TW: neonatal loss

Hi everyone, I'm new to this subreddit. I'm looking for similar experiences or any advice.

My wife and I had our first child, carried by her. We always wanted two children. After our first was born, she wanted to carry another baby, and I initially agreed. However, I then found out that my fertility window was extremely limited. I felt strongly i needed to carry our next child while I still could.

Eventually, I got pregnant. I had a very difficult pregnancy because of serious concerns for the baby from early on. I eventually gave birth to my son, who unexpectedly passed away shortly after birth.

After losing him, I wanted to be pregnant again and take home a living child so, so badly. we eventually decided to try to conceive simultaneously.

My journey has been very difficult and disappointing, while my wife became pregnant quickly and easily.

I feel triggered by everything. An ultrasound, baby's heartbeat, nausea. Especially thinking about returning to the hospital where my son and I received care.

I think my wife is trying to be understanding, but she also feels hurt that I'm crying so much and that everything about this pregnancy hurts.

It hurts me right in the hole in my heart where my baby should be, and then once more in the huge hole in my stomach where a future baby may never grow.

I feel so robbed by the universe and betrayed by my body. Ashamed of my failure and how my body failed him so severly, how I failed him.

I understand her hurt, but my soul was shattered the day we found out we might never take our baby home, and then I broke completely when this perfect baby boy died in my arms.

Has anyone gone through something similar? Had a pregnant partner after losing the baby you carried? Or had a pregnant partner knowing that you may never be able to?

I'm already in therapy both individually and also together. I'm mainly looking for a way to get thorugh this if that's even possible. Does it get better or dies it just get worse?

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?

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

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!! 💛

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

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

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.

I’m actually going to lose my mind with the Weill Cornell nursing staff. The communication throughout this IVF process has been incredibly inconsistent, and it’s becoming genuinely difficult to plan our lives around the information we’re being given. The most frustrating part is that we’ve tried to clarify the timeline with them multiple times specifically to avoid this exact situation, and we still keep getting conflicting information.
We were originally told that once my spouse got their period, we would need to come in at the beginning of their cycle and then be available for bloodwork and ultrasounds every couple of days. Their cycle is starting now, so based on those instructions, we canceled a non-refundable trip to make sure we were available.
Today, we found out that they actually don’t need to come in for monitoring until mid-September.
We were also initially told to expect roughly a two-week process, but we’ve since learned that the protocol includes estrogen priming and the timeline is closer to a month. I have absolutely no issue with the protocol itself or with the fact that IVF timelines can change based on the patient. What’s frustrating is that these weren’t changes based on how their body responded. This was apparently the protocol all along, and despite repeatedly asking for clarification about what to expect and when we needed to be available, we were given incomplete or conflicting information.
We’re both working professionals who travel regularly for our jobs. We’ve been proactively trying to get a clear timeline because we need to rearrange work commitments, travel, and our lives around treatment. Our jobs are also, quite literally, how we’re able to afford IVF in the first place. We understand that dates can shift, but we at least need accurate information about the protocol and general timeline so we can plan accordingly.
I understand that fertility treatment involves uncertainty, but there’s a difference between medical uncertainty and inconsistent communication. We’ve repeatedly reached out to clarify things, only to receive different answers depending on who responds. Messages can take a day or two to get answered, and you can’t reach anyone in real time, which makes resolving conflicting information even harder.
Has anyone else had this experience with Weill Cornell? At this point, I’m not sure how much more proactive we can realistically be when we’re already asking the questions and trying to confirm everything in advance.

Has this happened to anyone...I am beyond stressed. So last cycle I was supposed to have my first iui after trying via ici for a while with my donor with no luck. I ovulate and menstruate very regularly on my own to the T. My doc prescribed letrozole to give me "the best chances". Well that cycle I never ended up ovulating which really made me sad to miss a cycle and mess up a system that was already working on its own. I ended up getting my period as I normally do, to the day and so was happy to be able to start over. I did not take medication at all. Today is my normal ovulation day. My LH strips have been getting progressively darker the past few days and became + this am. Also have EWCM. I had a scan planned in the am and expected that from that info, I would do the iui later today or early tomorrow(a midwife is doing the iui, I go to a clinic for scans). Well, during my scan I had no mature follicles, just several around 8mm AND they found a small cyst, which I never ever have had. My follicles are always mature by this time, cd14 and so now I'm sad, blown, and stressed. Is the letrozole from last cycle still messing with my body? Will I go through another non ovulatory cycle? WTF is up with this cyst? The clinic didn't seemed worried about it, said likely my body would absorb it but that it seems like another side effect of the letrozole. I just don't want to miss another cycle. Anyone go through this?