Intro

daydreamer34254 · April 2014

Hello Ladies! Nice to meet you

I'm not new to TB... I'm an old, familiar face to the IF & 3T boards, but am 'undercover' with a new screen name (a few blog stalkers will be able to figure it out pretty quickly!). This is my first time on this board as we are at the very beginning of our 3PR journey. Here's the quick version of our story:

Ditched BCP in September 2011, officially TTC in March 2012, first appointment with the RE in April 2013. Diagnosed with unexplained IF and an arcuate ute. Three failed clomid IUIs later, we did a laparoscopy & hysteroscopy to search for more clues. Doc did a partial septoplasty and diagnosed me with minimal endo. We attempted an IUI with injects which got canceled due to overstimulation. BFN. Moved onto IVF, 10 retrieved, 6 mature, 6 fertilized (half & half with ICSI), transferred two low quality 7-cell embryos on day 3. Remaining four arrested before making it to blastocysts. BFFN. IVF #2 14 retrieved, 9 mature, 5 fertilized (no ICSI). Transfer was canceled because all embryos arrested by Day 3. Complete devastation. IVF #3 with a new RE, 9 retrieved, 5 mature, 5 fertilized with ICSI. Three embryos arrested before Day 5, two were still growing slowly. One of which arrested, but the other MADE IT TO BLAST!!! Complete joy and total miracle! CCS testing showed the embryo was normal. Sadly FET = BFFFFFFFN. We are totally heartbroken

(

So now here we are faced with a big decision to make and we are weighing all of our options. Doc said we could try IVF again and again and again with my eggs. He estimates our chances of success to be about 15% with each try... unfortunately, we're not celebrities or millionaires, and there is a very real limit to how much we can afford to do. We are considering donor eggs as one of our options with our final IVF covered by insurance (we are extremely blessed to have incredible IF insurance... I never imagined that we'd actually make it to our lifetime max, yet here we are).

The fun stuff about me: I love to run, I have two adorable doggies, I love my job as a music teacher. I am sick to death of IF and desperately want this part of the journey to just be over, but I'm a fighter. IF is not going to break me (any more than it already has).

I'm looking forward to getting to know you girls & wonder if you have any advice for a 3PR newbie. Sorry so long!!

AllieAlba · April 2014

Sorry you've had such a horrible time TTC. Welcome, though, and good luck!

lincoln79 · April 2014

I am so sorry about your struggles. Welcome!!

The great thing about this board is that you will find all flavors of TPR here people using donor eggs, donor embryos, donor sperm, and gestational carriers.

I love that you are a music teacher! That was my original major in college, now I just play a musician at church sometimes!

Good luck trying to make some tough decisions ahead!

Twinkie0612 · April 2014

Welcome to the board!

BeckyP005 · April 2014

Welcome to the board and sorry about what you've been through with your cycles.

sarahjeri · April 2014

Welcome - I'm sorry you've had a hard time TTC. The insurance part is great! That's awesome that they'll cover IVF for you!

brooklynesque · April 2014

Hi, and welcome to the board. Regarding DE v. OE, a few questions come to mind. Are you happy with where you've cycled to date? Have you considered traveling to one of the top clinics to try again with OE? Have you had at least the basic immune panel type testing done to make sure you don't have MTHFR or one of the other (often easily treatable) causes of implantation failure, which might help explain the BFN with a normal embryo? (It could also have been bad luck -- something like > 1 out of 5 transfers with normal embryos fail even at the tippity top clinics -- there's still some magic in the secret sauce -- but you want to eliminate obvious issues.)

If you decide to use DE, there will be lots of support for you here. Feel free to ask any questions you may have. For DE it's particularly worth traveling to a really good clinic because from the recipient's perspective DE is like an FET -- relatively simple, so you can do remote monitoring for most of it. DE IVF has high success rates but is also more expensive than OE IVF, so you really want to come out of the gates with guns blazing and not do your cycle somewhere with mediocre success rates. I and I'm sure other ladies on here would be happy to recommend some well respected clinics for you.

Good luck!!

daydreamer34254 · April 2014

brooklynesque said:

Hi, and welcome to the board. Regarding DE v. OE, a few questions come to mind. Are you happy with where you've cycled to date? Have you considered traveling to one of the top clinics to try again with OE? Have you had at least the basic immune panel type testing done to make sure you don't have MTHFR or one of the other (often easily treatable) causes of implantation failure, which might help explain the BFN with a normal embryo? (It could also have been bad luck -- something like > 1 out of 5 transfers with normal embryos fail even at the tippity top clinics -- there's still some magic in the secret sauce -- but you want to eliminate obvious issues.)

If you decide to use DE, there will be lots of support for you here. Feel free to ask any questions you may have. For DE it's particularly worth traveling to a really good clinic because from the recipient's perspective DE is like an FET -- relatively simple, so you can do remote monitoring for most of it. DE IVF has high success rates but is also more expensive than OE IVF, so you really want to come out of the gates with guns blazing and not do your cycle somewhere with mediocre success rates. I and I'm sure other ladies on here would be happy to recommend some well respected clinics for you.

Good luck!!

Thank you, ladies, for the warm welcome

@sarahjeri, yes, I was blown away from the start when I learned about what my insurance covered. My first thought was, holy crap, the disparity of coverage throughout the country is so wide and unfair. And then I thought, we'll never reach our lifetime max, hopefully we'll get KU from the first IVF, if not the first transfer from our frosties... HAHAHAHAHA. We have only had the luxury of one blastocyst/frosty for all three IVF cycles that we burned through. Sad.

@brooklynesque, thank you for the great advice and things to think about. We cycled with two clinics to date... two IVF cycles with the former, and then we moved on to the top ranked clinic in the state (and if I'm not mistaken, it's up there nationally too). We just did an IVF cycle with that top clinic, and unfortunately the results were similar... slightly better than the former clinic, but still not great.

As far as the immune panel, no, I do not believe I have had that... I consulted with several clinics between IVF #2 & #3... one of which was all about the immune testing. We decided not to go with that clinic (although we were very impressed) because our problem seemed to be with the seed rather than the soil (to use their analogy). Perhaps we should consider getting that testing done just to be safe though... I'd hate to do a DE cycle just to find out that we also have a uterine problem.

I am such a newbie when it comes to DE stuff... I haven't the foggiest clue if my current clinic is reputable for DE, though I know they top the charts with all their other statistics. Where do I start to research this?

THANK YOU for bringing all of this up!