Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP again: I checked with my nurse and my most recent TSH was 3.17. I asked if that wasn't a little high, and she said no, anything 4 or less is fine.

I'm surprised by this, but apparently some REs are A-OK with a higher TSH, while others insist on less than 2. (Obviously I should have been keeping better track of my own results instead of assuming the RE would flag any problems for me, sigh.)

Time to see an endocrinologist, since Shady Grove seems to have zero interest in helping me out here. I don't necessarily think a better thyroid will be the magic bullet, but since I probably won't have another embryo transfer until at least March, might as well try, right? I am also going to see if I can get someone (GP? endocrinologist? hematologist?) to do a recurrent pregnancy loss panel.

Honestly your RE should be the one to do this.

Anonymous wrote:OP again: I checked with my nurse and my most recent TSH was 3.17. I asked if that wasn't a little high, and she said no, anything 4 or less is fine.

I'm surprised by this, but apparently some REs are A-OK with a higher TSH, while others insist on less than 2. (Obviously I should have been keeping better track of my own results instead of assuming the RE would flag any problems for me, sigh.)

Time to see an endocrinologist, since Shady Grove seems to have zero interest in helping me out here. I don't necessarily think a better thyroid will be the magic bullet, but since I probably won't have another embryo transfer until at least March, might as well try, right? I am also going to see if I can get someone (GP? endocrinologist? hematologist?) to do a recurrent pregnancy loss panel.

Anonymous wrote:OP again: I checked with my nurse and my most recent TSH was 3.17. I asked if that wasn't a little high, and she said no, anything 4 or less is fine.

I'm surprised by this, but apparently some REs are A-OK with a higher TSH, while others insist on less than 2. (Obviously I should have been keeping better track of my own results instead of assuming the RE would flag any problems for me, sigh.)

Time to see an endocrinologist, since Shady Grove seems to have zero interest in helping me out here. I don't necessarily think a better thyroid will be the magic bullet, but since I probably won't have another embryo transfer until at least March, might as well try, right? I am also going to see if I can get someone (GP? endocrinologist? hematologist?) to do a recurrent pregnancy loss panel.

Anonymous wrote:OP here: I'm probably being naive, but I don't see the value in seeing another RE right now. (Possibly I'm also exhausted from dealing with all of this and the thought of starting over with another doctor sucks.) I can't really argue with the protocol because everything did go perfectly...right up until failure to implant. I guess I could demand they give me any kind of testing they would give for recurrent miscarriage, but I'm not sure that would get me anywhere.

The doctor did mildly suggest an endo biopsy, although NOT "the scratch." This one would require an entire medicated stim cycle with no egg retrieval, just an endo biopsy instead. And somehow this would tell the doctor whether I needed more estrogen and progesterone. I frankly didn't understand this at all. Do any of you know what I'm talking about? It seems like an awful lot of time and effort for not much in the way of information. And going through another fresh IVF cycle (and adding PGS to it) already seems like it's going to take forever, so why would I want to tack on an extra two months for this weird endo test?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Have any of you gone for a second opinion yet? Go see Abassi - she will order the various blood clotting tests for you. I saw her after my first ivf failure and she ordered the tests for me. All came back normal and I decided to do one more cycle with sgfc before ditching them. We did an endo biopsy with that cycle. Transferred two good quality 8-cells on day 3 and one so so. Got my first bfp ever that is now 18 months. I honestly feel the biopsy made a difference for me.

What type of biopsy are you talking about? The "scratch"?

Anonymous wrote:OP here: I'm probably being naive, but I don't see the value in seeing another RE right now. (Possibly I'm also exhausted from dealing with all of this and the thought of starting over with another doctor sucks.) I can't really argue with the protocol because everything did go perfectly...right up until failure to implant. I guess I could demand they give me any kind of testing they would give for recurrent miscarriage, but I'm not sure that would get me anywhere.

The doctor did mildly suggest an endo biopsy, although NOT "the scratch." This one would require an entire medicated stim cycle with no egg retrieval, just an endo biopsy instead. And somehow this would tell the doctor whether I needed more estrogen and progesterone. I frankly didn't understand this at all. Do any of you know what I'm talking about? It seems like an awful lot of time and effort for not much in the way of information. And going through another fresh IVF cycle (and adding PGS to it) already seems like it's going to take forever, so why would I want to tack on an extra two months for this weird endo test?

Anonymous wrote:I am in a similar situation to you, but when I met with dr. widra he said that he does not believe that implantation failure is real and did not want to do additional testing on me. He also just pushed trying more cycles and maybe pgs. It's so frustrating because I feel like we are not figuring out the cause of my failures.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP again: I just looked up my notes from our egg retrieval, in case this tells anyone anything: 13 eggs, 9 usable, 7 embryos produced, all 7 made it to day five, and then three were discarded. The remaining four were transferred over three cycles, quality ratings AA, AB, or BA.

We saw the RE (Sagoskin) yesterday and he wants to do the exact same stim protocol for our next round. I asked if there was anything we could do to the protocol to get better eggs, he said no. He gave us paperwork for karyotyping. I asked if there was any other testing we could do, such as for clotting issues, he said they only test for that if you have recurrent miscarriage, not implantation failure. I forgot to ask about thyroid, but I'm going to check with the nurse for my latest TSH.

The doctor highly suggests we do PGS for the next round. I just need to get my husband on board, but I think it is the right way to go.

I don't know anything about P-ICSI, so I might also ask the nurse about that.

NP here. This kind of thing makes me so mad. Really? You want to wait to see if I have recurrent miscarriage prior to administering a simple test? I don't understand why EVERYTHING isn't tested prior to jumping into something as major as IVF. I hate finding out about tests I could have had after I've already had a bunch of failed cycles. Makes no sense.

Anonymous wrote:Have any of you gone for a second opinion yet? Go see Abassi - she will order the various blood clotting tests for you. I saw her after my first ivf failure and she ordered the tests for me. All came back normal and I decided to do one more cycle with sgfc before ditching them. We did an endo biopsy with that cycle. Transferred two good quality 8-cells on day 3 and one so so. Got my first bfp ever that is now 18 months. I honestly feel the biopsy made a difference for me.