Hello Ladies
Hubby and I are about to embark on the IVF journey. He has had the snip some years ago and we would like to have a baby. We have been saving for this and really don't have surplus to have many attempts as many of you would be the same. I was just curious who had success first time round with icsi. We both have children from previous relationships and had no trouble conceiving there.
we didn't do icsi. But we fell duirng our first IVF cycle. DH is fine but you name it, I seem to have it.... PCOS, endo and blocked tube. I'd say your odds are good if you conceived easily before. Fingers crossed for you.
Some people get very lucky with their first cycles - hopefully you will be one of them.
I think you should be realistic, though - most first cycles do not work, unfortunately. It's all a bit random I'm afraid. Our first cycle was a complete bust - no eggs. But we succeeded on our next, which was our first transfer.
Good luck!
Purple chic - just thought i'd add my glimmer of hope...due to DH vas many many moons ago and a failed (and very costly) reversal, we underwent ICSI with sperm asp. in 2007. We only got 6 eggs at EPU (despite LOTS of follies) and after ICSI only 2 viable - A 2 dayer fortunately produced our DD (2 yrs). The other is being transfered by FET tomorrow (if it thaws), but i'm being realistic it might not happen again and we may have just struck it lucky 1st go. I really do think it is individual and no statistics will represent your situation. Best of luck with it all, we can only hope and pray and try to keep ourselves sane while we go through this journey!!!
Just to give you some more hope, I've been doing my first round of IVF (ICSI, to be precise) over the past month, and just found out today that it's resulted in a BFP! And that happened even though I only had 6 follies at EPU, which resulted in only 2 embies (4 didn't fertilize despite using ICSI). (I just realized this sounds a lot like what happened to Kimbe -- funny!) So it CAN happen to you, and you don't need boatloads of embryos to have a valid shot, either. I wish you the best of luck with your cycle!!
Kitkat72xx
PS. Kimbe, making us even more similar, I have one frozen blasty, just like you. More importantly, however, how did your FET go today? I'm wishing you the best of luck! FX that the thaw was successful and that you had no problems with the transfer.
Hi KitKat
Thanks for your post. It does give me hope thank you. What is BFP i am so new to the IVF and Forum lingo. I probably sound so silly. Most I can work out. Who did you go through which Dr.
It's good talking to others about this. And I haven't even started yet.
Hey Kimbe. Hope all went well today. I hope our journey will be uncomplicated. It would be nice to think it could happen first go emotionally and financially. But I am being realistic too. Fingers crossed for you. We both have children from previous relationships so am hoping it will be smooth sailing.
A BFP is a Big Fat Posivite . . . pregnancy test! Specifically, the "official" one that the fertility clinic does at the end of your cycle to see how it turned out. Mine was a blood test measuring quantitative HCG levels (the pregnancy hormone), and my test today showed that I am pregnant! Hooray! (I've never gotten this far before in my entire life . . .)
Kitkat72
PS. I'm with City Fertility here on the Gold Coast. They have been great. I see you're in Brisbane, so I don't know if it makes sense to bother telling you who my doctor is since he is down here on the coast. If you'd like to know, let me know and I'll PM you.
Hi KitKat
Did you check out different clinics before you decided on City Fertility. If so how did they compare to others in service and price. Or did you choose them on recommendation. I'm just so confused of who to go to and which Dr. I'm leaning towards City Fertility. Thinking of Dr Neil Astill. Has anyone used him for IVF. or can anyone recommend any other Dr's, Thanks to those who have.
Sorry for the delay in responding, but I knew I'd have a lot to write, so I waited till I had the time to sit down and do this properly.
I probably didn't do as much research as I should have. There were really essentially 3 options available to me here on the Coast (Monash IVF, City Fertility, and another centre at Pindara whose name is presently escaping me). Basically the factors I looked at were:
1) I knew someone who used and liked my FS. That held a lot of weight with me.
2) I liked that my FS was no longer practicing obstetrics -- focusing now solely on fertility and gyn, b/c I thought he'd maybe have more time to keep up to date with fertility advances (I have no idea if that's actually true, it was just a vague suspicion).
3) I liked that when I saw my FS for my first visit (keeping in mind that if I got a bad vibe, I definitely would have then gone to see somebody else, either from City Fert. or from a different clinic), he was on the same page as me about taking an aggressive course of action from the get-go. At 38 with no pregnancies under my belt, I definitely didn't want somebody who was going to make me f*$k around for ages before we could start. Note that if I had NOT felt like we were on the same page at that first meeting, I would have interviewed other people before going with him. But I felt comfortable in his hands when I met him so I didn't see the need to look elsewhere. I think I should say at this point that I got the impression while doing my research that your choice of specific FS is probably more important than your choice of clinic, since it's the specific FS who decides on your treatment plan in most instances. That said, I've learned from reading this site that at some clinics all the docs get together after your cycle and collectively analyze what they would do differently next cycle, so if that "brains trust" aspect is important to you, then that's something to look for when you're choosing your clinic. (I have no idea if City Fert. does this, and I have no idea what clinics do operate this way.)
4) I should mention that before starting fertility treatment, I had previously been seeing an ob/gyn for my regular gynocological care who was affiliated with Monash at the time (although no longer, apparently, according to their website). I ended up deciding not to go back to this guy after a number of visits because, while apparently technically knowledgeable and certainly kind, he was just too flaky for me. For example, when I had him test my FSH in 2007, he didn't bother telling me that I had a bad result (13) until I came in over a YEAR later for my pap smear. Yeah, in retrospect I should have followed up in 2007 and asked what the results were, but with all my old docs in the States (I moved to Oz in 2006) they had always contacted me if I had an abnormal result, so I wrongly assumed that no news was good news. As it was, I only found out about my high FSH when I saw him something like 17 months later. And then the way he told me was so distressing: I walk in, he flips out my chart, and the first thing he says is, "Whoa, things aren't looking good here with these FSH numbers! You're going to have a hard time having kids with this number -- with numbers like this IVF probably won't even work for you b/c you probably won't respond to the stim drugs!". Needless to say I was in shock, then I had to freak out for weeks until a second FSH test came back at 4.9 (Of course, when my new FS tested my AMH, he confirmed the original FSH result's indication of diminished fertility, but I DID respond adequately to the stim drugs and ended up with my BFP!). The more I thought about it, the more I was distressed about everything about this experience, from not getting the results when they first came in to how flippantly he told me, even though the doc then tried to help me with some on-the-cheap fertility services like having me come in to do ovulation monitoring on his ultrasound (bulk billed) and by BTs without his making me sign up with Monash. Long story short, when the time came to get serious about choosing a FS (my hubby wasn't ready to get "really" started until the past 6 mos or so), I just had too many qualms to go back to the first guy even though I do feel kind of guilty. I know this is awful, but that also made me kind of not want to go to Monash as my first choice even though Monash obviously is highly reputable and has achieved some amazing breakthroughs in IVF over the years -- mainly b/c I was afraid I'd come across this guy there if I used a different FS and that it would be too awkward. Ironically, I no longer see this guy's name on the Monash website (he doesn't seem to be doing fertility stuff anymore, from what I can tell), but I already had it in my head to look at other options, and when I did more research on City Fertility, I liked the sound of the doctors there and ended up being happy with the first one I spoke with (my current FS), so I really didn't bother looking anywhere else.
5) This might sound dumb, but the logistics also factored in for me. Pindara and Monash were both a bit out of the way for me (although since I live on what I think of as the central but what is apparently technically the southern end of the Gold Coast, none of them were really that far away), whereas City Fert. is close to where I work. Further, my doc works out of John Flynn, which I like. A lot of the other FSs on the coast are at or near Pindara, and when I've had to go there for stuff in the past it was always impossible to get a park. Not that John Flynn doesn't have its moments, either, but it's easier than at Pindara. And I hear it's even worse up there now b/c they're apparently doing construction on the hospital and car park which has exacerbated the parking situation. What I've found is that I've had about 1/2 my visits at CFC and 1/2 at my FS's rooms (including the visits to discuss testing before starting my cycle -- after I started all my visits were at CFC except for egg pick-up, which was at John Flynn Hosp.), and that was really nice b/c it was all very convenient for me. Again, this might sound like a minor thing, but when you're doing IVF, the last thing you need is more stress, including about getting to and parking at your appointments!
6) As for cost, while I could be wrong, I got the impression when researching them that all of the clinics down here were pretty similar in price, so that did not really factor into my choice. Anyway, luckily we have enough comfort financially that a difference of a few hundred bucks was not really material to me. If the difference between clinics had been in the thousands of dollars, I probably would have looked at the issue more critically. It did help, though, that my FS is no-gap with my health fund, so when he did my lap and EPU I had no extra surgical bill from him. (I did have other bills from him, obviously, such as for my embryo transfer.) That WAS a nice bonus.
7) When I started actually going to CFC for my appointments, I liked how most of the time I was the only one there: it was very private. The only time I saw other girls was the day of ET, when I saw 2 other girls. I really felt like the people there knew who I was, and they were all very kind. It wasn't a factory setting at all. I think that if I felt like a number at my first meeting with them (before starting my cycle), that might have inspired me to look at my other options before definitively selecting them. But because I was happy with my experience, I saw so reason to look around.
8) Finally, I really do believe that IVF is all a numbers game. Honestly, I'm even now not all that confident that it really makes all that much difference who you see or where you go to. Your body is going to respond to the drugs or not, and as long as whoever you see monitors you enough to get you on the correct dose of drugs to produce the right amount of embies (not too few and not too many), then it's up to your body to do the rest! And once they've collected the embies, presumably all of the clinics now are using the most modern embryo growing mediums and have competent embryologists growing them, so it's probably more up to the embies than the clinic as to whether they grow properly. Further, if the first protocol that you try doesn't work, then presumably most FSs are going to keep adjusting and making changes until they find the one that works for you. The biggest "skill" components that I can see come into having the judgment to understand which protocols are more likely to work for you, and also probably with doing the embryo transfer, since apparently placement in the womb has some bearing on whether it implants successfully. For my guy, he suggested doing an antagonist protocol right away for my first cycle because of my age instead of starting with the "typical" down reg cycle, and it worked. After he suggested it, I did some research on my own and saw that other docs, too, often find higher success rates with "older" women on antagonist cycles, so that gave me confidence in him. My only ability to judge his skill at ETs was the fact that he had been doing this a long time, and that suggests that he's done a lot of them. I know that in medicine, skill usually increases the more that you do a procedure, so that was reassuring for me. And finally, if you go to one person and you're feeling disillusioned with them after one or more cycles, there's no law preventing you from switching clinics, so nothing is ever set in stone.
I hope this all helps you.
Good luck!
Kitkat72
Last edited by KitKat72; May 17th, 2010 at 10:19 AM.
WOW KitKat That was an awesome reply to my question and I thank you for your time that it would have taken. I think I need to just stop looking and decide. I went to a seminar the other night with a clinic that I think I will just find a doctor there. Otherwise I'm just wasting time looking and not doing. They seem to know there stuff and all seem quite nice. Your info has been more than helpful and I really do appreciate it.
PurpleChic
Reading your posts and forums has given me encouragement and i have to admit, scared me a little also. I am 30 and DH is 36, we are undergoing our very first ivf due to unexplained infertility. I am on day 6 now n have started puregon ( injection stinks a little! ). I hope all goes well for me and I become pregs on this cycle. Is there anything I can do to help the suucess? I hv a confession though, i am still smoking but down to not more than 6 cigs a day. I plan to quit tomorrow!. Id appreciate any advice or words of encouragement.
Roxy,
I had success first round. I'm 31, DH is 37. Ours was due to PCOS, Endo and blocked tube. I honestly think one of the reasons we were successful was the acupuncture I had weekly during the IVF treatment. I also went just prior to egg pickup and just before and straight after the embryo transfer. I was also taking supplements and chinese medicine that she gave me.
I didn't do ICSI but my first IVF cycle was a BFP. DH's swimmers were fine, it was me who was the problem, blocked tubes and severe endo.
It can happen!!
As for choosing a FS, I see that you are in Brisbane. PM me if you want the details of my specialist. I also have a few friends who have also done IVF at the same clinic, so have a number of excellent FS names.
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Who had Success first go with IVF/ICSI
Hey Kimbe. Hope all went well today. I hope our journey will be uncomplicated. It would be nice to think it could happen first go emotionally and financially. But I am being realistic too. Fingers crossed for you. We both have children from previous relationships so am hoping it will be smooth sailing.
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