Who can tell me about IVF?

[Bernadine]

We have a follow up appointment with our RE next week.  So far, we've done two IUIs, with Clomid and trigger shot.  We're unexplained, I've responded well to the Clomid, I had one big follicle for each IUI, and h had a great sperm sample.

So, next week we'll discuss doing another IUI, with injectables, or moving onto IVF.  We are so incredibly fortunate to have insurance coverage, so cost is not an issue at this time.

I'm really unsure what to do.  I'm ready to be pg right now, and I feel like IVF probably gives us our best shot.  I'm just worried about how difficult IVF cycles are- what exactly was involved for you?  And I'm also slightly terrified of having multiples. 

[notoriousmeg]

I went straight to IVF so can't speak to the difference in terms of strain on you, but I prepared myself for the worst and didn't think it was bad. Going for monitoring every couple of days was wearing, but I had no issues with the meds outside of weight gain. I wasn't happy about hat, but even that wasn't awful. I gained 7 pounds from the drugs. I had a great experience with my RE and nurses. I also have extenuating circumstances that my RE would not transfer more than 1 embryo so multiples were not possible. I had very few follicles and ended up with only 1 to transfer the first time, but I was very lucky and it took. I did it again when my son was a year old, got 2 transferable and neither took. Physically it wasn't bad; mentally it's a total mind fuck. Good luck!

[shauni27]

I mostly just lurk on this board, but @meepmeep is right--the TTTC board was so, so helpful for me. An incredible wealth of information and SO supportive.

[yourmother]

Surprisingly, IVF is not that bad (physically) when you're in the thick of it. I'm referring to the multiple injections, being on a schedule, etc. The egg removal was easy and the egg transfer was a piece of cake as well.

My story is that I did 6 IUI's and then moved onto IVF. My body didn't respond to the original IVF protocol, so we had to stop and go a different one a few cycles later.

You are VERY lucky in that you have insurance coverage. We paid cash for everything except the sonogram visits.

My DH was very afraid of multiples (I wasn't...hahaha!!!!), but we did transfer two embryos at my doctors recommendation and now have a 2 month old son.

Honestly? I wish I would have just done IVF years ago. It was a lot easier than I thought. HOWEVER, if you're a worrywart like me, it can be emotionally taxing. Make sure you have good support (I actually confided in very few friends, but those friends were superstars).

Feel free to PM me anytime if you have more questions you'd like to keep off the board.

[Bernadine]

Jul 30, 2015 7:25:22 GMT -5 yourmother said:

Surprisingly, IVF is not that bad (physically) when you're in the thick of it. I'm referring to the multiple injections, being on a schedule, etc. The egg removal was easy and the egg transfer was a piece of cake as well.

My story is that I did 6 IUI's and then moved onto IVF. My body didn't respond to the original IVF protocol, so we had to stop and go a different one a few cycles later.

You are VERY lucky in that you have insurance coverage. We paid cash for everything except the sonogram visits.

My DH was very afraid of multiples (I wasn't...hahaha!!!!), but we did transfer two embryos at my doctors recommendation and now have a 2 month old son.

Honestly? I wish I would have just done IVF years ago. It was a lot easier than I thought. HOWEVER, if you're a worrywart like me, it can be emotionally taxing. Make sure you have good support (I actually confided in very few friends, but those friends were superstars).

Feel free to PM me anytime if you have more questions you'd like to keep off the board.

Thank you.

The IUIs have been hard on me, emotionally.  I am still not taking it well that neither of them worked, and I'm nervous about how I'd do with IVF.

[yourmother]

Jul 30, 2015 7:31:02 GMT -5 Bernadine said:

Jul 30, 2015 7:25:22 GMT -5 yourmother said:

Surprisingly, IVF is not that bad (physically) when you're in the thick of it. I'm referring to the multiple injections, being on a schedule, etc. The egg removal was easy and the egg transfer was a piece of cake as well.

My story is that I did 6 IUI's and then moved onto IVF. My body didn't respond to the original IVF protocol, so we had to stop and go a different one a few cycles later.

You are VERY lucky in that you have insurance coverage. We paid cash for everything except the sonogram visits.

My DH was very afraid of multiples (I wasn't...hahaha!!!!), but we did transfer two embryos at my doctors recommendation and now have a 2 month old son.

Honestly? I wish I would have just done IVF years ago. It was a lot easier than I thought. HOWEVER, if you're a worrywart like me, it can be emotionally taxing. Make sure you have good support (I actually confided in very few friends, but those friends were superstars).

Feel free to PM me anytime if you have more questions you'd like to keep off the board.

Thank you.

The IUIs have been hard on me, emotionally.  I am still not taking it well that neither of them worked, and I'm nervous about how I'd do with IVF.

I completely understand. I was a mess when my IUI's didn't work. I will say that moving onto IVF was somewhat a relief because the chances are so much higher than IUI's. My RE office had great stats as well and I took comfort in that. One of my biggest worries was he financial aspect of it. I mean, I would play out worst case scenarios in my head and it was just a mind fuck. So, if you don't mind me saying, I think you are in a MUCH better position because you have wonderful insurance that will cover the costs. 

[Muddled]

TTTC is a wealth of information and support.

I agree that IVF was harder on me emotionally than physically. The whole process is overwhelming as it looms ahead of you, but you get past that wen you get going.

Regarding multiples, you have total control over that with IVF, unlike IUI. If you don't want multiples, you just transfer one embryo at a time.

[Elsa]

Rak, I'm actually at the RE now for a sono, but I'll reply when I get into work

[btay]

I did not find IVF nearly as bad as I was expecting. I had to go in every morning for a week for monitoring because I was high risk for overstimulating, but the shots weren't bad and the discomfort was minimal. I took 2 days off work for retrieval and 2 days for transfer but other than that the effects on my everyday life were fairly minimal. I did have an allergic reaction to the PIO shots but not bad enough to stop taking them.

The nice thing about IVF is that if you are really worried about multiples, you can choose to transfer only one embryo. With IUI you lose some of that control. I did 5 IUIs, 3 with injectibles before moving to IVF

[Sloane]

I'm so sorry you find yourself here - the emotional toll of a failed cycle is the worst part of any of this. I went straight to IVF as well so I can't speak to the difference between the two. We did do three fresh and three frozen cycles however resulting in three transfers of two blastocysts each time and we had two singleton pregnancies. Our only issue was MFI.

In terms of meds and processes every RE will do things a bit different but for me, the fresh cycles consisted of about 2 weeks of injections (up to 7 a day depending on protocol) and then egg retrieval. The retrieval is no big deal at all, I was out for it and slightly crampy afterwards. You do have to watch for OHSS afterwards but it is manageable if you stay on top of it. Our embryos were grown to 5 day blastocysts - this part was unnerving as you have attrition on the daily. The ones that made it were then biopsied and sent for PGS testing - they test all the chromosomes for abnormalities. Our first round showed all of ours had fatal abnormalities . The next fresh cycle we had 2 normal female blasts and we did prep for the frozen transfer. This included 56 days of drugs (one shot a day) that sent me into menopause and then two weeks of ramping up hormones to mimic a normal cycle. The menopause was by far the worst part in terms of physical discomforts for me. Also worth noting, both my daughter and son were rated lower grades as blastocysts by the clinic - based on appearances only - so not having AA blasts isn't necessarily an indicator of success.

Check out SART rates for clinics near you and work with a team that you like if you can.

Best of luck in growing your family, let me know if you have any questions.

[sarahswim]

This sounds very familiar.  We were unexplained, our RE said that we were great candidates for IUIs, I responded really well to Clomid, H's sperm samples were great, and...nothing.  We did too many rounds of IUI because I was scared of moving on to IVF and I felt like IUI was going to be our ticket.  It wasn't.  

When we moved on to IVF, the cost was the biggest prohibitor for us.  Once that was secured, I relaxed enough (ha!) to focus on the cycle itself.  The shots, the meds, the appointments-I won't lie, it's a lot.  But it's doable.  I'm a teacher and I had my plan bell first thing in the morning.  I was usually able to snag the first appt of the day for all of my monitoring.  I talked with my principal without being too specific and he was more than accommodating to let me come in late, so I didn't have to use a ton of sick time.  I feel like a gained some weight during the process, both from eating my feelings and the hormones.  We also did ICSI, which I think increased our chances of success.  

Physically, it's no picnic, but I sort of got used to the shots.  I think someone recently Elsa ? mentioned she was running out of spots for injections.  I definitely felt like I was covered in bruises for a while.  The tougher part was the emotional aspect.  I tended to always think the worst, and focus on the what-if this doesn't work?  Then what?  My husband worked hard to keep me focused on the positive, which helped a lot.  

Unlike you, I was hoping for twins (maybe that's flameful?).  I knew we would only get one shot at this and I thought-hey, two for the price of one seems like a pretty good deal! Ultimately, they put in 2 embryos and one took.  I had an uneventful pregnancy and delivery (thank God!).  We have since done two rounds of IVF with our frozen embryos that were both unsuccessful.  Our son is now 5, so it's been a few years since I've gone through it, but feel free to PM me with other questions.  Good luck with your decision!

[Monica Geller]

I'm sorry Bernadine. The emotional side of IF is so, so hard. The TTTC board is a fantastic wealth of information and support. Not that you can't get that here, but I was so grateful for those ladies when I was in the thick of it.

[KB]

We were very lucky to have insurance coverage for IVF. I would say the emotional aspect is much harder than the physical. My first round of IVF I was on an antagonist protocol (birth control pills for a month until a period, CD3 starts daily shots of menopur and gonal-F; around day 6 they added centrotide to prevent ovulation) with good results. I had 15 eggs retrieved, 14 mature, 9 fertilized. By day 5 we only had 2 left so we implanted both. They took but I m/c at 6 weeks. The second round was the same protocol and almost the same number of eggs retrieved. This time we decided to do ICSI even without male factor to increase our odds of having something left to freeze. On Day 5 we had two perfect blasts and transferred both. One made it to freeze. I am now 10 weeks pregnant with twins.

It is an emotional decision but for us it was the right one. GL to you.

[sweetday]

I am very lucky in that insurance covered a lot of it.

It wasnt as bad as I thought it would be. There were a lot of monitoring appointments and the shots werent terrible.

I also only transferred one because I was high risk from the gate.

The greatest positive of all the sonograms is that you see week by week growth. Its was really amazing.

[Elsa]

Ok I am back at work now

So our backstory- we attempted 5 IUIs, completed 4, none worked. We attempted 2 IUIs with injects- one produced NO response. So we cancelled it, and tried again with a much higher dose, and I got several follies, but it obv didn't work.

I'm actually glad we did the inject IUI before going to IVF. It worked as kind of a stepping stone for me. And it gave my doctors an idea of how I would respond, so we based the meds dose on that for this IVF. I am so glad we weren't going into this IVF blind regarding dosage- it would have been much more expensive had we had to cancel an IVF cycle than an IUI cycle.

I agree with the others that the emotional toll is pretty huge. I had panic attacks on the days that I was calling in payment for the RE and for meds. It is just SO much money. And its not guaranteed. I really struggled with that. This money could buy so many other things. It would pay for a year of college tuition for M. IDK, it was hard for me. But since you have insurance coverage that should hopefully be easier for you!

My rec is that you do iui + injects first, and then go to IVF. Since its a stepping stone, since you learn some of the basic inject stuff then rather than trying to learn all inject stuff at once, so that you find out how your body responds to stims, etc.
However...I really really understand the frustration at how slow this entire process is. So I don't think anyone here would blame you for going straight to IVF. I'd talk to your RE, see what they suggest and why they suggest it, and go from there.

{{hugs}}

[Elsa]

And yeah, I'm running out of room to give myself shots that isn't already bruised. I'm having blood drawn every other day to check estrogen levels, and they've been needing to use the same veins, so I'm bruised there. The Menopur I'm on burns. Its not fun...but the payout should it work is 1000000000% worth it. Don't let the procedure or the stuff leading up to it deter you. Its doable, no doubt.

[ninjabridemom]

No IVF advice but big hugs.

Also, girl, if **I** can do Twins you could do it. Benefit would be you could only go through the process once I know a few twin moms who had twins from one transfer so I definitely try to be okay (not great -- maybe not even okay, maybe just fine) with having multiples. Something about the process can make the egg more likely to split. There are of course risks no matter how twins/etc are conceived but having twins is awesome. Just to help your perspective with that piece of it

[calmcosmo]

IVF was a lot easier than I thought it would be physically. Emotionally, any time you put so much energy and hope toward something it is scary as hell.

We went straight to IVF because our infertility was caused by an overly aggressive D&C from a miscarriage (scar tissue blocked my tubes).

I was angry at the time because I'd had my loss, followed by 18 confusing months of not being able to get pregnant again. And I was angry at the universe that my miscarriage essentially triggered infertility. But the IVF itself wasn't so bad. It was the 2ww that nearly did me in.

I think it's really important to get in a good headspace if you can. I did guided meditation CDs and acupuncture and massage. I just needed to RELAX. Both my body and my brain. Maybe ask if your RE has any recommendations for that? My clinic had a whole acu/massage space attached to their main branch fertility clinic.

Good luck!

[lucky513]

Its not that difficult, there are loss of injections but they are not that bad. Good luck

[Deleted]

We did one IUI first and my doctor said it was pointless because my XH's sperm was so bad (worse than the initial sperm analysis)

IVF was difficult emotionally. The drugs were no big deal for me. The blood draws were rough. The procedure were easy (retrieval and transfer).
For me waiting was the hardest part...waiting to hear how the embryos were doing, how many were left, were we going to do 3 day transfer of 5 day (planned 5 day, ended up doing 3 day)

The very hardest part was the decision at the end. We had 4 embryos. 2 good quality, 2 no so good. The two that weren't good my doctor said it wasn't worth freezing. He said we could do 2, 3 or all 4. I wanted to at least give them all a chance so we opted for all 4 (knowing it was a slim slim chance of quads). By the next morning only three were left so we transferred 3 and ended up with one baby boy (who is now 10!)

Best of luck to you!

[Deleted]

One more thing that was mentioned...acupuncture helped me a lot and can improve your chances

[Muddled]

Jul 30, 2015 9:03:47 GMT -5 ninjabridemom said:

No IVF advice but big hugs.

Also, girl, if **I** can do Twins you could do it. Benefit would be you could only go through the process once I know a few twin moms who had twins from one transfer so I definitely try to be okay (not great -- maybe not even okay, maybe just fine) with having multiples. Something about the process can make the egg more likely to split. There are of course risks no matter how twins/etc are conceived but having twins is awesome. Just to help your perspective with that piece of it

Assisted hatching. This is usually done for frozen transfers, but will depend on the age of the blast and your clinic for fresh transfers. You can elect not to do it.

[Elsa]

Oh one more thing....My dr bumped up my dose on Clomid so that I produced 2-3 eggs instead of just one. Could you ask about trying a higher dose?

Remind me- are you guys entirely unexplained? What does your AMH look like? Your H's SA?

[mrsukyankee]

I'm someone who did not get a child with IVF and they couldn't explain why my body didn't respond when it should have. I also had massive hot flashes, sleep issues and the like brought on by the hormones and the injections sucked as I bruised from the three that I had to do several times a day. But I think I'm a rare case and I was older than you. Other people who have gone through it have had much better luck than me and did not have the sleep/sweats issue that I did.

[hopecounts]

IVF is less likely to give you multiples then IUI with clomid/injectibles (you only transfer back 1 or 2 embryos vs. multiple eggs with no control over fertilization) so don't worry about that.

[Bernadine]

Jul 30, 2015 9:55:12 GMT -5 Elsa said:

Oh one more thing....My dr bumped up my dose on Clomid so that I produced 2-3 eggs instead of just one. Could you ask about trying a higher dose?

Remind me- are you guys entirely unexplained? What does your AMH look like? Your H's SA?

My AMH is good, and so is h's SA.  I think he had 117 million sperm our first IUI, with 4++ motility.  My HSG was normal, and so are all of my hormone levels.  My lining was a little thin, but reacted well to the estrogen I was prescribed, and was the appropriate thickness at the time of the IUIs.

I do have mild endometriosis, but my RE does not think that's contributing to our issues.

[ninjabridemom]

Jul 30, 2015 9:54:33 GMT -5 Muddled said:

Jul 30, 2015 9:03:47 GMT -5 ninjabridemom said:

No IVF advice but big hugs.

Also, girl, if **I** can do Twins you could do it. Benefit would be you could only go through the process once I know a few twin moms who had twins from one transfer so I definitely try to be okay (not great -- maybe not even okay, maybe just fine) with having multiples. Something about the process can make the egg more likely to split. There are of course risks no matter how twins/etc are conceived but having twins is awesome. Just to help your perspective with that piece of it

Assisted hatching. This is usually done for frozen transfers, but will depend on the age of the blast and your clinic for fresh transfers. You can elect not to do it.

Awesome! Last time I looked into it I couldn't find a "reason," just suspected. I'm glad it's an option.

[rageragerage]

I am another story of we did 6 IUIs before moving to IVF because we were unexplained.

IVF was hard, but not that much harder than IUI with injectables. I always advise moving forward with IVF if possible because of the low success rate with IUIs.

I did IVF twice and didn't carry to term, but I did get PR once.

Good luck with whatever you decide!

[pooh8402]

We did 5 IUIs, all with clomid + trigger in increasing dosages and metformin before moving on to IVF.

Like the others said, it wasn't so bad physically once we were in the middle of it. ER was relatively painless, and honestly was the best nap I've ever had. ET was similar to the IUIs. Physically, my only issue was that I developed moderate OHSS after implantation, so that was the suck. But worth it!

Mentally/emotionally, I was fine. My mental state was that I was willing to do whatever it took, and had prepared for it since my DH had a vasectomy reversal right before we started TTC. DH took it a bit harder and it took longer for him to come around to the idea, but once we started the process, we were both all in.

IVF has a lower risk of multiples than IUIs since you can control the number of embryos you transfer (typically one or two). We transferred one since fertilization was our main issue, not egg/embryo quality. We felt comfortable doing this since we had a total of 4 good quality embryos, so we knew we could do frozen transfers if necessary. IUIs have a higher risk of multiples since you can't control how many eggs fertilize.

Again, TTTC board is a wealth of information, and so welcoming and helpful.