I have PCO too. The only time I cycled with one follicle (instead of a plethora of cysts), I had sworn off sugar for the whole month. I was really stunned at that result, but pleased as punch! As that month, the transfer worked.
As for improving egg quality, I'm certain that cutting sugar will have a great impact. Combine with low GI/low carb diet (chocolate may be officially 'low GI', but is still full of sugar), and healthy exercise - well... you're setting yourself up right.
Fingers crossed ladies. Let us know how you get on.
All is going well and abstained completely over Easter, one small hot cross bun outside of my plan only.
Re: the pasta..I found one site saying it was low gi and another saying it was high and it was possibly reading this made me decide that professional advice was better.
Of the main meal suggestions, my diet plan indicates only a cup of pasta if you are having a spaghetti bolognaise which would indicate to me that we still need to be careful about the total carbs you consume in relation to protein. So you just need to ensure it is a meat heavy dish you eat. Your GI won't spike if you eat in the right combination and proportions.
A basic main meal looks like this.
200-250g lean meat
1-2 cups of vegies
1 cup of starch vegie (OR 1/2 cup or pumpkin or sweet potato)
However you can't overdo the number of carbs either. I know this because the dietician has the number of carbs written against each meal and also my FS was focussed on number of carbs. So, because bergen bread or a special type of low gi muesli is out there, it wouldn't be wise to just pig out on that. I couldn't just eat 3 apples in a row and 3 handfuls of nuts because it would mean I had consumed excessive carbs and fat, neither of which are good (as a snack I can have a piece of fruit and a small handful of nuts).
I wish I could copy an paste you my diet plan just so you had an idea!!
Just so you know, a chocolate paddle pop is allowed if I need a sweet fix - guess who bought a pack of 10!
Information was very helpful once again! Well done over Easter! I had a few very minor lapses in will power - oops - but am back trying to keep going on my diet again. I'll have to remember the paddle pops for next time
I think I'm getting better at balancing my gi each meal and snack but still have to increase my meat intake! Are you meant to eat a protein at each main meal? We only really have meat at dinner. Also, did your dietician tell you how frequently you needed to eat at all?
...eat regularly, every 3 to 4 hours - so have a snack between main meals. I guess that means you have a fairly even blood sugar and insulin level, no idea what happens when you are asleep though! I just get hungry so I always want to snack.
Obviously protein comes in the form of milk and cheese and egg and nuts , so no, you don't need meat at every meal and my diet plan has plenty of non meat things. And yes you should have something protein at every meal, remember the 40:40:20 ratio of C, P and F which is not just about GI (obviously this advice pertains to me so you might want to be checking it out for yourself, but it is pretty much what the FS said)
With my diet plan, i am mixing and matching all over the place. I sometimes I might swap breakfast over with lunch eg have a toasted sandwhich at breakfast and the eggs on toast at lunch. Or I swap what the dinners around. The quotas remain the same but I take it as following the principles.
Examples
LUNCH
small pocket bread with leand sandwich meat and salad
seeded bread (Bergen or Helgas seed sensations) with say low fat cheese (plus/minus vegemite)
Not on my plan but Oporto does a really nice grilled chicken salad - just say no to the lashing of creamy sauce. Very tasty when you are out and about and are stuck and starving in a food court.
SNACKS
vita weet crackers and low fat cheese
nuts and fruit (she recommended lucky nuts which are small boxes of raw nuts you might put in a lunch box - so I should probably stop by nice tasy salted versions which have vegie oil on them)
No dried fruit or fruit muesli bars
(occasionally I have cracked and had my breakfast cereal combo again but I know this is probably not very good thing as my daily quotas will go up)
DRINKS
1 low joule drink per day limt (I rarely have anything)
madura tea (for the caffeine benefits though I reckon it has more than decaf coffee)
water
Good Luck!
BTW I just sniffed a half eaten Lindt bunny, and really wish I hadn't!
Last edited by Sophie Baby Makes 3; April 8th, 2010 at 08:41 PM.
: add some more stuff
Thanks so much for all your info - I've been trying hard to stick to my low gi and low sugar diet and have been finding it ok apart from the blow out I had tonight at my brother's wedding (mashed potato/dessert/soft drink) eeek!
After my last neg test I went to the dietician and skipped my next cycle as I was over it, needed to save more $ and the diet needed to be cemented in. I have since completed a new cycle and I have just had my egg retrieval today (7) and the FS did the ultrasound himself the other day and said this is the best stimulation I have had. Obvioulsy will know more when days goes by with transfer in 5 days.
Three new variables are involved here
- Mild stim with different drugs and slight increased FSH (gonal F 75s and the last 3 days were puregon 50)
- The diet 40:40:20 (Protein:Carbs:Fat)
- I am taking adifferent multivatamin with iodine plus fish oil tablets as per the dietician (I just stuck this in for test rigidity sake!)
My stress level are still the same which will always impact hormones - 1 yoga session and a few walks don't really negate your nanna dying and having to drop allyour appts and geta flight at short notice and not knowing how on earth this is all going to fit around your cycle!
Any updates following diet and new cycles??
Sophie
Last edited by Sophie Baby Makes 3; June 2nd, 2010 at 05:39 PM.
Wow Sophie, sounds like you had a great cycle so far, fingers crossed things continue to go well and you recover ok! So sorry to hear about your Nana though, sending hugs and hope you're ok.
Well I'm just about to go for my blood test on Friday, eek! I entered my cycle with high hopes for my diet (low gi, low sugar, good amount of fruits and vegies and healthy protein), but I didn't cope at all well with the synarel, I had severe vision blurring migraines, that caused me to vomit. So I ate very poorly, whatever I could handle. Then I got OHSS after my hcg injection and was very uncomfortable with a 6 month pregnant looking stomach, I was in agony for about 4 days after the EPU, and I thought I was being a wuss as I have had 2 EPU's before and didn't experience too much pain. Anyway sorry to ramble.
But FS said I had about 16-18 follies, and we got 13 eggs, of those 7 fertilised and 2 made it to day 5 for transfer - yay! I'm not sure whether the others didn't fertilise because of maturity or sperm issues as we did half ivf and half icsi. But only 1 ivf one fertilised and 6 icsi ones. I cheated today and poas..........it was a very very faint positive, but i'm quite nervous as all my crinone has been coming out brown and I've had pink spotting on my toilet paper I am hoping everything is ok though.
Gosh what a nightmare roller coaster for you MM, which unfortunately you have been on plenty of times before!! Despite all of that your ratios have improved significantly haven't they in relation to viability at 5 day transfer compared to your egg pick up numbers. Before it was one fifth were fertilised and this cycle it was over half. That is an indication of much better quality isn't it and possibly the introduction of ICSI if you weren't doing it before.
I guess if you were doing well on the diet and if they know that synarel has this effect on you they will now know to try you on something else and make it easier for future if you need it. I use a drug delivered by needle instead of synarel - I kept getting worried on whether or not the pump action had worked and the ramifications of repeating it or perhaps my follicles popping.
Best wishes for a glorious outcome tomorrow - I have never ever had any POAS excitement before so I hope this is exactly what it is indicating. My fingers XXX and do try to have something nice planned for tomorrow evening to reward yourself for everything you have done whatever happens.
Last edited by Sophie Baby Makes 3; June 3rd, 2010 at 06:55 PM.
Sorry for the late reply we had a really busy weekend. Thankyou for all of your help and info and support, I really appreciate it! I hope everything is going well with your little embies and that they are ready for transfer tomorrow. Am really praying you gets lots of poas excitement this time and that your new diet has your womb all cosy and ready!
My blood test came back positive (hooray!) and I have another one on Monday to check my levels are rising.
Yes I think you are right the icsi did help our fertilisation rates. Even though our swimmer numbers are low the lab still deemed them fine for ivf but i guess i'm glad FS made us go half ivf and half icsi. I got a letter from the lab the other day though and found out our 1 little ivf emby made it to blast and only 1 of our 6 icsi ones made it to blast. I thought that was interesting.
Wishing you all the best for tomorrow, I hope everthing goes really well!
xoxo
Last edited by milly's mummy; June 10th, 2010 at 08:55 PM.
Oh God MM you have been really battered about, I am really sorry to hear your news. Last night I wrote you a big long response telling you how absolutely happy I was to hear your news and that I had been hanging out for it and trying ot judge by the number of days that went by if that was good or bad - so probably best it did get lost in cyber space. Despite my exuberance I acknowledged your need to be cautious. So many milestones to get past, and you don't know about them all until you trip over them. People around you will always say why be so negative or cautious during a cycle but how on earth do you protect yourself when you get flattened so many times.
You seriously need some wine and chocolate and snuggling in over the weekend with some good books/mags. Thank goodness I have found the struggles have brought my husband and I so much closer, so despite the hormones and misery I hope this happens for you both. A bit of a break from your ivf might be a good thing then come back reinvigorated and some different meds to help the whole diet and hysperstimulation thing sort out. Please don't give up..I hope that I can give you an inspirational story to the many out there. I had 2 embryo's transferred on Monday (1 was able to be frozen at day 6 a bit slow) and will find out next Thursday.
When you are ready please stay in touch.
take care of yourself!
Sophie xx
I really appreciate your encouragement. Chocolate and snuggles sound like a good idea, I think I will be having a break for quite a while.... I didn't handle the last stim cycle well and think I need some time out without thinking about it (and to work on my diet!)
Oh yay! Thats such good news so far, I was so worried that you didn't make it to transfer when I didn't hear from you for a few days! Phew, I'm so glad you got such good results after a horrid time before. It still brings me joy and encouragement to hear when others cycles are going well. Sending you lots of sticky vibes, prayers, and hopefully fun/relaxing things to distract yourself with! So often I feel like my life is in slow motion over the 2ww.
Oh guys I got a big fat negative. Not much I can say. Thought i was in for a treat and am so dissapointed. i have just eaten a big fat chocolate donut!
My HCG was 2 which probably means they didn't even take a bite - I really thought with my sore boobs, headache and bizarre dreams (my husband became a korean version of himself) something could be building. I did wonder if my sore boobs going away at Day 13 perhaps something was amiss - I asked the nurse to check with the Doctor after my result. I have one little frozen day 6 emby left and it really doesn't thrill me to go through this again with the odds stacked so highly against me this time, the poor little thing is actually annoying me. I know keep up the positive attitude but I really honestly don't think that makes a single amount of difference - I have tried on every attitude under the sun and rotated them and the result is always the sympathy call from the clinic. Still I am lucky that I didn't have something to begin with and lose it like MM.
This is still about egg quality for me so I will check in with my next result from the frozen embie and if I start a new cycle. I would love to keep hearing other peoples stories..
Hopefully less of a misery guts next time round and a big thanks for the support.
Sophie
Sophie, your situation sounds fairly similar to what I went through at times... All the right symptoms and then bang on time AF starts... and it was agonisingly painful and clotty and crampy and just ick.
Thing is... if you have ANY HCG in your system at all, that embryo gave it a red hot go. My clinic didn't admit this to me until I asked - they said anything less than 10 was a BFN, but if it was somewhere between 0 and 10 it is actually a chemical pregnancy. I went through that hell twice, and it was actually a weird kind of relief when I got my first HCG=0 BFN.
Anyway, what eventually worked for us was getting through a stim cycle with less eggs, they were collected a tad early and a lot were immature, but we finally had better quality. It was the low GI, low carb thing that worked in the end. The 18 month old boy that is a result of that cycle is currently sleeping on my chest.
I just want to say hang in there. I know the hell you are living in right now, and I also know that you are close... so very close. It may be horrible to say, but I think that in your situation (because I've been there) I wouldn't be pinning my hopes on that frozen embryo, but working on lifestyle and diet and doing everything you can to try to get better eggs in the next collection. Make your partner do the same - you can't tell me that the quality of the sperm doesn't count, and it's always easier to make the changes if your partner joins in too.
Oh Sophie sending hugs, you have every right to grieve, you did everything you could, I'm so sorry it didn't work this month. The roller coaster is awful, to have such good news throughout your cycle and through all the waiting and anticipation and then it all goes horrible.
We've been having more dramas, my miscarriage hasn't come yet......only some browny reddy leaking each day (sorry tmi). I started feeling pregnant againand rang up my clinic and asked for another blood test. My levels are above 1030, I've also been having some nagging pains in my left side for the past 2 weeks that I told them about. There was a bit of a lump on the u/s today so FS is quite sure its ectopic and wanted to do a lap today to remove it (unless its just some stray placenta?). But then when I got to the clinic this morning I started cramping with red blood and I think my AF has finally arrived, but I only have cramping on my left side! So I've decided to get one more blood test tomorrow and if my levels haven't dropped I'll get the lap done tomorrow.
I know it sounds stupid and I've never really had a break from fertility treatment before but I can't wait for this to be over so I don't have to think about it for a few months/maybe years! Every cycle I tell myself I will be mentally strong and not think about it and not wait for appointments and ultrasounds and phone calls and procedures. But I always cave and let it consume me a bit. Sometimes I feel like for the tww my life is on hold or in slow motion!
I really hope you can have a nice rest over the weekend and pamper yourself, not that that will make it any better but try not to be too hard on yourself. I know I can't help, but if you need to vent I'll be here. Take care!
It turned out to be ectopic, poor little thing. When I saw FS yesterday he said I should have a lap done that day. But it was my sisters engagment party that night and I really wanted to go and the pain wasn't all that bad............but then the pain got a lot worse , I had to go the emergency room at 8.30 last night and I had a lap and my tube removed. I'm ok now just a bit sore.
Hope you're taking it easy this weekend
Last edited by milly's mummy; June 20th, 2010 at 06:56 PM.
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I am hoping everything is ok though.
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