God bless anyone who makes it through this, I'll try to condense it as much as possible but I was ttc #2 for over 15 years.
DD #1 came easy at 17 and unmarried, just what you don't want (sigh), but she is now 21 years old and a great belssing to me.
I started trying for #2 when DD #1 was around 4 or 5. I got PG right away, but it ended in an ectopic PG and the loss of my left tube. We tried years of clomid and IUIs all failed. So we took a break. Frist month on a break, PG again, yet another tubal (ectopic). Had surgery to repair the tube, which looked like it worked and moved to IUIs with injectables, more failures and our docotr recommended IVF. At that point (almost 10 years ago) IVF was still pretty new, success rates were low and the price was sky high, so we decided to try on our own.
Well, no luck with that for a few years. We moved to NJ and I was working for St. Barnabas when they first established thier IVF clinic and it was covered by our insurance (they can hardly extablish a clinic and then tell the employees they don't cover thier own services!!!) I was thier Second patient. At that point my FSH was 8, elevated for a 27 year old, but not much was known about it at the time. IVF went great, 28 eggs retreived, 22 fertilized, transferred 3, negative beta. I was thier first FET and they lost about 15 eggs trying to thaw for FET, transferred 3, negative again. 2nd FET transferred 2, negative again and we were out of frozen embies (I guess they are much better at thawing now).
A year later DH and I divorced (not ferility related). I met DH #2 a year after that, and since I had been told after my IVF that I could not get PG on my own I was carelessly using no birth control with my now fiance. You guessed it, PG AGAIN, ANOTHER ectopic. Since I did not even suspect preganacy, things got pretty messy and it resulted in the total loss of my tubes.
On to IVF again (BTW, we got married 2 month after the ectopic). Now come the BIG blow, I go to RMA, they say I have a great chance (seeing I was just PG), run the standard tests, FSH 17.6. WE got the DE speach immediatly, but somehow talked them into letting us try. 1st attempt with them was cancelled due to poor response, 2nd attempt cancelled (same reason). They REFUSED to try anything out of the oridinary, no antagon or microdsoe lupron, nothing. So we left and went to WECARE, Dr. Roseff. I told in in advance of making my appointment that I had high FSH and was not interested in DE but looking for someone to work with us with my eggs. He said they were "different" and he would help. Went for our consult, ran FSH and Inhibin-B tests (Inhibin-B was a dismal 15) and he brought us back ($5,000 later) to give us the DE speach (????) and told us we had NO, ZERO, ZIP chance of getting PG, he actually used the word HOPELESS.
I cried got depressed the usual (you all know). I was posting my goodbye on this and another board whehn I ran across Malka's success story (I hope she posts it here, it changed my life). She had gone to Dr. Check and so after talking to DH, we decided it couldn't hurt to talk it over with him )except to maybew go back to depression).
Dr. Check was a breath of fresh air. The only Doctor to realize if I had just been PG (although ectopic) it mus still be possible. He agreed to work with us. He wanted us to try Natrual Cycle IVF right away, but we really wanted to try stims and get more than one egg, so he reluctantly agreed (girls, please listen to Dr. Check's advise the first time). Anyway, we did get 4 eggs, but only one fertilized and the beta was negative. Tried another stim cycle and only got one egg and it did not even fertilize.
Back to Dr. Cehck for a follow-up, now he was insisting we needed Natrual Cycle IVF, so we agreed to try it. I was already on CD 4 so we started right away. It was a slow moving cycle and we did not even trigger until CD14, got 2 eggs, one fertilized and our baby girl was born in May!!!!
We are now back in treatment, 3 Natrual IVF cycles have failed already and we are on #4 right now. Since this is IVF #10 I may be throwing in the towel this time, but I am blessed with 2 wonderful DDs (20 years apart, hee hee).I amy be getting too old and tired for all this treatment, but DH wants to try a bit longer.
Hang in there ladies, sometimes it takes a while, but I must say, it was worth every bit of it.
SusanNJ
Posted on Jan 2, 2003, 7:37 AM from IP address 206.61.178.245