Failed iui questions

[Robyn321]

Hi ladies...

So found out today that my 4th iui failed. Dr appt tomorrow morning. Can anyone suggest questions that I should be asking? Feel like I'm getting to the point where there just isn't anything else to say...so far I can only come up with:

Should I be on different injectibles?
Why did I have to take progesterone straight after the iui this cycle, when I didn't have any on my last iui?
Are there any other tests we can do?

 

[Flake-y]

Hey Robyn, failed IUIs can be hard to deal with.

Was it confirmed that you ovulated during the cycle? Cause if you did, there should be no reason to change your injectables. ALthough it's good that your clinic is changing some things cycle-to-cycle, like adding the progesterone.

I had 2 failed IUIs before moving on to IVF. In my own case, after doing the IVF we found that the sperm wasn't binding to the egg, so it would have been unlikely that IUI would have worked at all for us, or it would have taken ages. That's not something you can test for without doing IVF though, so I'd say if you've had the basics, HSG, SA, ovulation-confirmation, then thats all you'd need.

IUI can take a few goes to work though, even if there are no problems whatsoever, it's not much different from a normal cycle.

I've heard of some clinic doing multiple IUIs around ov time, so there are double or triple the amounts of sperm going into the uterus, you could always ask if your clinic do that?

Good luck, hope apppintment goes well tomorrow!!!

 

[cottonlily]

My failed IUIs were always harder on me than all the non-IUI TTC cycles. Seriously the 4 IUIs we did were like a lifetime of TTC and made the other 90-something cycles seem like nothing. I think it's because you spend so much of yourself - money, stress, frustration, time, anxiety - on IUIs and you think with all the modern medicine miracles out there you just know it's going to work. Then when it doesn't, you feel 10 times more let down. I did. Plus on top of that the RE kept suggesting IVF. Honestly, the severe disappointment we had from our IUIs was a big reason we decided to not go the IVF route.

I never had to take progesterone because I was always tested one week after IUI and all my results were good. Are you being tested also? Perhaps they thought the extra measure the last cycle would help.

There are lots of things I know now about IUI that had I known then probably would've kept me more grounded. Like how IUI increases an infertile couple's chances of conceiving up to the same percentage of "normal" couples. When we started IUIs we thought they were the greatest thing ever and would surely work for us...but even "normal" couples can take months to get pregnant! And washing the sperm decreases the insem count so drastically. I know it "weeds out" the lower quality ones but we were working with such a low count to begin with, had we known about this we never would have been so optimistic about IUI working for us.

 

[RayeAnne]

there is a blood test (not sure of the name) that you should have to see if the follicles are actually releasing the eggs. It's something everyone should be tested for BEFORE even going to a FS.

 

[Robyn321]

Thank you all - I read all your posts before I went to dr's this morning and it really helped.

We spent lots of time asking things (all the things you ladies mentioned!) but the upshot seems to be move on to ivf. That was a shock - we thought the dr would suggest another iui as he'd originally been keen on doing 3 on injectibles - so we were not really prepared. But DH's morphology seems to be dropping (consecutive tests have shown 5%, 4%, 4%, 3%, 2%) and I seem to have a lazy ovary. I do like the idea of finding out whether the spermies are actually able to bind to the eggs though - if they are not, at least we know. We are going to think about it over the weekend....