimulation with Gonal-f pen (morning) and Repronex (evening) for 11 days.

One of my ovaries produced a large follicle in my first FET cycle which was not supposed to be there since I took BCP for 21 days and then lupron for 14 days, they two drugs should have beaten my ovaries to death (suppressed them to produce eggs)! Yet, I went ahead to make egg and ovulated on that cycle. As a consequence, they canceled this cycle which wasted me two months! After that, they changed the protocol on me, they let me use BCP/Lupron/E2 patch 5 days overlapping to each other, which worked very well.

Andrea,

Good luck on your coming cycle.

Everyone else who are still pursuing ivf, please update so that we know that you are there somewhere.

My first US schedule on 16th of this month and I will update then. Eloise just had her first surgery yesterday (putting two tubes in both ears to avoid frequent ear infections, she has had one almost every other month since 6m old!) and we are having our hands full lately.

Thanks for listening,

Yasmina

[kimmysq]

Yasmina:
Congrats on your pregnancy!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Kim

[Catharine]

Good morning Ladies!

I hope every one is doing well.

Yasmina how are you? been thinking about you.

Welcome Ceriberi. This is a wonderful group of ladies, full of support and inspiration.

We're fresh back from the beach. I had a doc appt yesterday and everything appears to be progressing well. We actually heard the heart beat by the hand held doppler. Although I'm fast approaching the 'half-way' mark, it has not really sunk in. Probably because I'm got so much other stuff on my plate: orchestrating home repairs, which once complete will allow for focus on a nursery.

My best to everyone reading the posts here. I'm praying for small miracles for each and everyone

Have a great weekend.
Catharine

[teachertam]

Catharine: Glad to hear that everything is going well for you and your baby.

Ceriberi: Welcome to this site.

Yasmina: How was the ultrasound today? Hope everything went well for you.

Hello to everyone else.

Take care all,
Tammy

[children]

Hi all,

Update from me: the US showed one baby and we are happy to report there was a heart beat of 123/min. The fetus was measuring at 7w which was 1 day earlier than its actual age.

I wish all of our over 40 women get what they are pursuing for - whether we are continuing the ivf treatment or we are adopting.

Talk to you all next time, we will have another OB check in two weeks!


Kim and Andrea,

How are you two doing with your coming cycles?

Catharine,

Congrats for the mid mark! At 20 weeks, they will give you a detailed US and you will be able to find out the sex of your baby soon. Do you choose to find that out or to be surprised? I wish that one day I could be like you - not worrying about the job and going about the world! I have to admit that it is very difficult for me to focus on work right now.

Tammy,

Thanks for asking and I am doing fine except for a more severe morning sickness to deal with this time.

I miss so much the luxury that we had last time when you, Bev, Anna, and me, all of us were going through the whole thing together in the same time! Now, I am also posting on the "pregnant after treatment, Feb 2009 mom's thread" but my constant nausea kept me away from the computer for the last few days.

How are you doing with weaning Andrew? Has he started talking yet? Eloise has some expected delay in language since she has to cope with three different languages. On the top of the trilingual issue, we suspect that she had some hearing problems before her ear tubes implantation. She has improved quite a bit after that.

[teachertam]

Yasmina: I'm so glad to hear that your ultrasound went well. I can say that Andrew is finally weaned. The last day that he nursed was on Memorial Day, so he was 15 months. It was easier than I thought it would be. I had my DH put him Andrew to bed for 5 nights in a row. On the 6th night, I put him to bed with a bottle and he did not even ask for the breast! Now I need to wean him from the bottle!

Take care all,
Tammy

[children]

Hi Tammy,

Congrats on weaning success! Eloise's eyes lighten up when she sees bottles but we don't plan on weaning her from them: we gave her bottles twice a day (morning and evening), 8 oz each. The daycare did not allow any bottles since she was 1. She has been using sippy cups there since then. We don't give her bottles in the middle of the day on weekends either - to be consistent with the daycare. Since she eats well and gains weight well, we don't worry if she wants her bottles up to 5!

I want to thank you for all your support and good luck on deciding about the #2!!!

Yasmina

[teachertam]

Yasmina:

I am not going to rush weaning Andrew off of the bottle. However, my pediatrician said he should be weaned by 1 year old. I'm not sure why they push it so much. When Andrew went for his 15 month check up, he was still taking the bottle. I also want to start working on potty training him. He has two potty chairs; one at home and one at my parents. He likes to sit on them and many times he sits on the potty without taking down his pants. I need to be more consistent and sit him on the potty on a regular basis.

Hello to everyone else. It has been very quiet lately.

Take care all,
Tammy

[children]

Hi Tammy,

Remember that I was proud of having Eloise to use the potty since she was 6 wks old? Well, all that was because we read signs and put her on the potty right on time! Now, after her long hour daycare stay, she pees and poops in diapers whenever she wants to in daycare, more and more I see there are "BM" on her reports, from none to once per wk to 2~3x per week - so sad to see all our efforts gone just like that!

I insist to put her on the potty whenever possible though which means that we can do pretty well on weekends - very few accidents. She naps dry and diaper free now on weekends. I put training diapers on when we are out to shopping on weekends and regular diapers for the night. Will be anxious to see how you progress w Andrew. It is fun that we can exchange tips.

Hi to everyone else, I wish you all doing well although most of the times that we feel there is nothing to say. Do take good care of yourself and hope to hear from you!

Yasmina

[Catharine]

Hi All
Hope this message finds everyone well.

Yasmina-how are you doing?

We had our anatomy survey today. I can not tell you how nervous I was I just was so afraid of the unknown for some reason, well because much of the development is out of our control. In the long run I was nervous for not as we learned that we are having a long healthy girl. DH's mom was a little saddened that it was not a boy. What do you say when hope for an heir are dashed. Otherwise all is well.

Wishing everyong all the best.

Catharine

[children]

Hi Catharine,

Congratulations on your healthy girl!

I always wanted to have two children, one girl and one boy, girl first and then boy so that the big sister don't nfight with the younger brother.

I had been disappointed for about 1 day last time when we were told by the us tech that it was a girl. My DH said he could see on my face at that moment. He did not have ANY preference at all and his family was happier to have a girl since his sister had already a boy. I was worried about him being the only male child of his family and it was highly likely that would have been our only child! However, the "disappointment" was replaced by growing love quickly and I was so prepared for her coming at the end and very worried to be surprised by a boy. Fortunately, the us tech was right and we had our lovely daughter and our lives forever changed to be happier!

We are blessed now being pg again and now I predict this is a boy. However, I will be happy to be wrong, again!

I had dealt with some severe morning sickness in the past few weeks and I think it just started to go away now. Will have another u.s. next monday to confirm the fetus is doing fine and then I will be released to my regular OB who does not like u.s - I only had done us once with him last time at 20 weeks.

Have you done any genetic screening for diseases such as down syndrome? We did not do any of such things last time and we have not decided what we are going to do this time yet.

Will update again on Monday and thanks all for listening.

Yasmina

[teachertam]

Catharine: That is great news on your healthy little girl! If DH and I have another child I would love to have a girl. I wanted a boy for my first child and we were blessed with Andrew.

Yasmina: I'm sorry to hear about your morning sickness. I did not any morning sickness at all with Andrew. We also had the genetic screening with Andrew. I had the 1st trimester screening, as well as the 2nd trimester screening. We did not do amnio or CVS.

Take care all,
Tammy

[children]

HI Tammy,

They say there are only 50% women will have morning sickness. You are one of the lucky ones. In both of my pgs, I had it at around 6 weeks. For Eloise, it never went away and I felt mild nausea the whole time. This time, I feel it comes in waves but overall stronger than last time and it caused few times of food out of my nose episodes. But like they say, this is the happy sickness so I should not complain! I just hope it disappears at one point.

Thanks for the inputs about genetic screening. Originally, we thought we would do everything to rule out the possible defects of this coming baby. Now after our first US, none of us has ever mentioned about testing anymore. I guess we cannot handle terminating a live so it is again unlikely that we will do any invasive tests such as CVS or Amnio. Your genetic screening mainly just blood work, right? I will ask DH whether he would want this to be done.

Yasmina