Hi ladies,
I have learnt alot from the ladies in this forum who have shared and I would like to also share my experience, esp for ladies with poor ovarian reserve ie poor responders.
Like soul, I have been married for 5 years and started TCC ing 3 years ago.. I went for a laproscopy as well as D&C 2 to 3 years back ti clean up some cysts, polyps as well as my thick uterus walls. However, with the 'clean up' I still did not manage to conceive naturally.
I decided to switch gynae and embarked on IUI.. Failed. My DH SA was not exactly good. Took me nearly a year to try SO IUI in july this year coz I m terrified of needles.. That failed too. All this while while trying the IUI, I was with a general gynae and she then recommended that I see a RE instead to deal with infertility issues.
I did the AMH test and I believe that there r ladies in the forum who have gone for this as well. My RE called me immediately after the results r known to point out to me what that means..although physical age wise, I just hit 32, my AMH is at 2.3 which means that I have low ovarian reserve, my eggs are aging. I found it hard to accept. This was the reason why despite jabbing 150 u of puregon plus being on clomid in the previous cycle of so iui only resulted in 1 follicle being recruited.
We then explored ivf as a last resort and per doc's advice, dun waste too much time in embarking on this journey. However, I asked him to delay by one cycle coz I wanted to seek tcm ( I never believed in tcm but I had to try after reading this forun even tho it's only for a month). I went on to do accu and took Chinese medication from eu ren sang. I was seeing dr Qi at tiong bahru plaza.
Given the low amh results, it came without surprise when the FSH results was also very high... I was at 17. Doc prep me and my Hubby that we'll not get the qty but now to focus on quality. He decided to put me on at least 1 month of growth hormones before starting on ivf. There has been research and papers that GH has a positive impact. I was injecting GH all the way till ER, injecting a higher dose during stim phase.
I was on the short protocol (no point supressing anymore when I m already so suppressed with my high fsh) and was on 400 units of puregon and 150 units of menopur for approx 14 days. That's about the max max dosage of stim drugs. Despite the high dosage, I only yielded 3 follicles.
Out of the 3 follicles, 3 eggs were harvested. Only 1 was of good quality. The other 2 were with fragmented. Out of the 3, 2 of them went on to fertilize (icsi). My embrologist did not tell me the gradings and it really din matter to me then coz I din have a choice to choose. I only had 2. One was 6 cell ( the good egg) and the other was 8 cell (the not so good one). I did a day 3 transfer.
During the 2 weeks, I took pink m's advice seriously and made sure I was on bed rest most of the time. She advised that she took Chinese meds too dr Zou during the 2ww. I requested the same from my Chinese doc. I did what u ladies have advised, taking the dates wolfberry tea, durians, brazil nuts, conceive well, chicken essence.I plonked myself in bed and took Day's advise to lay down in bed especially in the first week. One thing I may have done differently coz my bbt is very low is that I started to take red ginseng powder to bring up the temp levels. I started taking red ginseng rather late in the game tho. Like 2 weeks prior to ET all the way till now. Not too sure if that helped tho.
My bhcg is not high at 190.2. Like the ladies here .. I guess nothing is firmed until the see the scans and hear the heartbeats. I continue to pray for little miracles, one baby step at a time.. And count my blessings when each hurdle is crossed.
Tho I do not post much here, I must tell u that u ladies have supported me in this journey.
All the best everyone! Persevere and continue to stay strong and positive!
