The Over 40 Crowd

[children]

Hi Rhonda,

I am not sure which protocol that you are following. For me, I used so call "mini dose flare up protocol" which involves taking birth control pill (BCP) for 14~21 days and then low dose lupron for the whole process during stimulation with 300U Gonal-f pen (similar to your follistim) and Repronex (decreased to 150U 4 days after due to potential OHSS) in the morning and evening. The folicle numbers increases with time, at the begining days, I only had one or two on each ovary, at the end, they retrieved 25 eggs total. You also don't want to have too many numbers of eggs, something about 8~12. In my case, I was overstimulated as a result, I waited another 6 months to conceive my baby.

Tammy,

Of course I think that you will have a chance to conceive naturally given your miracle Andrew. However, it's always better to have multiple plans lined up like you do. I also have hi hope on your frozen eggs. Somehow frozen cycles gives better pg rate nowadays. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

I saw another over 40 crowd thread started under ivf group but I think I will stick around here for the time being.

Catharine,

Big day tomorrow, I hope you are ready?!

Everyone else, have a nice week!

Yasmina

[Catharine]

Hello everyone

Just a quickie-

Rhonda-how are you doing? my protocols were a bit different. First ivf was a co-flare protocol: lupron and follistim everyday then hCG trigger before ER. The last two ivf cycles employed the French protocol of using menapur and brevelle, hCG trigger before ER. All three times I responded well. Thinking lots of positive thoughts for you.

Yasmina-how are you holding up? are you enjoying this part of your pregnancy? As the end of my third trimester closes and I reflect back through my pregnancy, I missed the second trimester the most. I didn't feel so clumbsy or huge. I was still capable of doing most of my fitness routine with some modifications. This last week not so much. I'm thinking of lots of positive thoughts for you as well.

Tammy-how are you? I agree with Yasmina. You have lots of paths lined. I also believe you have a good chance of conceiving naturally. Fingers crossed for you and I'll being thinking positive thoughts too.

It's early the day of DD arrival date. Last evening she did one more big fitness routine inside of me. She was amazing to watch. It is hard to believe she will be arriving in less than 5 hours. We are as ready as we will ever be. We've planned as much as we could. Now it's time to meet her and have her teach us what she requires. There will be time to fill in the gaps once we get home and get to know her better. DH and I are so excited. Occasionally when I steel a look his way, I think I see a bit of nervousness across his face. Once he catches me, his demeanor changes into confidence. His oldest sister will be arriving next week to help out for a few days while I heal and he returns back to work. I'm looking forward to having more adult conversation in the house during the day.

Everybody take care. Lots of PMA and babydust.
Cheers!
Catharine

[jen babes]

Catharine- GOOD LUCK
Hoping all goes well and you heal quickly. It will be lovely to at last meet your DD hold her and look into her blue eyes. Am thinking of you and sending many prayers your way...cant wait to hear all about her ...

Tammy- Good Luck trying again ...i am SURE you will get another mirical like Andrew...have fun trying x x x


Yasmina- sounds like you are enjoying your 2nd preg as much as your 1st. Hoping you have an easy 3rd tri x x x

Rhonda- Please do noy worry day 2 is far to early to see all the follies. I stimmed for 14 days saw nothing for the 1st 5 days and then only had 4 follies at the end of 14 days. Had 3 eggs and all fertilised. It does help to do some relaxation and visualisation of the follies growing. The Zita West book on fertility and conception is fab and most of us on this site have it. Explains things easily and helps with nutrition too. good luck i am sure you'll have lots of follies and eggs to fertilise... baby dust x x x

as for me...i am still struggling with auto immune disease so am on drugs for nest 6-10 months . I still hankerr after having another go at DE but DH isnt so sure as i will be 42 and we dont know how the future will be with the disease. Can understand that but am still torn.

On the good news front we are etting a new puppy. Born 3 wks ago and due to be picked up Dec6th. If you want a look check out www.nurisha.com to see our other dog look under the past litters page and on litter 4 is our 'baby' now 2 yr old Broc.

love and luck to you all
jeni
xxxxxxxx

[Catharine]

Good early morning to all

Hope this finds everyone well. Sending out lots of PMA and babydust.

DD arrived at 10:30a, weighing in at 7lbs, 14oz, measuring 20in long. She's perfect. Alas we have not come up with a name yet. No worries they will not let her check-out without one. She is sleeping peacefully at the moment by my bedside.

The fe side effects I have from the c-section are a whopper of a headache [spinal anesthesia-3% chance of this] and gas in my right shoulder [very painfull]. I am quite sore in the belly from both the uterus contracting and the point of incision. This is to be expected. The Ob asked if I had felt any conractions during the procedure. I felt some braxton-hicks but nothing that took my breath away. She replied that the cervice had thinned and dialated. Oh my, I hadn't really noticed that. I was afraid I would not feel labor. I've been known to walk around with broken bones for days before thinking I should really have this checked out. The procedure went as planned. It appears that some of the placenta stayed behind, but not much. This part lagging behind is highly attached to the scar tissue from my myeomectomy in 2005. We knew this could be a possibility. The medical staff will watch over me looking at specific criteria to determine if there is a problem leaving that piece inside. If it is a prob, they will administer methotrexate to kill of the remaining placental parts. Sadly if this occurs that ends the breastfeeding.

This brings me to, DD and breastfeeding. All is going well. She is teaching me a few tricks to help her feed.

Well, time to get some more rest. Everyone take care.
Cheers!
Catharine

[jen babes]

CONGRATULATIONS

catharine and DH on the safe arrival of DD

Love and hugs
jeni
xxxxxxxxxxxx

[teachertam]

Catharine: Congrats on the arrival of your precious baby.

[children]

Catharine,

Congratulations on your safe and sound arrival of your girl! Enjoy your little precious and give lots of kisses from all of us! You are amazing - given the fact that you just gave a birth to DD and then was able to write such a long post already! Good to know that your ob did not remove your uterus! I wish they did not need to do anything else invasive so that you can enjoy breastfeeding as long as you wish!

Again, happy birthday to your DD. Please post her beautiful picture ASAP, very anxious here!

Yasmina

[teachertam]

Jen: Thanks for the encouragement. Congrats on your new little puppy!
How exciting. We have two labs. They love Andrew and he loves them.

Tammy

[mrscutter]

Catharine, I am so very happy for you. I can just feel your excitement. I am sure she is so beautiful. I hope you will continue to keep coming to this web site. I value your advice.

Jen babe, I have such a hard time relaxing and keeping stress down. I have always been that way. What does this book say to help with stress. Does it say anything about deep belly breathing? If it does, how do you do it. I seriously need to do it.

Everyone: Today was day 6 of stims. Day one only showed four follies. Today it looked like 8 or so. Well I guess thats better than four. I go again Friday. I have been doing 450 follistim a day and she changed it to 600 a day staring today. I have also been doing the lose dose hcg. 15 units. Well the pharmancy didn't have any insulin syringes so they gave me a bigger one. well we thought we were doing the right amount we had to convert it to the bigger one. wrong!!! apparantely we were doing way too much. I was freaking out. I told the RE Im almost out of the HCG low dose and she said you shouldnt be then we figured out why. I am really nervous about it. I thought too much might make me ovulate early. They said not to worry that my unltrasound looked ok. How can I not worry? so now we had to have more sent overnight in the morning. My retrevial is going to be Tuesday. I thought the HCG low dose was only to be taken a few days. I wish things were explained more. They are in such a hurry getting me in and out, i dont have much time to ask questions and they dont give much info. I will find out around thanksgiving day if it worked or not. I hope I get good new.
I hope you all are doing well. And I wish each and everyone of you the best of luck. Talking to you guys is the only thing that keeps me calm. Take care.

rhonda

[Catharine]

Greetings!

Thank you all for the congratulations! Despite the pain of the headache and gas we are still on a high. Now using caffeine to treat the headache, trying to do lots of walking/exercise to get the gas to disapate. Still awaiting positive results. DD is resting peacefully next to me after her 11p feeding.

Good luck Rhonda with the remainder of tmt. findgers crossed for you and DH. Sending you lots of baby dust. Sorry to hear you feel rushed at your clinic. I know what you mean. Our clinic had many clients and as a consequence it seemed like we were always being rushed in and out. Ultimately, I found that if I took the lead on the appts, and asked questions before they gave me the opportunity they were more than willing to help with the understanding of why certain procedures were the way they were. Don't let this be a stresser to you or DH. I encourage you to take a proactive stance on your tmt.

Yasmina how are you doing? Is you son exercising for you?

Tammy-thinking of you as your tmt approaches.

JenB thanks for stopping in. I love puppies. all the best.

Cheers for now!
Catharine

[children]

rhonda,

It is very nervous process when you go through an ivf cycle, but I agree with Catharine, ask questions whenever you have them. Dr. and nurses tend to scare us a bit or make us feel so stupid when we ask some questions that they assume we should have known already! But on the other hand, they are closely monitoring the growth of your follicles and E2 levels to adjust the dose of drug uses, you should not be too concerned! I also used wrong doses during my some of my cycles but they did not seem to do any harm.

Catharine,

Thanks for your update! Are you getting ready to go home now? I sensed that your sporty background helps your speedy recovery quite a bit. I was asked to walk the second day which was so painful and I only walked less then 10 steps and barely made it out of my room! And I was not allowed to eat anything solid until 48h later considering that I had not had anything more than 30 hours prior to my C - I was starving and so was my DD, I remember that they did not bring her to me until at least 8h later of her birth and when she was finally with me, I did not have a drop of milk to feed her as I did not know that I was supposed to express the first few drops out first to lure her to the breasts. Later, the lactation consultant came by and taught me how to express milk. Anyway, our DD developed Jundice which made her too sleepy to eat and on the top of everything, I mistakenly thought that she was just wanted to sleep until she lost almost 15 ozs of her birth weight to tell me what a terrible mother I was! I cannot believe that was almost 2 years ago already!

What I only wanted to say here was compared to me, you are much more proficient being a new mother and all, I have no doubt that you will make a terrific mother!

Tammy,

How is everything going with you now?

Jen,

I went online to check your puppies out the other day and they look very beautiful. I had dogs when I was little and loved them all! Unfortunately, my DH is strongly allergic to furs and we cannot have any fur pets. It's kind of sad since we have a very big yard!

About me now,

DD is doing very well in her first two weeks diaper-free life in daycare. As I promised to report, here is a summary of how many accident(s) she had:

Week 1:

Mon - 1
Tues - 3
Wed - 0
Thurs - 1
Fri - 0

Week 2:

Mon - 1
Tues - 1
Wed - 0
Thurs - 2

We are waiting to see how she will do today! That largely depends on how intense her activities are. The teachers said she has not been able to tell them each time that she needs to go, they need to remind her to go for potty every h or so. But both DH and I are already very happy about her progress. She has not even consumed more than 5 pull-ups, her teachers don't encourage us to use them for potty training. Yet, I bought 5x28 of the hi quality huggies pull ups, I guess I will use them for the night training later.

About the pg, will update next Mon after 28 wk checkup.

Take care and have a nice weekend, everyone!

Yasmina

[teachertam]

Catharine: I hope you are feeling better now and will be home with DD soon. I did not have a C-section, so I cannot give you any words of wisdom. Although, I'm such a baby that I tried to talk my OB/GYN into letting me have an elective C-section, as I did not want to go through the labor pains. He would not go for it and I'm glad that I went the vaginal birth route. I'm getting excited about my upcoming cycle.

Yasmina: That is good news on Eloise and the potty-training. Do you have any names picked out yet? I will be having my HSG x-ray this Monday and then will schedule an appt. with my RE to get instructions for the frozen cycle. It seems very easy compared to the fresh IVF cycles. I will not have to take any injectable meds except progestrone shots beginning just prior to transfer. I'm not looking forward to that at all, as with Andrew I had to continue the shots throughout the entire first trimester. Of course, that is a small price to pay for a precious baby.

Rhonda: I hope all is well with your cycle. I will be joining you at the end of the month, as I will begin taking estrogen pills to prepare my lining for the frozen embies transfer.

Hello to everyone else.

Regards,
Tammy

[Catharine]

Happy Saturday

we've been home for over 24h. I hope this post will be short and finds all you lovely ladies doing well. At this point before I forget I'll extend out lots of the PMA and babydust.

I'll try to summarize what has happenend in less than a week but feels more like several weeks, due to loss of tracking time with such little sleep.

So, I'm still doing the caffeine thing for the headaches as I am still suffering from them and the neck and shoulder pain. These may initially be unrelated but feed off of one another. We made it home yesterday Friday. The ride home was hard on me due to my current physical maladies, but we're home and happy to be so. A word on walking and that sporty nature. Please everybody don't hold back the giggles. So, many may know that I play several sports and consequently run to try to stay fit for the sports, unless preggers of course. So, when they asked me to get up and walk, I was like sure, of course, I know that. First I just paced in the mother baby suite, for DH was out cold on the pull-out bed and I didn't want to leave DD unattended. But when DH finally came to, we went out and walked the floor. I called it walking the block. True to my nature, I was like lets round it 3 times then lets see how I feel. So, we did. We only ran into one other very young couple out doing the walk, but they did not do the block. I should have qued in there right. Anyways to cut the story short. I did my block walking several more times during our stay each 2+ rounds about the block. I did what I thought my body could. The truth is your body will let you know what you are capable of, and you better be listening. I feel I am listening most of the time.

DD is calling me. One quick question. I'd love to post a pic, but not being tech savvy, could someone post instructions on how to do so.

Thanks so much
Take Care All,
Catharine

[children]

Hi Everyone,

I said that I would update about my ongoing pg unfortunately, my appointment with my ob was cancelled due to 1 day less than 28 weeks, they have to do the Glucose and HIV tests on 28 weeks, I am just 1 day away! I won't be seeing any medical professionals until end of the week, will update then!

Catharine,

Glad that you are home already! Enjoy your little girl. About posting pictures, I first upload it to photobucket and then copy the IMG code and paste here. The website (photobucket.com) is self-instructive enough for me, I am sure you will be able to do the same. You just need to sign in and upload pictures there. The only thing though, you could decrease the size of each image before posting, otherwise, it could be huge.

Tammy,

It seems that you won't have a long suppression period in your frozen protocol, I needed to take BCP in all my cycles, regardless fresh or frozen, although I don't know why. No injectables until PIO. Frozen cycles give better implantation rate lately and research say this is due to some kind of inhibitory factors were not there as they are in fresh cycles - you can read some of the posts by "ghost" under "In Vitro Fertilization" thread. He used to post a lot about this topic.

rhonda,

How is your progress now? Are you getting more follicles? When you retrieve and transfer days will be? Fingers crossed for your cycle!

Everyone else,

Take care, Yasmina

[mrscutter]

yasmina,
Thanks for asking about me. I went to day for preop. My retrevial is tomorrow. I ended up with 10 follies. 5 on the left and 5 on the right. Two days ago the RE said the ones on the left needed to grow alot to catch up with right or I guess they would not make it, but after two days, they are caught up. the RE says she is very pleased. She says my ovaries are "beautiful" and my uterus is "gorgeous" lol. never heard that before but I will take it. I just pray that the follies will have eggs in them and not be empty. I wonder what the chances of all 10 having eggs? She told me to stop worrying. She said we need to just cut that head off so you will just relax. i hate to tell her, it "ain't" gonna happen. I am the biggest worry wart you have ever seen. lol. Anyway she says my transfer will be Saturday unless things dont move along then it will be day 5, but she feels like it will most likely be Saturday. Boy does my body looked like one big bruised up pin cushion. Arms legs stomach. I am so tired of all of the shots. I have felt pretty good though. I thought i would try to relax and have a nice massage on my birthday Friday (41 by the way) and the girl about killed me. I am telling you she made it her lifes misson to try and get the knots out of my shoulders. i was sore the next day. No relaxing at all. I just cannot win. I hope you are doing well. I will keep you guys informed.

Everyone, I hope you are doing well. I look forward to hearing from you. It keeps me going. Take care.

Rhonda