u/ARIT127

TW: high yield

We are doing travel IVF to do embryo banking in the country we will be moving to permanently in 2 years. We were hoping 10 weeks would be enough for a retrieval and transfer with my history (successful second transfer that resulted in our LC). After retrieving 19 eggs this time with 15 mature I thought for sure this would be my last ER but after the day 6 results came in we have 4 embryos. Two day 5s, grades A and B, and two day 6s, grades B and C. I know this may sound great to some and I understand if you don’t wish to continue reading. But our intention is and always was to have a big family of 4 children if we can help it and came here to bank a minimum of 7 embryos. With the higher starting numbers (especially a much better maturity rate than I ever got at my last clinic) I was hopeful, and on day 5 they kind of gave us false hope by saying they were expecting 5-7 by the next day. Why would they say that without knowing for sure? It just made the final number hurt that much more. Maybe it wouldn’t have been as bad if they had said 4-7, I don’t know. 4 isn’t enough for 3 more children when it’s recommended to bank 2-3 per child you want to have.

Since this is travel IVF, we were planning on doing an FET next month and then flying home. Because I am at higher risk for OHSS, my doctor will not do a fresh transfer (my estradiol was 8400 at trigger last month and we needed an hCG trigger for egg maturity). So I can either do a frozen embryo transfer with one of the four next month as planned, which has no guarantee of sticking, or I can do a fifth retrieval (😵‍💫) and **try** to bank 3 more to make my cutoff. I am a high egg yielder which means my recovery is rough for 5 days but there’s no added benefit when they still end up with higher attrition rates than is average for my age. What would you do? I don’t want to have to fly back in a few months to do a transfer even though there is a chance I’d have to anyways if a first one fails.

Myself, my husband and our 20 month old toddler live in Mestre at the moment and his parents are staying with us for 9 days at the end of September. It will be their first time in Italy. We plan to take them into Venice of course, but they are wanting to do an overnight or two in one other location. They originally suggested Lake Como but with a toddler who won’t nap on the go we declined so they suggested Lake Garda (shorter train ride from Mestre). Any other suggestions they might like? We are definitely hotel people over airbnb. If not, what area around the lake is good to stay in for short trips/family groups? I kind of want the closest to Mestre/least amount of train/bus transfers as possible. Thank you for any who respond!

As the title says. I’ve never had a toddler and had to recover from an ER before, the other 3 were before I had a living child. Am I right to be nervous? She is 20 months and ATTACHED to me. Still nurses a few times a day but asks for it constantly. Absolute Velcro toddler which I don’t mind one bit. But I tend to have a high egg yield (poor egg maturity issues though so no added benefit) so recovery tends to be harder the more eggs they’ve retrieved in my experiences. First one was 24 eggs and was hard but manageable (and I was really young at the time), second one only 11 because only one ovary responded to meds and I thought wow! Recovery is easier each time you do one! Then I had 26 eggs the third time and it hit me like a brick wall that it was indeed number of eggs not number of retrievals under my belt 😭😭 I currently have 22 visible follicles at trigger and they normally find a few more hiding in my experience so I’m extremely nervous for this one, especially the recovery with a toddler who likes to jump on my abdomen 🥴 we are in another country for travel IVF so my husband is home with us but no other help.

Hello! As the title says. We live outside of Venice right now but want to retire in Tuscany somewhere easy to access Florence by public transit. We are going to visit for maybe 6-10 days in September depending on what we have time for. Is 6 days enough time with a 20 month old toddler who must nap once a day at the hotel room? Do you recommend longer? We want to visit the countryside a little bit and decide how far we'd be willing to settle down. My husband wants to stay near the city center and visit as many historical sites as possible. I'm considering taking a day alone by car while he stays with the toddler to do some real searching.

Hello! As the title says. We live outside of Venice right now but want to retire in Tuscany somewhere easy to access Florence by public transit. We are going to visit for maybe 6-10 days in September depending on what we have time for. Is 6 days enough time with a 20mo toddler who naps once a day? Do you recommend longer? She cannot nap on the go unfortunately. We want to visit the countryside a little bit and decide how far we’d be willing to settle down. My husband wants to stay near the city center and visit as many historical sites as possible. I’m considering taking a day alone by car while he stays with the toddler to do some real searching.

In my specific situation this is due to traveling abroad for IVF but this question is for anyone who has traveled before/after cycles and transfers.

My family and I flew from the usa to Europe for this round of IVF. I have done 3 previous ERs and this will be my 4th. Has anyone had a worse yield/outcome after traveling? Between jet lag and stress from lack of sleep (and traveling abroad with a toddler) plus my terrible preexisting insomnia from my thyroid issues I have been getting 4 hours of sleep a night for almost a week and I am on the 4th day of stims. I’m concerned about the outcome of this ER during all this. Does anyone have any insight or advice? I can’t do a fresh transfer so it will be another month before I do an FET, so hopefully sleep will have improved by then. But this is stressing me out so much and I’m so worried it’s going to effect our outcome this round :( please talk me off the ledge

TW: mention of previous pregnancy

TLDR: thyroid has been so out of wack and would like to hear from anyone who has experienced autoimmune thyroiditis or something similar.

History: started TTC in 2021, started seeing fertility clinic 1 after a year and they diagnosed us with unexplained infertility. Said my thyroid was out of wack though and I needed a synthyroid medication to level it out. For a year this clinic wasted my time not doing anything different once my TSH levels were stable and I had to find out from a friend with the same insurance coverage that we had 6 IUIs covered and they never told me, because I was “young and still had time” (26 at the time). As soon as I mentioned the IUIs suddenly they were aware of the coverage and let me do one that next month. They did 4 of those 6 covered IUIs only adding medication in on the final one which felt like a huge waste to me. Never resulted in a pregnancy, decided to switch clinics for my final 2 before moving onto IVF because of all of that and because of them lying about a procedure (longer story I won’t get into right now). I know now 6 IUIs was a waste but it was the only way to “maybe get IVF covered” which ended up not happening. Never saw a positive pregnancy test from any of the IUIs. I stopped the synthyroid as well between switching clinics to get base labs done before starting.

Still never saw a positive with the other 2 IUIs and moved onto IVF with fertility clinic 2. The new clinic also said the former clinic had me on an anticoagulant unnecessarily and that my thyroid levels were normal since starting treatment with them. Continued onto IVF, another year had passed by now and second transfer worked but I had to beg them to check my thyroid levels in early pregnancy. Turns out my TSH was above 5 which is high and can result in miscarriage so they freaked out and told me to start taking the synthyroid I had on hand but it was really concerning because they didn’t want to check my thyroid without me begging them and then freaked out when it was high? Thankfully nothing happened to my daughter and she was fine.

My LC was born in Dec 2024 is now 19 months. My PCP sent me to an endocrinologist a few months after she was born when I brought it up at my yearly wellness appt and I was diagnosed with postpartum thyroiditis, however the endocrinologist stopped checking my levels last October because my TSH and everything was finally in range (even though pp thyroiditis can swing back and forth for 12 months). She had only checked it 3 times over 6 months, it was too high, too low, and then in range. I doubted that it would remain in range.

Well I’m starting work ups for another retrieval and shocker, my TSH is below 0.01 when the reference range is 0.35 - 4.94. Which makes sense because I’ve been noticing symptoms but my PCP’s office hasn’t responded about it, only about other things. I’m switching fertility clinics again for this round and actually going to another country this time so I’m going through paperwork from clinic #1 and I find a document from 2022 that says “Diagnosis: Autoimmune thyroiditis.” Which they never told me about any specific diagnoses. It was dated over a year prior to me switching clinics too, so they knew all along. Wtf? I know infertility can still be “unexplained” with that diagnosis but why not tell me the actual name of what I have so I can get help with it?

I don’t really know what I want from posting this but I kind of just needed to vent about what bullshit this is and how much fertility clinics suck where I live. What does this even mean. Why is this happening over and over again. Why has no one cared enough to actually get to the bottom of this? Does anyone else dealing with infertility have this condition? It might explain all of the chemical losses I had early on in my journey. But no one ever told me out of all the doctors I’ve seen. I’m just tired.

For context I read the “Oh Crap potty training” method. We are ready to start tomorrow with bare bottom for at least a day and then go commando for however long that takes. Our daughter is poop trained from doing EC early on so we are just focused on pees, the problem is she takes 30-60 minutes to eat meals in her high chair and regularly pees during the longer dinner time meal. For those of you who normally use a high chair what did you do in those first focused potty training days where you’re supposed to watch them like a hawk? We have always done the whole baby led feeding thing, tried a weaning table but immediately learned she needed to be strapped into a high chair so she would sit and focus on eating. She is sooo messy so she’s in a full body suit type bib and even if she signals to go potty it takes us a few minutes to get her out and to the potty. Did you switch out of the high chair for potty training if you were using it before/had a younger toddler? Thank you to anyone who responds!

Tell me your stories. Good or bad. What age was yours officially potty trained?

We are jumping in, at 18 months getting rid of the diapers entirely (oh crap method). Been doing EC since 3m old and been 99% poop trained for many months!

How long did it take you? I am reading the book now, she seemed a little anti EC but my daughter is already poop trained I am just ready to be done with pee diapers too! (We cloth diaper, so less laundry) she is 17 months and we’ve been doing EC since birth

Does anyone know of any easy to hang fairy lights for a hospital room? I am attending a friend‘s birth any day now and I have seen a few options on Amazon but they all seem to require hooking something onto the wall to make them stay. What did you do for your hospital birth? How did you hang them? I had a home birth so I am no help here 😅

Have any of you ever had name regret that you used on your child? Like it’s been a year and a half, and I’ve decided I like a different name or different variation that name works way better and I wish I had thought of it back then. Unfortunately, it’s too close to my existing child’s name so I can’t use it on the next child, so I’m just stuck feeling guilty that I gave her a name that isn’t as versatile as the one I thought of years later lol. Oh well but wondering if anyone can relate

My daughter will be 19.5 months this summer when we fly to Italy (as a lap infant) where we will be staying for ~3 months. We will be flying out at ~3:30pm, 10h flight to Paris landing at ~1pm (idk if that counts as an overnight?), 2h layover then 2h flight to our final destination. How would you adjust the sleep schedule? I know we are lucky that we have plenty of time there for her to adjust to the jet lag, but any tips for adjusting sleep? Sh LIKES her schedule. Asks for night night when it’s around nap time. She’s never been a stroller napper. I’m bringing a baby carrier because she used to nap in that/on me when she was tiny. She normally has a very set one nap a day at home from 1-3pm at home but that of course won’t be doable on the flight day. She’s a pretty sensitive toddler and gets overstimulated easily! Any advice welcome, thanks!

What are we doing with our toddlers in lap for long flights? We will have a 10 hour flight on Air France in a few months when my toddler will be 19.5 months old. She is already 11kg/23lbs so she is/will be over the height and weight limit for the airline's bassinets. We do have bulkhead seats but do your toddlers easily sleep on you at this age? We haven't flown since she was ~9 months old and she still contact napped back then but hasn't since about that age. Just curious if anyone has any tips for sleep or flying in general with them at this age and size in your lap! (She gets overstimulated and fussy easily, so we don't do screens) TIA!

My 16mo likes to make a liar out of me whenever I think “she’s finally poop trained!” (we had gone over a month without a poop miss after almost a year of 2-3 poop misses at most a month). Well she was having some diaper free time at home as she doesn’t wear any 99% of the time during the day and she climbed into my empty suitcase while playing with her keyboard. I am turned around folding laundry and look over to see little poop nuggets falling into the brand new never used suitcase 🤦‍♀️