ok so I'll try and post a short version of my TTC journey....
I've always wanted children and NEVER even thought that I may not be able to have them! Luckily I had met my husband by the time I was 17 and at 18 we were ready for kids (I don't care if say I was too young - each to their own!) so I came off the BCP and that is where my problems started...
within 6 months I'd put on 3 stone, had severe acne and well as depressed as you can get and my cycles were all over the place!.... DH finally convinced me to see my GP (who is now unfortunatelly retired otherwise I'd recommend him lmao).... I went to him with all these seperate problems and he linked them all straight away and said I think you have Poly cystic overy syndrome....
I was refered to the UCH and put under the care of Mr Sarridogan at the fertility clinic....
So after tests etc (which took a few months - especially waiting for the appointment with the consultant at the hospital!) I was told that they would not treat my fertility issues until I had lost weight... I wasn't best happy.
During all my tests and scans they also found that I have a bicournuate uterus and septum in my vagina.
I was prescribed metformin and bascially told to loose weight......... I hated it but it also gave me the push I needed to loose the weight. I joined WW and started to loose and then continued and eventually lost over 40lbs in weight. this took around 2 years and in that time Dh and I also decided to get married.
In February 2005 we were enjoying life - I'd lost this weight and we were getting married... the pressure was completely off TTC.... I got taken out for Valentines day and we ahem..... 'had fun' a few times befor egoing out............. we then went out and got absolutely slashed, not even coming out from the ahem...locked pub....until about 5am {blushes}
So I carried on my daily life, even playing footy with my colleagues trying to keep fit..... my period due date came and went - no big deal it could have been anytime 32-37 days..... 37 days came and went.....
6 weeks before I was due to get married in April 05 my husband said 'you've been very tired lately' me - yes I think I'm coming down with something...my husband ' are you sure it;s nothing else... I'm sure you late now'........ he didn't say anymore but had planted the seed lol so I brought myself a test and vola... I was pregnant!
Georgina Josephine was born on 29th OCtober 2005 via emergency c-section.... she was over 2 weeks early and had been through a 2 day labour but was strong and weight 6lbs 11oz. She was perfect!
We never went back to using protection.... those first few months there was no sex anyway lol and then from about 6 months we started trying again.... by 9 months I was back on Metformin..... to this date I've lost 30lbs again and weight about the same as I did when I fell pregnant with her, my cycles are regular at 32 days and I know my body better...... I just hope that I will get my 2nd suprise bfp soon.
I'll come back and add anything later if I can think of it lol
In terms of awkward GP's thinking that we're complaining over nothing and refusing to take PCOS seriously...
I'd recommend Dr Bowley at the Ashville Surgery in Whalley Range/Trafford in South Manchester. She's been brilliant ever since the day I had my first appointment.
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~ Donna ~
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DX : Apr 2007 Current meds : Yasmin, Vaniqa
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I was diagnosed in January 2004 after many years enduring many PCOS symptoms. I went to the doctors with a pain in my side and immediately the junior GP (Dr Jane Barnard, Surrey Heath) I saw mentioned PCOS. When she explained all the symptoms it was spot on. For confirmation I had a private referral (thankfully DH's job provides excellent health care) for a scan and appointment with a gynae. I had my scan within a week and both ovaries were very cystic, the sonographer said that on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the most severe case he'd seen I was between an 8 and 9. The gynae (Mr Philip Toplis, Surrey & Hampshire) confirmed that my bloods were also all over the place and was happy to prescribe me with metformin. I combined the metformin with a strict low carb diet, lots of exercise and general healthy living. Within 3 weeks I had a period, first one in an age. Over a few months I lost four stone and within 9 months of diagnosis I was pregnant with Dara. The pregnancy was a bit difficult in the beginning with lots of little bouts of bleeding (and at one point they suspected it was an ectopic pregnancy), but that all stopped by 16 weeks and she was born naturally after a 6 hour labour...beautiful from the outset.
When Dara was 4 months old I unexpectedly fell pregnant and lost the baby in an early miscarriage. At the time I wasn't taking metformin.
In January 2006 we decided to start trying again. It wasn't as easy as it had been with Dara because the metformin hadn't been working for a while, my cycles were very irregular and I just knew I wasn't ovulating. We went the NHS route this time... After a few months I saw my GP (Dr Lawal, Surrey Heath) who took blood tests and sure enough I wasn't ovulating. Thankfully, after lots of consultation, he prescribed me with clomid. I got pregnant on the 3rd cycle of clomid. Again I had bleeding in early pregnancy but thankfully Grainne was born naturally after a 4 hour labour...another beauty.
I'm eternally grateful to all the healthcare professionals who helped us make our babies...I wonder do they realise the magnitude of what they do? I went down the private and NHS route and would happily use the NHS again if we decide to have another.
well, i always had horrible af right from when i started at 12. Had hair, etc. Was really blessed with my son in 1997. My pcos seems to get worse, until i was dx by my gp (Dr Kevin Thompson),but the surgery has now closed. He referred me to gynae clinic, who sent me to endo clinic in 2001.
eva
HI Paddy, im 29 from kent in england uk. Where bouts are you in england.? Anyway please email me as i would luv to chat to sumone that is close. Anyway ive been dx since 1998. Its kell2831@hotmail.co.uk if you have msn
or if you just want to email me its kell2831@aol.com
Hope to hear from you
Hugz and baby dust
Kelly aka faithrose28
HI Paddy, im 29 from kent in england uk. Where bouts are you in england.? Anyway please email me as i would luv to chat to sumone that is close. Anyway ive been dx since 1998. Its kell2831@hotmail.co.uk if you have msn
or if you just want to email me its kell2831@aol.com
Hope to hear from you
Hugz and baby dust
Kelly aka faithrose28
Hi Kelly
I'm in Surrey. Am rushing this evening but happy to help you. Feel free to email me at paddydara@yahoo.co.uk.
Let me tell you my story briefly. Married since march 2006 and ttc I have known that I have PCOS since I was first seen by a consultant in 2000 but wasn't TTC so no action as symptoms not to bad!! Now married returned to consultant and have been told the classic to loss weight!! I do have a slighly high BMI but find it hard to take advice as I am a senior midwife and see plently of woman who have been given treatment with BMI nearly double what mine is!!
I am now starting to feel really low as weight is not coming off as fast as I need it to as I am 31 and husband 34 this year!! Also loads of friends have been asking me to care for them in labour etc and although I am really happy for them starting to find it hard!!
Diagnostic Laparoscopy & Dye test (PCOS confirmed) - March 2008
June 2008 : clomid+puregon 75+ovidrel+pre-seed+instead softcup+progesterone+baby aspirin = BFP!!!!!
1st beta hcg level at 13dpo=601ui Al Hamdu Lillah!!!!!!!! To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 0 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
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#1 - About a year after being diagnosed I met a lovely man and we very quickly fell into a relationship. Now, my specialist and all the research i'd done on my own had suggested that i'd have trouble conceiving but a family was the last thing on my mind at the time. I was a student, just finishing my second year and about to go into my final, I was due to move out of the house i'd rented for the past couple of years as half my flamates graduated and left. I was watching my diet, strictly following a low GI diet as told by my specialist and taking 1500mg of metformin a day to ease my symptoms (Excessively painful afs which were once every 2 months)
My cycles had regulated to every 35 days around about and were bliss compaired to the flooding and agony i'd suffered for so many years.
Anyway,
My new man and I were going great, he was lovely and sweet (still is lol) and my health was improving, though I was still in a lot of pain from cysts. We weren't using protection because I assumed my fertility was fairly low to non existant (well it's what everyone kept telling me!) and I never much liked condoms. So, 6 months of unprotected sex later... heh
I skipped a period, thought little of it. I often skip periods at random after all. My partner however was slightly concerned. I assured him that if I missed two periods i'd do a test. The second month loomed but before af2 was due I started getting serious nausea. I was sick as a dog so I decided to do the test early.
It was most definitely positive, in fact at 7am that morning I rushed back upstairs to where my man was sleeping shouting "does this look like a cross to you!?"
hahaha, he hugged me and we both waited a while to calm down before he asked the inevitable "so what do you want to do"
There was no question really in either of our minds, we were gonna be parents!
I was 9 weeks along, 20 years old and homeless... it wasn't a good time. Thankfully everything fell into place. My mother helped us get a house, I took a year out of university to have the baby and we fell into domestic life as a proper couple. Cian was born in late november, a month early (his due date was christmas day lol) and about 6 months or so late, my partner asked me to marry him. He'd been waiting since we'd first found out apparently but i'd told him when we first met that I would never marry a man who asked me while I was pregnant, it always felt to me like that was the only reason he was asking heh.
#2
When Cian was about 12 months old I started to get insanely broody but my man put his foot down. We couldn't afford another baby, the timing was all wrong, we should wait until after the wedding.
So I threw myself into wedding planning, distracting myself sufficiently that I stopped thinking about babies.
Janurary came and brought af with it... but then feburary came with nothing... march and april followed suit, no af, random spotting and cramping but nothing. I did 4 hpt, it was the most logical assumption. All negative. Downheartened, I made several trips to my doctor, even leaving one appointment in tears because of his refusal to help me. I was told it was just "one of those things" that pcos got worse with age so that was probably the reason I wasn't ovulating.
They took blood, fsh and LH tests were done and the results came back horribly high. My doctor assured me that was characteristic of pcos and sent me home. I later found out that that LH spike was probably showing that I was about to ovulate as 2 weeks later on May 1st af finally reared her ugly head. It wasn't too bad, light to moderate and only 3 or 4 days long (usually it's 7) but it brought relief.. or so I thought.
I'd gotten broody again, was obsessed with my fertility thanks to the latest scare and started charting my periods once more. I calculated my fertile days and informed my man who said he'd have to start using protection then (while I wasn't ovulating we hadn't bothered, not that i'd been in the mood at all)
We started using condoms, fertile days came and went, june came and went... no af. I started getting cramps, sore boobs, indigestion and general pms symptoms. I did a hpt, I didn't expect it to be positive but I knew the doc wouldn't see me unless I did one. It was negative. I returned to the doctor, frantic. Why had my afs stopped? what was going on? was I infertile? He felt bad for making me cry the month before and agreed to refer me to a gynocologist for tests.
My trip to the gyno was... a waste of time to put it lightly. He sat with me and told me that because I wasn't ttc at the moment there was nothing he could do. He told me that infertility caused by pcos was treatable with a great degree of success and that all I could do regarding af was wait and see. He took blood again to check FSH and LH once more and sent me home telling me he'd arrange an ultrasound.
I returned home in tears, not sure what to do with myself or why my body was failing me like this. I upped my metformin dosage to 1500 once more, i'd never quite managed to get up from 1000mg since Cian was born. I changed my diet back to the strict low GI diet, all in a vain attempt to sort things out. I felt nauseated, I put it down to the upped metformin dosage and found that if I ate regularly it went away.
The indigestion turned to heartburn. I was miserable.
Then I started peeing blood (tmi I know). I had some sort of infection, probably bladder or kidney judging by the colour. That day I toyed with the idea of doing the last hpt, given I was planning on peeing in a cup to check the colour anyway (gross I know, needed to be done) but decided I couldn't quite deal with another glaring negative. The cycle beforehand had robbed me of any hope I had, I knew in my heart that despite my desperate desire for that to be the answer to all these issues, it probably wasn't the case. My doctors had managed to convince me that I was just infertile.
So, quite concerned about the amount of blood I was passing, I called the doctor and made an appointment, they could see me the next day at the earliest. I waited till evening then called the after hours doctor to see them instead, I knew I needed antibiotics ASAP, especially if this was kidneys.
I headed down to the hospital, leaving my partner and son to go grocery shopping.
The doctor was lovely, didn't even need to do a test to figure out it was an infection, pee just shouldn't be that colour damnit! lol.
She went through the usual list of questions they ask before perscribing antibiotics: Are you allergic to anything, do you have any preexisting medical conditions, could you be pregnant?
I laughed and told her that I was at that point around 34 days late but the doctors told me it was just pcos, they were investigating.
She asked me if i'd like her to do a test anyway and I said sure, why not. I figured a doctor confirmed negative, while upsetting, would kill those nagging doubts at the back of my mind completely. The hopes I was shutting up with logic and evidence.
She did the test, wandering off to find a dipstick for the blood count and all that to confirm infection. When she returned she looked at the test and said "yep, that's it" I was puzzled, thinking i'd misheard her I laughed and said "negative then?" as I fully expected it to be. "no" she said "it's positive"
I leapt out of my chair, rushing over to look. I stood in shock as she showed me the two lines and took out a second test which she poured water on to show me what a negative cassette hpt would look like. I was trembling, utterly completely overwhelmed. She lay me down and checked to make sure I wasn't having any abdominal pain then perscribed me some safe antibiotics and sent me home with much congratulations.
I phoned my partner immediately, informing him of the news before picking up my antibiotics and sitting in dazed silence as the cab driver took me home.
The following morning I took that spare hpt I had sitting on the shelf, the positive showed up before the control had even had time to develop. It was practically glowing in the dark!
If my dates are right, I should be 9 weeks along.
I haven't seen the doctor who told me that a negative hpt was pretty accurate and I couldn't possibly be pregnant yet... I'm sort of looking forward to telling him what an idiot he is for not confirming by doing a bloody hgc blood test before telling me I was just anovulatory.
The grief and stress I went through believing I was just falling apart at the seams, that my hormones had gone haywire when all the time the nausea, the heartburn, the pain and aches was ALL because i'm having a baby!
The bloating I put down to water retention? It's my cute little bump. I'm already starting to show lol.
Interestingly, I kept having dreams where i'd attend the u/s and the technican would tell me I was pregnant. I thought it was wishful thinking, turns out, if I hadn't gotten that infection and gone to the out of hours doctor, that would have probably been the first i'd known of the whole situation.
What makes me sad though, is knowing full well that if I'd waited 24 hours and gone to my normal doctor instead of the hyper efficient out of hours one, they wouldn't have even bothered to test and would have just given me full strength antibiotics. I suppose fate must have played a hand in the whole thing, my only symptom of infection was blood, no pain or anything after all...
I believe this one, like my first child, was meant to be.
I'm just dreading telling my mother. Lol. She told me I wasn't allowed to fall pregnant between ordering the dress (done in late May) and the wedding (next May) lol. Well, I didn't really.. I was already pregnant and just didn't know it! hahahaha
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Pcos & a sub septate uterus
Current treatment:
1500mg Metformin
- Married May 30th 2009 -
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Cian David St. John - Born 13:33, 27th November 2006 at 36 weeks
Weighing 5lb 4oz
Someone didn't want a Christmas birthday
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uk girls ttc/ success stories plus any helpful doctor info 
