Hi again Mum2Lauren.

Where to start... sorry, I'm really tired at the moment so this could be disjointed!

For the prednisone - I'm on 10mg as a base level dosage, and I increase to 20mg after ovulation/embryo transfer. I find jumping straight from 10 to 20 a bit rough, so I increase slowly over a few days. I have day 6 embryo transfers as my IVF treatment, so I have the appropriate monitoring to be able to do that. I'm supposed to wean off after I hit 12 weeks. By then, the pregnancy hormones will be well and truly controlling my arthritis (I started to get relief around 8 weeks, just didn't get much further than that, but it's before we figured out most of my problems), and the pregnancy will be safe. My rheumy assures me that it's safe in pregnancy, as very little of it actually crosses the placenta. Many people stress over taking it because it's a steroid and they give steroids in cases of pre-term labour to mature the baby's lungs faster - but that's a different steroid, prednisone is fine. I don't know about a maximum safe dose, though. I'm seeing my rheumy tomorrow so I shall try to remember to ask.

If you do have high prolactin levels, I know that there is a drug to bring them down, but I don't know a lot about that area of things, I just know that it can be fixed.

Your specialist sounds incredibly frustrating! I'm not the kind of person that can tolerate having a specialist who pats me on the head and tells me that it's his job to understand everything and mine to simply follow instructions. In my case - I've got three different conditions that all interact with each other (PCOS, arthritis and anxiety, and the arthritis and anxiety flare badly depending on my hormone levels at the time which are influenced by the PCOS, and just to make life interesting, the prednisone makes my PCOS worse!), so I simply HAVE to know what's going on with each treatment, each drug, and how that's going to impact on other things. You need to have doctors that are going to work with you on that and help you. I'm so glad you're in Sydney, Dr Sacks is just lovely, and he really knows his stuff! He's attached to IVF Australia and has rooms in Kogarah and the city. I don't use him as my regular FS - I use a different IVF clinic and a doctor that's much more conveniently located for me - but I do keep in touch via email if I have any questions at all about my treatment.

Anyway, I have waffled at great length here. I hope that my tired and muddled brain has managed to throw some useful information into the waffle for you. Feel free to pick my brain at any time - I'm no expert or doctor, just someone who's had to keep track of the instructions of three different specialists and try to make sense of it all! I'll help where ever I can, if something doesn't make sense, just ask and I'll do what I can.

BW