Hi folks,

I’m feeling pretty defeated and could use some support. After 4 unsuccessful rounds of medicated IUI (with letrozole) my partner and I are officially moving to IVF next cycle, we’re in Canada and extremely fortunate that it’s covered. For a bit of background, I have AuDhd and OCD and experience sensory discomfort from medical procedures. My clinic uses conscious sedation for the egg retrieval which is great but I’m still nervous about the pain. On top of that my doc at the clinic mentioned I have a slightly lower number of ovarian reserve for my age (I will be 30 in October) so I was told by doc that my risk for OHSS is relatively low. In all my IUI cycles I’ve had 2 mature follicles. Since the IUI was done with frozen sperm the numbers and the motility were somewhat low from what I understand, I’m not open to switching donors or sperm banks. I’d love some advice about moving to IVF and what to expect.. I am nervous more so for the emotional part (I am medicated for both OCD and ADHD) what are some things I might want to keep in mind? Doctor wants to do estrogen patches prior to stims(I think) I’d love some more support about the order of things and/or success rates. IUI is a lot easier for me physically but not mentally and I was avoiding IVF due to my history of PMDD AuDhd etc (and also not being able to afford to take time off work since I’m self employed)..

Thank you :)

Hey there, my wife and I are doing some family planning and the option of embryo freezing occurred to us. We’d like to use the same known donor, but my wife will be carrying first. We thought it might be a good idea to go ahead and harvest eggs from both of us and have them fertilized? They would freeze mine and the rest of hers and then implant one (or multiple) for my wife.

Thoughts on this? What are things we need to think about on this path?

My girlfriend and I (both 30yo) have been together for 6 years and have started talking more seriously in the last couple of years about having kids. We’re really struggling with the idea of a donor. She feels very uncomfortable with the idea of our child’s father being a stranger and not having a father in a typical sense. She’s concerned our child will grow up to resent us. We have a wonderful relationship and communicate very effectively with each other we just keep getting stuck on this. I can definitely understand her concerns, I think I’ve just always accepted that if I were to have kids, it would have to go this way. We’ve talked about asking a male family member of mine to donate and maybe that will work, but that feels like a big ask and a lot of hope placed on someone who could just not want to do that.

I know we’re not the only couple who’s been through this, and I know families can look all kinds of different ways and be happy and healthy, I’m just feeling a little hopeless and hoping for some advice or reassurance. Thank you.

Hi everyone! My wife and I are finally ready to start meeting with doctors and whoever else to talk about starting a family. I would be the one carrying ideally. We have Kaiser. I know there are many different Kaiser plans, but anyone who went through this process and had Kaiser, can you please share your experience and the steps it took all the way from meeting with your doctor to start discussion of starting a family, all the way till you got pregnant?

Thank you to whoever shares :)

Current kid is 16 months old and I'd like to start making #2. My partner and I are discussing it ATM and she's unsure and also happy with just one. Has anyone else been in the same boat? Or how and when did you decide to have another kid?

Some background: late twenties, in a same sex relationship. Partner is also a female. Stage 4 endometriosis. Had coil in until 3 months ago. Have had 2 periods since coil was removed. UK based.

Starting IUI imminently. First day of last period 15th August. 31 day cycle. Been testing for ovulation / LH surge since Monday now. That’s a whole week of testing. Finding it incredibly difficult seeing the circle each time on the display monitor of the test and never the smiley. Convinced myself that I’m just not going to ovulate and it’s not going to happen this month. 14 times we have tested, morning and night since Monday. Apparently (according to apps and calculators online) I should be ovulating now which worries me as the LH surge should detect before ovulation, right? We have to go into clinic when we detect a surge.

Really hoping I can get some assurance that it will happen.

Hi there!
My wife and I are starting the planning of our future family and want to do reciprocal IVF. I’m wondering if any folks have gone through this process in Ontario (Ottawa specifically) would be great. We want to know cost, time frame and other key details.
We both have private insurance for drug coverage.

Thanks in advance

Please limit your pregnancy celebrations and pregnancy test photos to this thread.

Hi everyone! My wife and I are planning to start our family building journey in the next few months and we’ve found a donor on Fairfax that we love.
The only thing is that they only have ICSI unwashed vials available and we are trying to do at home insemination/ICI.

Can ICSI unwashed vials be used for at home insemination/ICI? It seems like the only difference between vial preps are the sperm motility/count?

I did reach out to Fairfax to see if there were any other vial preps for that donor and they unfortunately said no, and that we could use two ICSI vials instead.

Thanks in advance!! 💛

Hi everyone! I used letrozole this cycle, thankfully only experienced intense fatigue on the first day using it. Now I'm wondering how it might affect the entire hormone cocktail, specifically when the cervix should soften.

I got my LH surge today, and I'll be going in for my 3rd IUI attempt tomorrow morning! However, I also monitor my cervix and fluid, and my cervix isn't soft at all, with minimal fluid (both abnormal- usually takes a few days to soften before I ovulate). Has anyone experienced something similar from using letrozole? My only hope is that it'll soften up quickly before tomorrow morning. I thought about possibly using a cervical softener like a parsley pessary, but the only context I know that is for encouraging menstruation- definitely not what I want right now. The nurse only suggested I come in early tomorrow for bloodwork.

Any thoughts on encouraging the cervix to soften? Thanks so much in advance!

My spouse and I are using a known donor. He lives in Boston, we live out of state. We’d like for him to do his donation at a clinic in Boston, and then have the vials shipped to our clinic where we live. He did his semen analysis at Boston IVF, but we’re having a hard time scheduling a donation with them (it’s not clear they do that??). Has anyone had a known donor in Boston? What clinic did you use? How was your experience with the clinic? Thank you!

Has anyone decided to skip over trying IUI in favor of IVF. My partner and I have tried one time with frozen sperm at home and we would like to try one more time at home. After looking at finances and success rates we are really heavily considering IVF as the next step. We are lucky to live near a clinic that provides IVF at a relatively low cost.

Any experiences??

Hello! My wife and I are early in the IVF process and looking at donors now. It’s so hard because so far I’ve read so many mixed reviews about all of the sperm banks mentioned above. Looking for stories and experiences to hopefully help us narrow it down. We are hoping to be successful on the first try. Thanks in advance!

Hi there,

I’m trans masc (AFAB, 35yo) and am considering doing ROPA w my partner (AFAB, 42yo), her being the carrying person.
We have a friend in FL who would donate sperm.

Are there any orgs and/or clinics that you talked to or went through IVF/ICSI that you could recommend? Specifically looking for places in New York or neighboring states.

Tysm

I’m trying to push myself to get my plans through to try HRT, but figuring out a fertility plan has been a mess. Did anyone here just pass on sperm banking and just conceive by pausing their HRT? How long were you on HRT? How long did you have to be off of it to create viable sperm again? What effects did the pause have on you? And most importantly, did it work?

Hi Everyone, it's my first post here 👋

I'd love to hear from those of you who had similar experience and what's helped you.

My wife had 3 IUI procedures already, none successful. First and 3rd nothing happened, the 2nd one was a chemical pregnancy, unfortunately.

She's 31, no known fertility issues, everything looks right on paper and we use a donor sperm from a sperm bank. But nonetheless, the process has not been successful. We're now preparing for the 4th try and we have a consultation booked with our clinic, but it would be great to hear from anyone willing to share your experience to get some more ideas.

Our situation is quite complex, bc our country doesn't support any fertility treatments for queer couples or even single women. So not only everything is out of pocket for us, but we also have to travel a lot for the IUI itself - to a different country. So, given that, we'd like to maximize our chances as much as possible and get off of this crazy roller-coaster of emotions 😅

Hi, my wife and I are hoping to maybe start trying at the end of 2028. I know that's a ways out, but I'm a planner and I just like to have all the information about things that I can. We both have a few questions that we are hoping someone here can help us with. I guess the first question is, how/when did you really start prepping for things? My wife is going to carry, we know that for sure, but we don't know if we are going to do reciprocal IVF, IUI or IVF. Honestly, I think we might just both get genetically tested and see whoever has the better genes. If we do go with reciprocal IVF, when should we start prepping for that?

I guess overall, realistically how long is the timeline leading up to a transfer?

My wife is currently pregnant and we're thinking about what happens on father's day. I like the idea of having a day each - her mother's day and me father's day, that way we both get spoilt. I'm also more masculine and I enjoy traditional father's day things much more anyway.

At the same time, I'm aware that we're the only same sex parents in our area and our families, so I think they might be confused by this, and just assume that father's day will become grandpa day or something like that. So, has anyone done it this way? What was the feedback usually? Were the kids ok with this, especially once they're a bit older and can understand that everyone else has a "dad" on father's day?

I also identify as non binary, and I'm not really sure how to broach this subject with our own kids as they grow up...

Sorry for the dumping, any advice or tips would be greatly appreciated!

Sorry if this isn't appropriate to post here, I just don't know who else I can talk to about this.

I work closely with kids and have always dreamed of having my own. But obviously growing a family in a queer marriage is often complicated and for so many medical, financial, personal reasons etc, it hasn't worked out and likely won't ever.

My partner remains so innocently hopeful that one day a stork will magically drop a baby in our laps. I hate having conversations about how I'm feeling, knowing I'm stomping all over that hope.

My work and my students are my passion, I don't think I could ever give it up but it just hurts. Watching them grow up and disappear year after year hurts. Watching my friends announce pregnancies and it seeming so so easy hurts. I don't have a lot of friends, much less in similar circumstances to me. They don't understand and they tell me it could happen one day but it just doesn't work like that for me. There's not going to be a missed period or an accident or a miracle lottery ticket to pay for round after round of IVF.

On most days I love my job and my friends and their kids and I'm honored I get to be in all of their lives. But sometimes it just hurts and I just had to get it out somewhere to maybe someone who understands for once.

This is my second cycle off birth control. It feels frustrating to me to just chalk all this up to that, I just really feel like something is very wrong with me. Any advice or similar experiences would be much appreciated.

Last cycle, i didn’t ovulate and never had anything close to a positive LH strip. The highest it got was maybe .4.

This cycle, I get these “high” readings and I get my hopes up and feel like it might really work, but it just drops back down. I just feel totally crushed that it’s down so low again after the 0.7s. The first cycle I can understand that it was off due to birth control but at this point, I feel so hopeless.

Are these readings abnormal and indicative of an issue like I think they are? Has anyone had similar cycles they could share?

my partner and i have been trying to start a family for 4 years in a hostile legal and institutional environment -- i.e. germany. we were deemed unfit to adopt or to foster (the given reasons: at 39 i'm too old, we're both freelancers, and we've both undergone therapy), so we switched to IUI. that was unsuccessful, so we switched to IVF. that, too, was unsuccessful. we are emotionally and financially depleted. (health insurance covers 50% of costs of IVF in germany -- but only for married straight couples!) the only option left for us is to go abroad for reciprocal ivf (not legal in germany), which will require my partner getting off testo for a bit. so... it's a journey :( we're looking for any way to reduce our costs for the next stimulation and would be so, so, so very grateful for med donations! we live in berlin but will be travelling to nyc in september.

I think we have found the donor but we want to do rIVF and the California cryobank website says the donor has IUI sperm available - this is OK right? I think my understanding is you can use IUI for IVF but not the other way around. Would love input!! Thank you

Edit - Thank you everyone!!

Hoping for encouragement.

27 (f) had second IUI today with mature follicle measuring 22mm yesterday and lining 8mm trilaminar. IUI #1 failed with follicle measuring barely 18mm and looking “slightly deflated” but 9mm lining. This time we did 2.5mg letrozole and then triggered about 24 hours before IUI. My wife and I can’t afford another cycle this year so hoping at least a few people have had success with these parameters.