December TTC Vets

[cangoss]

This is the thread for people who have been TTC for at least 6 months and/or have known fertility issues... a "club" no one wants to join but it's great to have the support here when needed.


my recap:
Candace (33): TTC since Dec. 05; diagnosed with PCOS a year ago.
DH (39)


Well, I'm hopefully back in the game again this month though things appear to be a bit messed up. I was on the pill last month because we had to take the month off due to Thanksgiving. I shouldn't have gotten my period until the middle of this week, but I started having spotting in the middle of last week and AF started today, so I go for my baseline ultrasound tomorrow. If I'm cleared for this cycle, we'll be doing femara with ovidrel and possibly adding FSH injections followed by two IUI's.

I'm really hoping this is the month. My SIL's baby is due Jan 6 and I know that is going to be really hard - I just want to be able to be happy for her and enjoy the baby. There is also added pressure because of the possibility of moving out of state - we currently have full infertility coverage and it's less likely that will be the case anywhere else we go. DH has an interview in CT on Wednesday.

[Bawstinn]

My recap:

Me: Maria, 38
SO: David, 34 - spinal cord injury a year ago led to male fertility difficulties
DD, 18 months

Hi Candace.

I was placed on progesterone suppositories last cycle to see if we could get my luteal phase to be longer than 10 days. It worked - ovulated on day 14 and ended up with a 28 day cycle. Yipee, one hurdle jumped. I have to say though, having early pregnancy symptoms is a pretty cruel side effect. Even though there was only a slim chance I could have been pregnant, it still made me hope. :( So I am on CD4 here. Still makes me wonder if my luteal phase has always been on the short side ...

Talked to the doctor this morning and he was pretty happy it worked out. He still wants me to try clomid for the first IUI in January, but I am still hesitant on taking it. The stories I have read on some boards have not done much in making me want to try it, but then again some people on the same boards made progesterone sound bad and in reality I didn't think it was bad. Inconvenient, especially in the morning, but not bad. Anyhow, I guess maybe I need to read up on it a little more, or talk to my regular doctor and see what she thinks.

So, other than wishing for a special Christmas present ... not much else going on.

[Couperine]

Candace, I am glad to see you were up for trying again this month - I will keep my toes and fingers crossed for you as the month goes by. How have the visits with the nutritionist been going? It seemed like the weight loss was a nice positive thing for you.

Maria, I'm glad the progesterone worked for you even with the nasty side effects. It's great to have one potential problem dealt with. I hope this month works for you as well.

*back to being a cheerleader in lurking*

[2HUNGRY!]

Good luck Candace! I'm excited for you.

Maria -- I only found the progesterone to be really bad when I was taking it after I had gone a long time without a period. When I was taking it for a cycle after I had ovulated I didn't have many problems (except for the fake PG symptoms you mentioned). Clomid was okay too, but I did find myself going from normal to yelling at someone really quickly (usually a co-worker so it was okay). It really worked for me, but the downside is there is a small increase in your chances for twins.

[cangoss]

Maria - that's great that you were able to have a regular cycle with the progesterone. The side-effects really suck though. I cried for a week when I was on it last year. My clinic doesn't use clomid anymore - they use femara instead because of all the side-effects of clomid - so I am not really informed about it.

Hungry & Nancy - thanks for checking in on us from "the other side". I hit a weight loss plateau for a month or so but got re-committed the week before Thanksgiving and now seem to be back on track - I lost two pounds in the last two weeks. I am going to see the nurse every week this month to try and stay on track through all of the holiday temptations.

I had bad news this morning after my sono. The thing that was previously called a hemhorragic cyst is back, and now they can see that it is not connected to the ovary - it is connected to the tube and they don't know what it is. And there is a problem with the tube on the other side not being in the proper position. So I have to have a lap to investigate both problems and try to fix them. The earliest they can schedule it is Dec. 31, when we had planned to be out of town, so I've decided to go a little longer and have it in January. We're going to go ahead and do femara and ovidrel this month, but not FSH. The saga continues. I'm beginning to think it's just not meant to be:(

[2HUNGRY!]

Bummer Candace. I'm so sorry. It really stinks that you have to have a lap the same month your SIL is giving birth. I hope everything is okay with your tubes. Do you have IVF coverage if they have to take them? Why didn't they see this before when you had your HSG? They didn't have any idea what it could be?

Good luck with the weight loss this month.

[mst]

Candace- When we went through IF, I heard a lot of "if it's meant to be, it's meant to be." Bahumbug! Sometimes, it is just crappy luck. You sound like you get such a kick out of kids. How could it be "meant to be" for Britney, and not you?

(Sorry if you meant that not to be such a big deal, I would just hate for you to think that you don't 1000% deserve a child!)

[Kerri]

Hey Candace - The lap might be good and bad. Maybe by going in there, they can figure out what is going on and fix it. You might have some endo in there as well. Keep us post on how it works out.

And I know that you are dreading the birth of your SIL's baby. I will say that when my sister had her baby, that night was one of the most difficult that I had to deal with. But once I saw the baby, the whole thing became "Charlie" and not "my sister is pregnant and not me" and much easier on me. It is easy to say on this side, but I hope you will find the same is true for you as well.

Maria - I think the clomid might just help the timing of the IUI, but I can understand the hesitation because of side effects. Maybe this time you can just try a low dose, and switch to Femara if things are bad. I have just heard really good things about Femara.

[cangoss]

Thanks for the good thoughts. I still haven't heard from the surgery scheduling person, which is getting frustrating. I tried calling her yesterday but didn't get through to her and she hasn't even made an attempt to call back. It's not typical of my clinic or this person in particular so I don't understand what's going on.

Did anyone else read this article about fertility and diet in Newsweek this week?
http://www.newsweek.com/id/73354
I thought it was strange because it was advocating a pcos-like diet but did not mention pcos once. It talks about insulin resistance and hormones though. It's more lenient than the program I'm on but was somewhat reassuring.

[Puppylove]

Lurking Here! I just read the article Cagnoss posted and it was really complicated, here's what I think it said, correct me if I'm wrong:

You CAN have:
Complex carbs like brown rice, whole wheat bread, and beans
Protein from fish and beans
Whole Milk / whole milk products
Good fats like nuts and avocados
Lots of veggies - (what about fruits?)

Stay Away From:
Transfat
Simple carbs like potatoes, white bread, pasta (what about wheat pasta?)
Chicken/Beef protein (pork too?)
Skim/lowfat milk
Candy? (Unless you need to gain weight to start ovulating which the whole milk would probably take care of anyways!)

Did I get all that right? Was there anything I missed?

[cangoss]

Puppylove, I think you've mostly got it right. I emailed a friend who is a dietician to get her take on it - she has helped me a lot with an appropriate PCOS diet, which is similar to this.

For fruits - whole fruits are OK - this means that if you eat an apple, you should leave the peel on; according to both my friend the dietician and the nurse I see for PCOS, fruit juices are horrible - liquid sugar that is metabolized very quickly with no fiber.
For the whole milk thing - it's something to have in small quantities; for me, it's a piece of full fat string cheese on days that I work out. Milk (and many milk products like yogurt) has a lot of lactose, which is a sugar.
I never got the impression that chicken/beef needed to be avoided in the same sense as simple carbs; more that plant proteins are better. And for your pasta question, whole wheat pasta is OK (as is the blended kind, like Barilla Plus); along the same lines, brown rice and whole wheat couscous are OK.

Of course, you don't need to worry about any of this if you don't have any signs of insulin resistance and you ovulate normally.

[2HUNGRY!]

I had great luck with WW's core program. I modified it though so I was eating all whole milk dairy products. They basically say eat all of the fruit, lean protein, veggies etc until you're full, eat brown rice OR whole weat pasta OR 1 baked potato or sweet potato once a day. It also made you get in one teaspoon of olive oil each day. There were some other things like sugar free pudding and jello that people would make all sorts of fake baked goods and sweets out of, but I tried to stay away from those. It was really easy to follow and I got into a great routine with it. One other change I made was to switch to all organic dairy products. I do drink a lot of milk and eat a lot of yogurt. Anyway, I started met around the same time so I think it was a combination of those two things, but I felt 100 times better (well, as good as you could feel under the circumstances I guess), and my skin cleared way up.

Food and exercise to me was something concrete that I could work and and feel like I was doing something positive to help my situation (I have PCOS too and I would do anything to avoid Type II diabetes). To me, having a concrete plan like that made me feel much better than some vague advice like "just relax" which is my least favorite phrase ever.

Either way, I think a fertility diet would be great for anyone to follow but they seem like good eating guidelines.

[Bawstinn]

I should be glad that this isn't the month that we were starting IUI. My temps are all over the place - on the high side. I have had a cold and it is hard to take my temp since I can't breathe when my mouth is closed.

My cycle also seems to be a bit messed up and I am wondering if it is from the progesterone, or would those effects be gone? I started using the ovulation test strips but all I am getting is a very faint line.

Today is CD14 and usually ovulation id CD14 or 15. Yesterday I started spotting which has never happened to me mid-cycle and from what I read it could be from ovulation. In that case, do that mean I ovulated a lot earlier this month and just missed it? I guess I am just wondering if even though my period was postponed last month from the progesterone, does my 'whole cycle' get pushed out or would I still ovualte on CD14 of the old cycle, which would CD10 of this cycle? Does that make sense?? :confused:

[cangoss]

Maria, I'm really not sure what might be happening with your cycle. As far as I understand it, once you start a new cycle, you're starting fresh and whatever happened the last cycle is "wiped out". The progesterone could still be affecting you though - I know that when I was on it last year, being on it for one month (with clomid) got me back to fairly regular periods for about three months (after going three months with no period before progesterone).

I'm going in for my mid-cycle ultrasound on Saturday. We're probably just going to bd and skip the IUI this month, since it looks like there is so little chance of success and I don't want to waste a cycle on insurance. My surgery is now scheduled for January 11.

[2HUNGRY!]

Was I the only one who read the steriods report yesterday and was most disgusted by the way most of those big tough guys were too afraid to inject themselves?

Maria -- Its so frustrating when your body does crazy things. I have heard that some people do spot when ovulating.

Candace -- Good luck this month, and if not this month I hope the surgery is the answer for you.

[cangoss]

Hungry, I haven't paid enough attention to the baseball thing to have seen that - right now my sports attention is focused on Michigan Football and their coaching situation... I was kind of freaked out the first time I injected myself, but I got over it because it just had to be done. You'd think if they're hell bent on breaking the rules they can handle some injections...

I had my mid-cycle sono this morning and had two mature follicles. We're skipping the IUI and going it naturally.

We had big news yesterday - my husband got a job offer in Connecticut. My biggest qualm about moving is having to start over with a new infertility clinic... but theoretically the programs available to me there are better, though they are all an hour away from the area where we would live. I've also gotten very attached to the nurse that I've been working with on my weight loss effort, and she's also been the one monitoring my cycles for the last two months. I'm really hoping that this will be the month for a positive test so I can move without the fear of leaving.

[2HUNGRY!]

Candace -- Where in CT? That would be scary. Is there a way you could keep in touch with your nurse by phone? I know it not the same thing, but maybe she could provide you with some virtual guidance. Congrats on the 2 follicles! Did you trigger or or you just going for it? I hope this is the month for you. I would be great to avoid surgery.

[cangoss]

The job is in Groton - we would probably not live in Groton but somewhere around there. As far as I can tell, my choices of fertility clinics are UConn, Yale, and Women & Childrens' Hospital in Providence.

I'm so glad we decided against IUI for this month... we got socked with 8 inches of snow overnight and we would have had to have been up shoveling at 6 AM to get out of our driveway, and our street didn't get plowed until noon. I would have been having a total anxiety attack. I did femara, and had the ovidrel trigger yesterday - I'll give myself the ovidrel booster next week.

[SusanPC]

De-lurking to say I am thinking of you Candace. You are in my thoughts/prayers that this is the month...and will be the best holiday present ever!

[cangoss]

Bumping this up...
I am out of the TTC game for a while - I had my lap and they found endometriosis so I'm doing 3 months of lupron.

I have a pile of OPK's that I'm never going to use. If you can use them, please PM me with your address and I'll be happy to mail them to you. They expire in December 2008 and I think there's about 8 of them.

[Kerri]

Hey candace - Thanks for the update...I was thinking about you. What stage do you have?

When I was going through infertility, I didn't think that Lupron would really help. But after getting pregnant a second time naturally after conceiving via IVF I think there might be something to it. Good luck!

[cangoss]

Thanks for the encouragement Kerri - I need all I can get. It was a pretty tough blow to add another diagnosis and delay, but at least now we know.

It is stage 2-3.