38 years old & new to IVF. Please share your experience?

[VMJ007]

Hi Everyone. I have my first visit next week to the IVF specialist after years of trying. I’m so grateful to have found this forum. I need to hear from you brave women my age or over. How many cycles have you had? Did you have? How have you been going? Would love to hear your journey.

[Hope76]

Hi and welcome. I was your age when I had my first appt at my clinic. I won the lottery first go of IVF and 3 weeks before my 40th Birthday my miracle son Harry arrived. He is now sitting next to me, watching cartoons aged 4.

Unfortunately my journey for Harry’s brother or sister has proven not to be so straightforward 🙈. I am in the middle of my 6th attempt now & well we are reaching the end of a very long road as sad as it is I know at 44 this will be my last go with my own eggs. Am back in tomorrow for another scan and hopefully my last ever egg collection Wednesday. 🤞🏼

I wish you every success with your first appointment. 🤞🏼🙏🏻🍀

I find this forum is my therapy and use it more when am going through a cycle. I have found invaluable support and advice on here that I have never found from fertility specialists !

[Stato]

Hi there and welcome 👋🏻

I’m 40. I have a high AMH but high risk of OHSS. They were able to take good care of me and managed to get 13 eggs, leading to two blastocysts to transfer last week and one to freeze. Just hoping my story has a happy ending on Friday (or sometime in the not too distant future). Good luck. Use this forum as much as you need to x

PS I hope you are eligible for at least one funded ivf round but unfortunately I wasn’t

[RhinoCat]

Welcome to the best part of ivf, this support forum of fab women who just GET IT! You can see my version of the journey in my profile. It’s great to come here and ask your questions or read what others are chatting about because chances are, someone is thinking or feeling the exact same thing or has been through the exact same thing. You’ll defo need emotional support. The only advice I’d give at this stage is to keep your expectations realistic and ask questions at your clinic when you feel anxious. Wishing you the best of luck as you begin this crazy adventure. You will also get better at looking after your own needs as an added bonus 😘🥳🤩🤩💖💖💖

Hugs 🤗

Rhinocatx 🦏 🐈

[MissSaoPaulo]

Oh, best of luck. I had IVF at almost 39 and had pretty good results - 5 embryos. We've used 2 and have a little girl, the others are on ice.

Are you doing NHS or private? I live in Brazil, so we had to do it privately. It was expensive but also very quick. First consultation in July (although we'd already done most investigative tests) and pregnant by November.

This forum is amazing. So much support and also advice and experience shared xxx

[Ozma4]

Hi and welcome to the group! I was also 38 when I had my first cycle. I have a very low AMH so getting eggs would be difficult but they managed to get 5 eggs at collection and we had 2 put back. Unfortunately, it didn't work the first time. I sometimes think its my bad luck but I was very stressed also with work too. Who knows. Anyway, I'm now on my second cycle (which should have been March) and they only got 3 eggs at collection this time. 1 worked so that was transferred on wednesday last week. 2 days after collection. On the 2 week wait now but trying to keep a level head about it all but it is hard. I wish you both every success for yours. It does play havoc with your emotions but if it works it will be soooo worth it!

[24hopefuls in reply to Ozma4]

Hi, please can I ask if you were on short or long protocol for your ivf?

[Luna_79]

Hi there and welcome, as others have said before this group , the support and advice from women who just completely understand will really reallly help, I was 39 Very nearly 40 when we got to our app with the fertility clinic , whilst everything was fine with me regular cycle etc no other issues apart from age. sadly hubby has low motility and low count so it meant IVF was recommended though the consultant pretty blunt but realistic and said whilst naturally things on my side were fine but wouldn’t probably happen due to hubby’s sperm but with IVF the sperm was no issue as they would so ICSI but now the issue would be my eggs and age!!!as he didn’t have much hope we would collect any never mind them fertilize or get to embryos!! Lol he gave us a bleak outline but we ‘scraped’ through his words with my AMH and age and got 1 free round - lol I felt like I’d won the lottery then and we were going to have a baby!!! Lol I’d really not known anything about IVF at all , so I never knew was all of the stages that come next., but at each stage we just kept telling ourselves one step at a time , we were still in the game! so the fact that we had eggs was good, the fact that they collected some- only 4 but that to me was still good, only 3 mature enough to fertilize but still good and then amazingly 2 blastocysts that made it to 5 days ! The consultant did say that for my age!! Gee thanks!! That was very good , unfortunately the first embryo didn’t implant but we feel very lucky to be going for our second embryo transferring this Friday. This forum will show you , you can’t look at the statistics , it’s not always about how many eggs!! You just need 1 good egg and 1 good embryo. My hubby and I just keep telling ourselves what will be will be, you have good days, you have bad days and on any given day we are all here for you and routing for you. So embrace the journey - miracles do happen and this forum is proof that they do 💕🌈 wishing you many blessings for your journey ahead xxx

[Ketkoot]

Hey. As others have said this is a great forum.

I joined here only a few months ago and already it has started to help me figure out this journey. No one on here would chose this but hey ho here we all are! We all have slightly different stories but all hoping for the same result. BFP or for me to get past 7 weeks.

I am on day 2 of norethisterone tablets, start sims on 24th, egg collection on 4th sept. I have pesseries and lots of stuff to inject which have lots of complex words! Lots of words I have never come across before and scary as 💩 especially as I have just turned 42 and time is running out or so I keep being told.

Good luck with ur appointment next week. Just shout if you need any support x

[Hidden]

Hey welcome! You are in good company!

I am afraid I can’t give you a totally good news story but I started at 39 too and if you visit my profile you will see all my highs and lows!

Don’t hesitate to message me if you have any questions or need to rant! It’s a rollercoaster but it will be worth it!! Xx

[jengi]

Hello & welcome to this crazy world of IVF. I first went to my GP at 36. I have very low AMH, I was given 1 NHS go, produced one egg which didn’t fertilise. The clinic made a mistake by doing IVF instead of ICSI so we were given a 2nd free chance. Month after month my body failed to respond, after 5 attempts we moved to a different protocol, I produced 4 follicles with 3 eggs. Two eggs were immature and one was good. The good one failed to fertilise via ICSI, one of the immature ones matured in the lab and miraculously fertilised. It was transferred on d3, we were warned it was a poor grade. Sadly it didn’t work. After a great chat with the embryologist I reluctantly accepted my eggs were not only low in numbers but were really poor quality. The chances of me getting pregnant with my own eggs via IVF was less than 2%. We made the hardest decision of our lives & moved to donor eggs. I did lots of counselling to deal with the grief of the loss of being able to have my own biological child. We traveled to Greece, a donor was found, together with my husband’s sperm 6 excellent 5 day embryos were created. We transferred one, it failed. We have just transferred two & im having my pregnancy blood test tomorrow to tells us the outcome. I’ll look forward to following your story, best of luck. I won’t sugar coat it for you, it is one hell of a roller coaster of a ride. But always keep your dream alive in your head & one day you will be holding your baby. Take it one day at a time, be kind to yourself, your mind & your body. Remember to put yourself first. Think carefully who to confide in, the closest of friends & family have surprised me in their inability to comprehend the emotion & pain of this journey. There are some great podcasts & books I can recommend if that interests you Xx

[KjsMila]

Hi! I went to my first appointment at 35. All of our testing pointed to an unexplained low sperm count and motility, so after attempting to improve my husband's numbers, we eventually moved on to IVF. My egg retrieval was when I was 36; 15 eggs retrieved and 4 made it to blastocyst and PGS testing. PGS came backs as one normal, one abnormal, one mosaic and one no DNA. After a canceled mock cycle and then a successful one, then a delay for our transfer due to COVID, we final did our transfer in June (I'm 37 now). Two weeks later we got a positive beta and I'm now 12 weeks pregnant. I think the one thing I've learned along this journey is nothing happens the way we want/expect it to and thats OK, as long as you stick in there.

Best of luck to you!

[Daughterofaking]

I just did my first ivf immediately I turned 38 this year. I am lucky to be pregnant the first time. It was a mild ivf, I had 7 days of stims and 9 eggs were collected, 6 fertilized, transfered 2 on day 3 and had three 5 days blastocyst freezed.

This journey is not easy anything can happen at anytime but I must say you are in the best place as a lot of people are passing through the exact same thing and you have a lot to unlearn and relearn here. I wish you all the best in your journey and pray you vet the result you seek. xx

[JenRoy]

I was 39 when we finally were approved for IVF after 2 yrs TTC. We are unexplained infertility.

We were approved for 3 cycles on the NHS.

Started our first cycle in March 2018. We were so lucky and it was very straightforward. 12 eggs collected, 7 fertilised, 5 made it to day 5 as blastocysts and we had 2 transferred. Sadly we couldn’t freeze any as the 3 remaining embies weren’t quite strong enough to survive freezing.

One little embie stuck and was born 3 days after my 40th birthday. She’s now 19 months.

We’re about to start our 2nd cycle.

It’s such a stressful/emotional and physically tiring process but it can work. You’ll have good & bad days. But stay strong, as much as you can. Good luck!!