Long termers TTC

Lucyfur wrote: »

I said 300-1000 as that's what I was advised from clinics abroad. Obviously I'm wrong, which is brilliant! Delighted to hear they're all covered under DPS.

Apologies

No not at all. I'm delighted to be hearing figures. So as it happens our new hiouse fell through tonight so we're half thinking of taking ours off the market and staying put for another year end praying we manage to get pregnabt during that year.

I was gutted this eve. We have ours sale agreed now too and I feel terrible pulling it off the market but we just don't have anywhere to go it's unbelievably stressful

I had my follow up with consultant today. So I had bloods done on day 21 of my first Clomid month. My progesterone levels were 26 so consultant wants me to continue on 50 ug of Clomid for 5 months. Of course I've just googled the norms for progesterone and everything I've read says less than 30 would indicate an endometrial lining or sufficient for implantation. What has your experience been?

Well my MRI results came back & all is fine! Need to get prolactin levels checked again. Doing bloods today, hoping the results are back by Thursday & if all ok, I'll be starting my sniffer then!

Yellow diamond wrote: »

Hi there I am new to this thread and just looking for some advice. Was just at our clinic today for first consultation and was told IVF is our best option, I was prescribed the pill for four weeks followed by four weeks of hormone shots. They then will commence egg retrieval......can I just ask how long this process takes? It's a private clinic. I forgot to ask these questions as my head was all over the place! Thanks in advance

Hi Yellow, Egg Retrieval will happen once your eggs are mature enough. There is loads of different protocols(cycles) that someone can be put on so it's hard to tell how long each one would be. A short protocol only last 4 weeks and thats from start(frist day of AF) to finish(test day). A long protocol can last up to 8 weeks and that might not be including the time your on the pill before hand. So sounds like your could be on a long protocol but if you call your clinic and speak to a nurse I'm sure they'd be happy to explain. Best of luck xx

Hi ladies, I'm afraid its an official negative for me at this stage. Thanks for all the messages of support, as always. It's great to be able to let off some steam here where people understand how you are feeling. I don't know yet where we will go from here but we will definitely be taking some time out to think about things and I won't be organising a review appointment for a few weeks until I am ready to talk about it.

Just thought I would add to some of the discussion on going abroad for treatment. I know a few ladies who have gone abroad and some do swear by it (although I think whatever clinic gives any of us success, we will inevitably swear by that clinic!). Anyway, we switched clinics for our most recent cycle and I gave serious consideration to doing abroad, but when I weighed up the pros and cons, for me there were too many cons. I suppose the main pro is that ivf abroad is much cheaper, buf like nemo said, the savings tend to work out at about €1000. When you factor in flights and accommodation the financial saving is not as much as it might seem. Now €1000 is certainly a lot of money, but all my cycles have cost between €6000 and €8000 so it is not a massive saving when compared to those prices.

The main things that put me off were: my cycles are very irregular and I've never been able to time an ivf cycle the way some other people can. (I've never been put on the pill in the run up to ivf for medical reasons). Coupled with that, i'm a very poor responder and have often ended up stimming for longer than expected and have also ended up with cancelled cycles due to my poor response. All of this means that it would be very hard to organise dates for flights, accommodation and time off work and leaving it until the last minute would tend to put up the price. What a lot of ladies seem to do is to book flexi flights, which cost more, but this allows them to pick a date for flights at the last minute. Even people who find the timing easier tend to do this, as it is very hard to predict an exact date for egg collection. Booking last minute accommodation tends to be awkward and expensive though and with so many cancelled and delayed cycles to my name I think this would only add to the stress. While work is obviously not the most important thing to consider, I still need my job to be able to afford sll this, and I have to book annual leave quite far in advance and I don't know how things would work if I had a cancelled cycle - I would probably want to cancel my annual leave and use in for another cycle in a month or two. Again, I felt that this would add extra unwanted stress for me. Finally, the real clincher for me was the fact that the one and only frozen embryo that i ever had didn't survive the thaw. The embyro was thawed on the morning of my scheduled transfer and I got a call then to say the transfer was cancelled. If this had been abroad, i would have already flown over by the time I got the call and so I would have wasted time and money on flights. This would actually have meant that this cycle would have cost more abroad than it did in ireland and so with all this uncertainty, I felt that a potential saving of €1000 (or maybe even less with wasted flights) wasn't worth it for me. I know that there are people who have more straightforward cycles and some of these issues will not be a concern for thdm, so I think the decision to go abroad really depends on the individual circumstanes.

Lastly, i just wanted to mention a few things in relation to the price of ivf (in ireland). Someone mentioned €4500 earlier and I just wanted to point out that this tends to be the most basic price and it can very easily become €6000 or more, without adding anything too fancy. Obviously prices vary from clinic to ckinic, so these are approximate, but typical extra costs could be icsi/imsi (€500/€1000 extra - pretty much a must if there are male fertility issues), culturing embryos to day 5 and freezing spare embryos (can be doughly €1000 extra and this is actually fairly common). EU bloods can be €150 per person (some clinics will allow you to get these done through your gp which is cheaper, but some won't) and if meds run into 2 calendar months you can pay €144 twice (not uncommon). So without adding in anything particularly "fancy", a cycle can easily come to €6000 instead of €4500. Bit it depends on the couple and the clinic, but for anyone budgeting, just be aware of this. After a few failed cycles, we started adding in all sorts of other extras and then the cost rises even more. A lot of these extras will also cost extra abroad. Also, if you are lucky enough to have frozen embryos, check out the price for your clinic to transfer a frozen embryo. This is typically around €1000 so if you get to this stage and have a few frosties, subsequent cycles could be much cheaper. By the time you factor in flights, going abroad for a frozen transfer is probably not cheaper than having the transfer here.

I should also just mention, to clear up any confusion, that not all meds are covered under the DPS!! The vast majority of them are but again if you have a few failed cycles and you starting throwing everything at a cycle, there are particular drugs that can be used thst are not covered. I paid about €1000 for drugs for my last cycle. But for most standard cycles the drugs should be covered.

Sorry for the essay, didn't think this would get so long! The very best of luck to stickybean and hollywood and anyone else starting soon xx

So sorry Tomee. Hope you're OK.

So I'm waiting on a call from the clinic. I phoned them this morning to let them know I received the bloods results, so releived to say my Prolactin levels is 18.7 down from 45 the last time. So happy they are ok. Thursday is my Day21 so hopefully I'll get the go ahead today. Very excited!

yes you can submit receipts for the ivf I think you get 20% back

You sure can YD, I've been keeping all my receipts, spent a fare bit already with IVF, MRI, Endo Scratch, roll on January I'm on long Protocol too so today is my day 1, I've started a nasal spray which I am on for 2 weeks then I have a scan.

God the spray will get a bit of getting used to. It tastes AWFUL when it trickles down your throat! But excited to be on Day1

Tinkerbell 03 wrote:

Hi all...first time post here...TTC 5 years had 1 miscarriage 2 failed IVF ...don't know what to do... Hubbie can't even talk about it...

Tinkerbell I'm so sorry for everything you've been through. I had a miscarriage last year and found it really tough. Would talk to my hubbie but it got to a stage where he was getting frustrated because I kept bringing it up. Men just deal with these things differently to us.

I have never been through ivf but have a few friends who have. It's a tough experience but never feel like you are alone. There are so many on this thread who have been through it and who can support you when you need it.

Never give up hope. One day all of this will be worth it. Xx