Anyone whose experience of ICSI made a difference? How do you stay positive?

[Sybil0]

Starting injections tonight, 3rd cycle. 1st time doing a long protocol - nervous about side effects: I get bad headaches every time and hate injections... Also Doing ICSI this time. Anyone whose experience of ICSI made a difference? Super new on here. It's been a real struggle. If you're in middle of a cycle too, how is it going? All of my friends have just given birth to their seconds. My best friend is 20 weeks pregnant at first try...😭 Feeling a bit lonely. How do you stay positive?

[Savs]

It’s so hard with the headaches they are fierce, also to stay positive but try and picture that baby in your arms at the end of it and why you’re doing this. Positive mind , positive results. Yes ICSI was better and the success for me. I only had one egg fertilise on my my first IVF cycle and it didn’t implant. Then we paid for ICSI and we had 10 fertilise and 5 make it to day 5. That first fresh cycle gave me my 4 year old son and after another couple of failures, I have 12 week old twin boys with my last 2 frozen embryos. It doesn’t get easier with the endless baby showers and pregnancy announcements of others. But keep the faith , it’s all worth it no matter how long it takes and who has kids first. Be kind to yourself and try some meditation too it really helps. (Mindful IVF is a good app).Wishing u all the luck.

[Sybil0 in reply to Savs]

Ah didn't know about mindful IVF app, will check it out for sure. I'm familiar with breathing exercises, hypnotherapy YouTube videos, and guided visualisations and meditations, and don't know what would I do without them. Thank you for sharing details about your experience: so reassuring. Somehow I'm nervous that through ICSI they'll find out I have shrivelled non-viable eggs, and they suspect there might an issue on sperm level too (we have unexplained infertility). Aware that I might sound irrational, but this is part of the struggle. Were they able to give you more insight into your fertility struggle once you did ICSI? Egg details, sperm details? And congrats on 12 week old twins!

[Savs in reply to Sybil0]

Sounds like you’ve got lots of good relaxation techniques I totally relate with everything you are saying , irrational or not. It was kind of unexplained for us too, I do have PCOS but they said the sperm just couldn’t get in to my eggs. (1 out of 17 eggs fertilised).