oh the cycling again thread is quiet.
I noticed that the part 2 thread is “closed to comments” – is it because it reached the limit for comments?
Hope everyone is well!
Sprightly, is your baby due soon? How are things?
Evening, how far along are you now?
Jly, any updates?
I haven’t posted in a while.
I have news…we had one PGS double donor embryo left from our fresh cycle early last year. After filling out international adoption papers and paying the agency’s registration fees, we decided to go ahead and still transfer our remaining embryo.
We are now almost 17 weeks pregnant. I have not wanted to announce anything to anyone because I just keep waiting for the ball to drop given our history. But my 8th (or maybe 9th, I’ve lost track) DE transfer seems to have worked.
I had a bad bleed at 12 weeks and thought it was another miscarriage, but it was a subchorionic hematoma, which is shrinking (now about 1.6 cm – small).
I am very excited but also very wary. I have a great midwife and a backup MFM doc.
Our protocol…
I went rouge on a couple of things. My RE wanted to do an ERA but we weren’t willing to put in the extra time or money given that we had pretty much settled on adoption. But, I remember my most successful pregnancies that went to a heartbeat were afternoon transfers, so I technically had been on progesterone for an extra 10 hours or so. So, I took fate into my own hands and did an extra 12 hrs of progesterone prior to transfer.
I also got my functional medicine doctor to prescribe low dose naltrexone (4.5mg), which is supposed to balance your immune system and reduce the chances of repeat miscarriage with very little side effects. My immunologist refused to prescribe it. https://www.ldnresearchtrust.org/sites/default/files/Dr_Phil_Boyle.pdf
I had been on prednisone for several months because of a previous transfer that didn’t take. I did 20mg of prednisone leading up to transfer and 30 mg at 11 weeks when my immune system flared up. I am still on 30 mg and my last immune labs were somewhat normal.
IVIG every 2-3 weeks – immunologist would prefer every 1-2 weeks but I couldn’t afford that. I am not sure if I need to continue it at this point but my last infusion was last week.
Vaginal Viagra prior to transfer, and a endometrial scratch the month prior (which was way more painful than any other scratch I had done, not sure why)
Baby aspirin, vit E, lovenox 40mg twice daily (now every other day after bleed), high doses of progesterone (2cc pio + 200mg prometrium three times daily); high doses estrogen (2mg estradiol three times a day plus estradiol patches, 2 every other day) – my progesterone/estrogen levels never cooperated (even yet) so they kept increasing my dosages, and I am still taking some progesterone and estrogen at 17 weeks.
High doses of methylfolate (I have a double mutation of C677T). I started out on Metanx but my B12 and B6 levels got too high, so they changed it to just 5mg of methylfolate.
Fish oil and curcumin for inflammation.
Lots of acupuncture, and I did some Chinese herbal teas for the immune system and inflammation prior to transfer.