Anyone here do IVF?
I’m about to start my second round of meds (I didn’t respond to the first one) and was just interested in hearing from other diabetics that did IVF.
I know it’s kind of late but I did IVF June 2017 and finally had a positive embryo transfer in August 2018. We did a freeze all cycle. Been T1 since I was 8.
Unfortunately I had a failed second cycle. My blood sugars went crazy from this protocol of hormones. I was very anxious about the fasting before retrieval. The blastocysts didn’t make it to freeze. I’m 40, and curious about other’s ages that went through IVF. I just read 3 scientific papers that low AMH (what I have) may be another understudied long term complication of t1. Wish I knew that 2 years ago.
Hi Ginny, I am a Type 1 and I am currently 26 weeks along with my second pregnancy through IVF. I am 43. I am happy to trade experiences with you if it’s helpful - the main thing is we used a donor egg mainly due to my age. Had my daughter 4 years ago healthy and happy. It was quite a journey but worth it all…
Congrats on your pregnancy!
Did you do medicated egg retrieval cycles before going to donor eggs? How was your blood sugar control with the added hormones?
Right now I don’t see how I can have a successful embryo transfer since my blood sugars were so bad before the retrieval. It seems like it would definitely effect egg quality (which mine is already low).
Thanks for any input!
Hi, we didn’t try my eggs. We had to pay out of pocket and for us, it was looking at the chart that said our chances were I think less than 20% with my eggs vs. almost 70% working with a donor. That’s a personal choice for sure, and I know with our clinic we were required to see a counselor before we signed the paperwork to make sure we were comfortable with that choice. YES, meds affected blood sugars. The medrol was the biggest for me - you’re only on it for a week or so but my endo and I ended up creating a temp basal for it - I was using double or triple insulin to cover those days. But now that I’m almost in my third trimester, that’s true for me on a daily basis! You’ll see once you get pregnant that the sugars keep rising and you need more insulin for daily food intake. I took 8.5 units of insulin for a broccoli egg scramble this morning with a whole wheat english muffin. If I wasn’t pregnant I would have taken 2 units for that.
As for sugar control, it’s hard but worth it. Hope you have a good endo. Again everyone is different. I found a combination of going with a different pump and a CGM, along with some major determination, made the difference.
Best of luck!
Thanks for sharing. I’m at a point right now I realized how burned out of fertility treatments I am (on top of the super strict diabetes control 
). The initial miscarriage followed by 5 failed treatments has just been too much. I think part of my frustration is, ironically with all the dr appts etc. I feel like I have not gotten nearly enough information or thought to actually succeed at becoming pregnant. My diabetes endo, who I really like and specializes in pregnancy and type 1, hasn’t delved into infertility and T1, she focuses on a healthy pregnancy. And then my RE hasn’t really addressed my T1 as part of the treatments either. It’s all been left up to me, and I feel like I have gotten very little support. I don’t think she even addressed my percentage rate of success, just the clinic’s. So we haven’t even talked about donor eggs, they just keep cycling me through the various protocols as they do with everyone, with seemingly no tailoring to specific people’s needs (I’m in Massachusetts where it is covered by insurance). I had a pretty horrible experience leading up to the retrieval, the thought of going through it again gives me a lot of anxiety.
We are going to meet with our RE in a couple of months to talk more. I’ll bring up a lot more then, including donor eggs/ embryo donation etc… I feel like I need to “clean up the mess” on my health that the treatments did, prior to any route we take (even adoption or fostering).
I’m not too worried about tailoring my insulin needs if I were to get pregnant, I did really well before when I was pregnant being safely aggressive on control. It’s the meds, especially prior to the retrieval that I had so much trouble with. I’d have a lot of highs and then crash, then back up again.
HI, just found this thread as I’m preparing for a mock cycle with an ERA (endometrial biopsy) to determine whether my two failed frozen PGS-tested normal embryo transfers were a result of implantation failure. It’s been such a slog. We’ve been trying to get pregnant since 2015, starting treatments in 2016, and moving to IVF at the end of 2017. Everything right now is unexplained - nothing looks “bad” on his end or mine. But I have to say, I’m so tired and burned out from poking and prodding and monitoring my body so much - it’s hard for me to feel any gratitude towards it at this point! Anyway, we have one embryo left and will probably transfer in the spring, after we get the results of the ERA and figure out if its an implantation window issue. Meanwhile, my RE also wants my a1c down to 6.5 before we do the transfer - it’s at 6.9 now, and I’ve been on the 670G auto mode for two months. It’s been a pretty smooth transition, so we’ll see if it continues to bring the numbers down.
So sorry to hear that. But I think you have a chance of becoming a mother.
My friend also had problems with diabetes and pregnancy. She was diagnosed with infertility due to the fact that she has a problem with hormones and because of this, she could not get pregnant. She and her spouse underwent repeated treatment, but this did not help. Then they tried IVF with a donor egg cell. I understand that not everyone wants to do this procedure, but sometimes this is the only way out of this situation. You should try. Read about this procedure here: https://ivf-international.com
Good luck to you!