This is a bit of a long story and is my first post but wanted to share it as reading positive stories on here really helped to keep me going when we were first starting out on this journey.
I was diagnosed with severe stage 4 endometriosis with a large chocolate cyst, a hydrosalpinx and a frozen pelvis in 2016 after trying to conceive with not even a glimpse of a positive test for a year.
2 laparoscopies (including 1 joint surgery with a bowel surgeon to try and remove some of the endo from my bowel), 3 months of GNRH injections, 2 HSGs, 1 hysteroscopy, 2 rounds of IVF with ICSI and 2 years later we finally fell pregnant and I saw my first ever positive pregnancy test!
During this time after numerous fertility tests I also discovered that it was unlikely I was ovulating due to low numbers on day 21 blood tests and that I had an FSH of 22 and an AMH of “less than 2.2” the NHS would not fund any IVF cycles due to my FSH and AMH numbers giving me such a low chance of success with IVF.
I saw a nutritionist, started Accupuncture and cut out gluten, dairy and fizzy drinks from my diet and on second round of testing my FSH was 9.9 (still pretty high but a big improvement) so then we commenced our IVF journey.
1st round of IVF (ICSI due to some male factor issues too) on max dose of Gonal F I had a slow response and ended up stimming for much longer than average.
This round resulted in 3 eggs retrieved all of which fertilised and looked good on day 3 so they recommended I push for a day 5 transfer.
By Day 5 2 of the embryos had slowed down and I had 1 compacting Morula transferred with nothing to freeze but after a nerve wracking 2ww this unfortunately resulted in a BFN.
I then went on to have my 2nd HSG, 2nd laparoscopy and hysteroscopy along with the scratch and started round 2 of IVF on max dose of Gonal F again.
After a fairly promising start I seemed to have stopped responding to the Gonal F on the day 11 scan - I was devastated- the nurses mentioned potentially cancelling the cycle but my consultant said it was up to me and if I wanted to carry on I could and maybe try switching to a different stimms drug which I did and after a stressful few days found out I seemed to be responding better and there were a few likely follicles.
On egg collection day I was a little disappointed to learn they only collected 2 eggs.
1 of these 2 fertilised so the clinic suggested a day 2 transfer with our 1 remaining embryo which I agreed to as I was scared that our only embryo from this round might not make it to day 3.
I wasn’t feeling particularly positive at this point if I am honest despite everyone telling me that “it only takes 1”........but this 1 little fighter of an embryo resulted in our first ever BFP.... and fast forward 9 months to June 2019 and I have just given birth to our beautiful baby girl 💕
There were many times when I thought we would never get to this point and that the odds were stacked too steeply against us but all the positive stories on this forum gave me glimmers of hope that just maybe one day our dreams might come true.
Our baby girl is now 2 weeks old and I still pinch myself from time to time as I still can’t quite believe she is really here!
If u have made it this far and are still reading then well done! 😀
I hope my story brings someone else who is on this rollercoaster of a journey some glimmers of hope too 😘
August, let the ball roll again
IVF: Bad clinic - no scan until day 10?
**Sensitive post** A bit of hope for those with primary unexplained infertility.
Round 2 booked in, anyone else down regulating on 3rd March ish ?
PUPO - The 2WW!
