3rd cycle -- this might be the one!

 So...my 3rd ivf/pgd cycle, and its finally looking good.  I have changed doctors and I can already see the difference.  As of this morning I already have 16 good sized follicles!!  I am stiming again tonight and triggering tomorrow night, so my retreival is scheduled for Tuesday 11/22.  Even my nurse says "what a difference!" and she believes this could be the one.  I nkow we will have girls (we have in the past), my hope is that I have some healthy/perfect eggs in there...and they turn out to be the girls :) We are doing a 24 panel testing this time so to eliminate any questions as to whether the embryo is truly "normal".  I am staying positive and hoping the third is a charm -- after 1 year of trying and going through ivf 3 times I am more than ready to finally have my baby girl!

AnnaG1:

Sooo exciting! Wishing you lots of luck and hope you will update! Where are you cycling? Did you have protocol change? Are you doing day 5 biopsy.... I love details lol.

17 follicles this morning!  They are triggering tonight. I am cycling with Boston IVF - Brain Berger...he is the best. My last doctor was terrible. Protocol change, yes!  Higher doses of Gonel-F (the stims), and hcg shots daily.  I never took hcg shots in my last 2 cycles.  Also, after the retreival he has me taking progesterone and estrogen.  My last doctor only had me taking progesterone and I believe it might have been the reason for my miscarriage -- the embryos were chromosonally perfect, I think my body was not hormonally equipped to maintain the pregnancy beacuse the doc did not have me on the right med's. Anyhow, doing a 3 day biopsy and a 5 day transfer.  So transfer will be on Sunday 11/27.  Can't wait!

 that sounds pretty awesome, wishing good thoughts your way....

CulturedPearl:

Sounds great, 17 follicles is what I imagine when I'm trying to do positive thinking exercises!  I'm excited for you.  Who was your last doc, someone at the same clinic?  Is Brian Berger the son of Dr. Merle Berger at the same clinic?  Dr. Merle Berger actually was my parents' fertility doctor back in the '80s!  Anyway, good luck, and hope you get a little holiday season miracle or two!

No, he is not the son of Merle Berger -- just happen to have the same last name.  That is too funny though -- Merle Berger was my doctor for the last two cycles.  I did not care for him at all -- I felt totally judged by him that I was doing Ivf for sex selection.  And ontop of that, he did not do an aggressive protocol with me at all - he just figured because I was young enough, not to put me on all the med's and to keep me on a lower dose etc. As you can tell that did not work (1st cycle only got 8 eggs & 2nd cycle only 7 eggs!), cost me a LOT of money and a great deal of heartache.  I don't think he handles pgd patients at all, where as my new doctor handles more pgd patients as well egg donors - so he is knowledgable about what it takes to get the most eggs; and also, he truly understands my desire for a daughter which is comforting.

Huh, that's weird that they're not related!  Yeah, I've actually spoken to Merle Berger on the phone before and he didn't seem very sympathetic at all. My bio dad is an anonymous sperm donor whom I know absolutely nothing about (you can see how that would deeply affect me on multiple levels, not to mention feed my GD, making me loathe to have another empty unfillable spot on my family tree), and I called Dr. Berger to ask if he could fill me in on any details like nationality/heritage or at least if they were healthy guys, and he was just like, oh yeah we kept absolutely no records back then, and all the kids are fine and don't care at all.  It's like how the heck would you know unless they called you like I was doing?!  And not even all of them know about it - my parents weren't going to tell us, except then they got a divorce when I was in middle school and my mom told me one day when she was pissed at my dad to try to hurt him . . .  Uch, sorry TMI, but anyway!  Dr. Berger seemed like he couldn't even imagine that the kids he was helping to conceive could possibly care or be affected by not knowing anything about half of their genes/heritage.  I think donor kids today are much better off because if they want, they can access all kinds of information about their donors, even if it's anonymous donation.

That sucks too that you had to go through not just one but two cycles on low doses of meds that didn't work just because you're young.  One cycle okay, a lot of doctors want to be conservative starting out, but when you get such unexpected crappy results from the first one, you'd think they'd know to change the protocol!  I'm nervous about being under-dosed as well, since I'm also youngish (29) and have gotten hints that they're starting me pretty darn low due to that and my testing results.  I also did two lously MS/IUI cycles two years ago where I was on very low doses and hardly responded, so it's definitely a phobia of mine.  I gotta get to the bottom of this and sort it out by the time I start stimming next week.

Anyway, good luck tomorrow, got my FX for you!!!!

Good luck from one PFP to another!

Best of luck to you.  We just got a BFP today confirmed by my RE.  It was our 3rd try!  I was really ready to give up but I switched clinics and we did ICSI and I took all the recommended supplements (wheat grass, melatonin, royal jelly).  We did a Day 3 biopsy.

This cycle when I took the supplements, we had 5/9 (63%) come out normal after the Day 3, 3-probe biopsy.  I'm not sure if it was the supplements or the fact that we did ICSI this time and they take the best looking sperm.  The last 2 cycles we had 40% or less turn out normal.  I heard from the girls on this website about taking supplements.  I took all of them up for 2 months up until the ER and then continued with the prenatals, royal jelly and melatonin through ET.  The melatonin I read from Dr. T @ SIRM in NYC on a blog he wrote.  I think i took 60 or 100 of melatonin/day - just one pill.  DH only took a multivitamin for 6 weeks.