No one knows me on here, so I guess this is my safe place?

I realise it can be a private topic, but any real world advice from men about this would be appreciated. We’re currently 5 days into the suprecur injections and the anxiety is starting to set in. There isn’t an explanation for infertility, just ‘unexplained’ after consultations at the hospital and clinic we have been told we’re the perfect candidates, unfortunately that doesn’t change the fact that the success rate is only 33%. Will know if it’s worked by the end of September, everything crossed!

Can’t say enough good things about the clinic (Care in Sheffield), and they managed to get my best mates wife up the duff no problem!

I’ve got a bit of (unsuccessful) experience in this – happy to chat in private – email is in profile.

It was the most emotionally draining thing we’ve ever undertaken and whilst the physical stuff is well documented the great highs and deepest of lows still managed to catch us by surprise.

No experience, but good luck.

Good luck.

I’ve been through it including private and they are no guarantees. You are going to go through an emotional roller coaster. When your other half has fertilised eggs implanted back into her she is effectively pregnant. If the eggs don’t take she will effectively be going through the emotions of a miscarriage only worse because her hormones having been pumped up to the max.
Ours were unsuccessful and took us to the brink emotionally and financially. We met other couples whilst at the clinics. Some are no longer together, both succesful conceived and not. Others who had no success used a clinic in Sweden who concentrated on both partners not just the women like they do here in the UK and had success.
I wish you both success but you should talk now about what if it doesn’t work. Adoption, fostering or being childless are still options.

Know what you are going through. Been through it a few times, we had six rounds in total I think, and now here with my three year old son and one year old daughter. Both thanks to Care up in Nottingham, who we went to for the immune treatment work they do having tried and failed elsewhere. Once Care figured out the right concoction of drugs required it all just worked for us. (We were “unexplained” until we did the Chicago tests with Care.) I’m pretty certain it would never have worked for us had we not gone to Care.

We had a bit of a rollercoaster ride (I think most do). Negative tests. Positive test but no heartbeat at 6 week scan and a miscarriage (that was tough to deal with). Under/over stimulation due to not getting the drugs quite right. Loads of stress and worry and writing sizeable cheques.

Only advice I can give really is to keep talking. We’ve got a dog which really helped get us out the house for long walks, being able to properly talk to each other helped get us through it.

the wifes best friend and her partner have unlimited finacial resources and travelled all over europe looking and paying for a significant number of unsucessful treatments. the emotional strain was palpable and im pretty certain the partner was in an enough is enough place when finally it worked

they have twins and it worked out well for them.. the number of distressing phone calls the mrs took from her during the process was difficult for my mrs what it must have been like for the folks involved must have been awful.. was it worth it?.. all the misery seems long gone now.. but if they d not had that outcome i dont know how mentally it would have impacted on them both..

Some friends have been trying. They are on their 3rd go and now preggers with twins! The first two goes were a bit heartbreaking for them, so I suppose the message is don’t give up.

Thanks guys. We’re in the (selfishly) unfortunate position in that we’re good friends with 3 couples that all went through the ivf process and conceived 1st go, so despite me hammering home the likelihood of it not working first time (whilst being optimistic obv) I think she’ll be even more disappointed if it doesn’t.

We’ve agreed to try 4 times in total, we have this round funded by our pct and will pay for the following 3 should we need them.

Several friends have been through this, success has been about 50% between them, one currently expecting twins, three ended up adopting, one couple the strain was too much and split them apart.

I can only wish you both the best of luck, and hope you get the result you must really want to go through the process.

Good luck we did similar via drugs for crankygirl and selecting sperm and artificial insertion rather than natural can’t recall the technical term but it worked third round after a significant amount of stress .

We were lucky and got twins first time around (ICSI IVF) when ICSI was still something of a novelty. We did a stackload of research about the clinics beforehand.

TBH the clinic success rate doesn’t mean an awful lot as it won’t be the success rate for your particular circumstances, just for a whole host of couples with various different problems, some of them severe. Your partner’s age is probably the single biggest factor.

It’s hard not to get stressed out waiting for the results, though.

Age is her biggest anxiety, she’s 33 though which is a spring chicken when it’s comes to ivf. She won’t be told though.

Yep, boy is now 3 months. Worked first time, but wife suffered overstimulation, so embryos needed freezing / defrosting.

Roughly each stage of the process our eggs halved till we were really worried. We have one left “on ice”

Undiagnosed infertility. Personally I think it was stress. Wife was 34-5.

I always said our % must be higher than the quoted 33% as there are plenty of people with significant diagnosed problems trying along with fit young couples like us.

Amazing what they can do these days.

Good luck, most stressful time of our lives. (Well it was till he was actually born and had 5 weeks of hell)

Have a look at IUU too, cheaper and have heard of few successes

Good luck. It can be very stressful. We didn’t find the procedures themselves stressful, it was the waiting for results. I don’t know why but waiting to find out how many eggs had been fertilised was the most difficult for me.

We found a really good book by Zita West, called ‘Fertility and Assisted Conception’ it really helped.

Hopefully there’ll be some things you can laugh about on the way, when I had to produce my pot, the music in the room was terrible ‘don’t give it up’ by Chicano Ft Bryan Adams, I had no signal on the IPad so had to settle for the ropey mags!

We could have three goes, I kept in mind that having a 35% average success rate meant that over the three goes we’d have a total of over 100%

Like you there was no reason they could find why it wasn’t working for us naturally.

We went through 5 rounds of clomid,3 rounds of IUI and then started on IVF. First attempt at IVF gave 14 eggs which went to 11 fertilised. This dropped again to 4 but these needed freezing as the Mrs suffered with over stimulation. Once recovered and after a 4 month rest, 4 were defrosted and we had one implanted which. Blood tests showed a chemical pregnancy but it came to nothing and the other 3 didn’t come to anything.

We were in two minds for giving it another go after all the ups and downs. We had made our mind up to adopt but wanted to give it one more go. During all the drug use/ injections, my wife was monitored very closely. This time we got 7 eggs, which went to 7 fertilised. 4 went to day 5 with 1 being implanted and the other 3 being frozen.

Mrs is currently 38 weeks pregnant. Have got 3 frosties so we may try again providing everything goes well this time, or adopt like we were going to before.

My advise is talkn to each other a lot. It’s the most emotional thing you can do. Also have a back up plan. Ours was adoption. Be open to the fact that it may not happen but hope it does. I found it a balancing act and thought it would never work but lucky for us it has.

Good luck and be there for each other

I’m in the middle of another round of this and share many of the experiences above, same as mintman happy to talk off line about it. Good luck.

We looked into it – and decided against. No much chance of success (due to few remaining /poor quality eggs) and the shear emotional roller coaster ride. 7 years on-no kids, celebrating 10 wedding anniversary in a few days. Couldn’t be happier (both of us)

My brother and his wife went through IVF – they had no issue getting pregnant, but she had severe endriometisis which lead to several miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies. They were lucky – they got pregnant on their first round and now have an adorable near-three year old. Some of their friends haven’t been so lucky though, and my mom’s window cleaner went through seven rounds before giving up.

One bit of advice.
Dont ring up the expensive one off harley street saying you want a refund as the child is faulty. (Heart condition but made in jest)
They dont do humour and think your serious.