The Over 40 Crowd

[Kat]

Can someone please tell me why, just when I thought I was doing OK, someone at work has announced their pregnancy in exactly the same week I should have announced MY pregnancy. I will have to watch her at every stage and think 'that should be me'. She will be due the same week I would have been.

Someone somewhere really doesn't like me. I hate this.

Kat x

[teachertam]

Hello all,

Anna: We are not too old to adopt in the states, but would probably adopt from China, as the turnaround time is usually less than 1 year. I have also heard of horror stories in the states where either the biological mother or father changes his/her mind and the courts rule in their favor!
Can you believe it? I used to live in Chicago, and I can remember a case where the little boy was adopted at birth and was returned to his birth parents at 3-4 years old. It was awful! I could never raise a child for several years and then give it back. I would skip the country first!!

On another note, my 23 year old niece just volunteered to be a donor for us, if we need one. She is married but does not yet have children. Does anyone have thoughts on this?

This site is great! I have only been on here for a short time and I already
look forward to new posts. Next week I won't have as much time to monitor the site, as we start our Spring semester. I am a teacher at a local college here, so it is back to work for me.


Tammy

[teachertam]

Kat,

I know exactly how you feel. We found out 12/30 that we were not pregnant from our first IVF attempt. On New Year's Day, my husband and I were feeling a little better and ventured out to Border's to browse for fitness books. I turned to my left and who should I see, but my ex-boyfriend who broke my heart. He introduced us to his new wife who was obviously very pregnant! I thought to myself....................LIFE IS UNFAIR! But then I thought, I would not trade my situation for hers anyday! I have a very understanding, supportive, faithful husband and I can't say the same for her.

Keep your chin up! We all know how you feel.

Take care,
Tammy

[randa2006]

Tammy,
I hope you realize that an fsh level below 8 is fantastic at our ages! And to answer your question about resistance to drugs over time, I have not heard that mentioned. Sounds like a logical question for your doctors though. Please share with us what you find out.
If my dh would consider adoption, I would also pursue a little girl from China.

Kat,
So sorry to hear about the preg girl at work. That would hurt so bad. But your time is ahead still. Keep your chin up, Sweetie.

[Jeni Babes]

Hi everyone...
wow you lot have been busy posting in the last few days!!!!

Tammy welcome, to 2nd all that has been said i too would be lost without the wise women on this specific thread...I don't know what to think about niece being donor? My own experience is clouded by the fact that my cousin offered, then backed down as the whole situation began messing with her mind. She didn't want kids but was happy giving her eggs up then after a while found the whole thing too much. Everyone is differant and deals with situations differantly. I do hope it works out for you. Let us know how you get on!

Kat- Sweetie my heart goes out to you. I went through the same thing. On my last post here 2nd jan i spoke about op to remove my my 10wk ectopic... when i went back to work my work collegue (who was also called Jen) was preg...and due the same day as I would have been. It was such shock, to see her 12 wks preg, getting scans done, growing into mat clothes etc. It was a really difficult 9 months...not only that we were called by staff 'preggy jen' and 'not preggy jen' to tell us apart. ( most of the staff didn't know i had lost a little one) My heart goes out to you to see this happen, but you are strong honey remember that. Take each day as it comes..would it help to talk to this woman? I ended up in 6 sessions of grief counselling to help me get through the loss of the fetus and coping with 'preggy jen'...would that be helpful? We are her if you need to talk. x x

Anna- how are you today then...i was back at work today as well and really struggled to get up out of bed too! Nightmare...hope all this hard work will bring on your AF.

Lisa- am so glad cyst op went well..hope your recovory is quick and AF appears soon...then you can focus on getting started on that embryo transfer. Hope E2 is at a good level too when do you find that out?

Randa- GOOD NEWS on the pap negative result..I didn't know about that you were going through that Randa... What a stressor that must have been. So good that you can now focus on the IVF. I do like the sound of a ' me 1st ' resolution...when you get preg and baby comes it will be 'me last' so make the most of it i say!!!!

Lara- Honey good for you thinking positively about going again.The stress and strain of thinking of going again is difficult, it took me all of dec to even think about it.But the clock in the background going 'tick' tock' is getting louder so had to start planning. You are amazing getting 10 embies wow!!! Am sure the odds are behind you now and this will be the one. Good luck


Hi to Jules, Amfy and anyone else i have forgotten...

i have added the list from Dec that we started, please add any new additions in or change the wording if it's wrong ... ta

love jen
xxxx

BigJ (Jules) - BFP 9/12/05 praying every day
Randa - EC Jan 31
Amfy-
Anna - waiting for AF, short cycle in Jan
Kat - taking time to decide next step
Jen - meeting with consultant 27th Jan
Lisa-
Lara-
Tammy-

[teachertam]

Jen,

Thanks for the advice on the donor egg issue. Hopefully, we can try again with our own eggs.

You can add the following to your list:

Tammy: Meeting w/RE & Embryologist on 1/17 to discuss next step

Tammy

[Jeni Babes]

Tammy good luck with meeting on the 17th...


BigJ (Jules) - BFP 9/12/05 praying every day
Randa - EC Jan 31
Amfy-
Anna - waiting for AF, short cycle in Jan
Kat - taking time to decide next step
Jen - meeting with consultant 27th Jan
Lisa-
Lara-
Tammy- Meeting w/RE & Embryologist on 1/17 to discuss next step

love
jen
xxxx

[amfy]

Hi All!

Kat & Jen - isn't life weird? Just before Christmas one of my staff came and told me she was pregnant. She has 6 children and 4 grandchildren, she is 5 years older than me and her pregnancy was a complete shock to her! She had spent the first 10 weeks trying to work out why she was so tired and then realised she was pregnant.

I was so resentful as she went for her scan, thinking how unfair it was that someone who had enough kids and really didn't want anymore was pregnant by accident when I had been trying so hard and wasn't.

Then the next day she rang me to say she had been for her scan and there was no heartbeat. She was going in for a D&C the following day (Christmas Eve), just like I'd had to exactly 3 years earlier with my molar pregnancy. She sounded gutted and I felt awful, like I'd somehow wished it on her.

It was a bit of a lesson for me. I'd posted here about not feeling very generous about other people's good news. This happenning has pulled me out of that a bit. On the other hand, if I'd had to go through the next 9 months or so being called "not preggy anne" I would surely have killed someone! Well done jen for having the patience of a saint!

[Kat]

Hi
It's funny how good things come out of bad things isn't it?
DH and I had a long talk after I got home and told him about my bad day. I am emailing Spain tomorrow to organise going over for testicular biopsy as they suggested. We'll then see what they say after that and then hopefully go again with donor eggs and DH sperm all being well. I must be mad but for some reason I can't stop hoping.

Amfy - I must say I do not currently feel very generous towards this girl at work. I don't really know her well, not sure if that helps or not, our paths don't really cross so maybe I can try and put her to the back of my mind. Maybe.

Jen - I remember reading about preggy Jen/not etc and really feelin gfor you. I'm with Amfy, I think I would have also had to kill someone. Only a very few people at work know of my situation and anyone else would presume I had chosen career over family (it's that kind of business) but I was told about this girl by one who does know but obviously never thought it might affect me the way it did. Luckily this girl does not have the same name as me (actually she has the same name as one of you....)

Tammy - I talked to my sister at one point about being a donor but we decided there were too many what ifs to get our head round. She doesn't think she wants children but she is single and 32 and so may well change her mind yet. We decided it was too much to deal with.

Anna - what news of AF?

Hi to everyone else too

I feel much more positive at the moment, I seem to be up one minute and way down the next - this business does weird things to your head...

Kat xx


BigJ (Jules) - BFP 9/12/05 praying every day
Randa - EC Jan 31
Amfy-
Anna - waiting for AF, short cycle in Jan
Kat - planning another visit to Spain
Jen - meeting with consultant 27th Jan
Lisa-
Lara-
Tammy- Meeting w/RE & Embryologist on 1/17 to discuss next step

[randa2006]

Look ladies... we're almost to 100 pages.

[erjumper]

Anna-Any signs of AF yet? Have you had any bloodwork? When mine didn't come they did labs and found the high E2 caused by an ovarian cyst. Just a thought.....hope it arrives soon.
Kat-I'm glad to see you're feeling a tad more optimistic and looking to the future. When you say you are going for a testicular biopsy, are you talking about a diagnostic one as opposed to a TESA during a cycle for ICSI. The reason I ask is that my DH's urologist who specializes and only treats male infertility told us that doing a diagnostic biopsy would tell us what we needed to know but we would have to wait 6 months after that for DH to heal and swelling to be gone before we could do a TESA/TESE with ICSI cycle. So he suggested that we just do the cycle with him having his surgery and just having a vial of donor sperm as a backup in case the worst came to light.
Tammy-I asked my RE that question about whether we build a tolerance to gonadotropins and he said no but we do only have a finite numbers of eggs so each cycle reduces the number left. Also FSH numbers don't have anything to do with egg quality just quantity. Have you considered embryo adoption if your next cycle should fail? If you search online under embryo adoption, there are about 3 "agencies" now that get a small finders fee for matching embryos with couples. It's much more affordable then egg donation but i'm not sure how long the wait is and on the down side, most of those embryos are left over from other infertility treatments so they aren't the pick of the litter so to speak. My neighbors have been trying to adopt a little beauty from Guatemala and they're wrapped up in red tape now for over 10 months! I hear China does have rapid availability (especially little girls) but they have alot of requirements like traveling in country twice for a bit of a stay which made it very expensive. Out of our reach.
As for me, the injectible estrogen and the steroids are making me a miserable b#### to DH the poor thing. He couldn't do anything right today and then I burst into tears and apologized for acting like a jerk....he just busted out laughing and so did I. Up,down,up,down. I really hope it's worth it in the end. And my MIL still says I just need to relax and it'll happen. I'm resisting the urge to claw her eyes out.

Lisa

[randa2006]

"claw her eyes out"... now that's a phrase I haven't heard in a while. Go Lisa Go!
Aren't we all just a hormonal mess.
At least now I have an excuse for my low libido... the news is saying that birth control pills kill our sex drive. Dh's jaw dropped last night as we caught that one.

[teachertam]

Lisa,

Thanks so much for the info. on gonal-f. I hope my next cycle produces more eggs. The last one produced 11 follicles, 6 mature, 3 eggs. I have not considered embryo adoption, but that is worth looking into. It would be a lot less expensive...........no retrieval, no drugs, just transfer and nasty progesterone shots.

Regarding adoptions in China, I have been referred to an agency here in Indiana that is great. You are only required to go to China once for a period of 12-15 days. The total cost for both parents is ~$15,000. The name of the agency is Families Thru International Adoption. Their website is www.ftiu.org/. Check it out.

I'm going to be starting on the BC pills myself in a few days. I want to be able to try IVF #2 on my next cycle and I always have leftover cysts after one cycle of fertility meds. This cycle has been very heavy with a lot of cramping.

Tammy

[Kat]

Hi all
Just popping in to see what happened overnight! (I actually just typed pooping there instead of popping so that made me smile)

Lisa - the biopsy is purely diagnostic at this stage but I will ask re timing afterwards just in case. They have not mentioned TESE yet but I suppose it will depend on the results of the biopsy.
Feels like I'm making progress anyway....haven't felt like that for a while

Anna - anything yet?!

Speak later
Kat xx

[BevT]

Hi Big J and Kat (and all the other ladies in the over 40's)

Thank you so much for the pm's and the information re clinics in Barcelona and Kiev. I am going to have a look at both and see if I can talk to DH about it. Bless him, 2 years ago, when we lost our darling daughter (at 32 weeks) he was so against IVF, but he came round in the end, but after 2 failed attempts and QMC (nottingham) said they were unwilling to treat me again with my own eggs, it took quite a lot of pursuading him to agree to go on the waiting list for donor eggs. He is so supportive, and he usually will gradually come round to my asking him for the "next step" but I'm not sure what he will think of if I ask him to start flying all over Europe for donor eggs and tmt. I guess I'll have to keep chipping away at him, until he sees the benefits again.

Fingers crossed that I can get him to agree, however, he is a schoolteacher and therefore will only be willing to devote time to overseas tmt during school holidays. He really does put his foot down when I ask him to take time off work for "us". I do see his point of view though, if he takes time off for whatever reason, someone else has to cover his lessons! He doesn't like putting on other people. Anyhow, he does have a total of 19 weeks off a year, so hopefully we can squeeze in some treatments somewhere!

I'm so glad I found this forum, the last 8 years of dealing with our "poor obstetric history" (as my consultant calls it!!) has been tough on our own. Now I have hundreds of friends to talk things over with, rather than my poor immediate friends, who are probably a bit fed up of having to listen to my constant woes. Ever get the feeling that people's eye's glaze over when you start talking yet again about your problems? The trouble is that the only thing I seem to have in life at the moment is my quest to get pregnant, stay pregnant and arrive with a healthy living child at the end of it all!

Although I may not have time to contribute to this site very much in the near future, I will be reading all your posts and taking comfort and support from them. So thank you ladies, and I will endeavour to let you know what transpires in the future for me and DH.

Bev xxx