You can do it, 3 little stars!!!!
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You can do it, 3 little stars!!!!
Gosh ladies...this is such an informative thread! I have been stalking gender forums for days now (staying up waaaaay too late too). I need some serious help!
I have 4 sons and we are going to try once more for a daughter.
Pregnancy history?
DS 1 - conceived 3rd try (first 2 attempts on clomid 50) - when bumped to 100mg - bam!
baby lost at 10 weeks gestation (conceived on clomid 100mg first try)
DS2 - Adopted from Ethiopia! :)
DS 3 #4 - twins conceived 1st round with follistim/IUI
Biggest issue for me is PCOS.
We did not need IUI, but the RE told me it upped the chances of getting pregnant.
This next go around I want to tell my RE that we are going to try timed intercourse.
Should I contribute my bio sons to my PCOS? Especially the IUI which gave me the twins...because otherwise I'm a little stumped. I love dairy foods and sweets (I could eat cake like things all day long). At 5'7" and 150 lbs, I am not overweight, but am going to try to get back down to my college weight (15 lbs lighter)...
My PCOS diagnosis is due to high testosterone and very irregular/missed periods.
So much of the girl sway is unrelated to PCOS and I have yet to see an informative thread about injectables/IUI and swaying pink....
Anyone have suggestions on diet? I don't cook with a lot of salt, but we do eat ground turkey and chicken a ton...
Generally I shy away from noodles, rice, starchy veggies.
My RE will most likely put me back on Metformin and progesterone and then follistim followed by an HCG trigger shot when my eggs (though hopefully only just one this time!) are ripe.
I would be overjoyed if anyone could point me in the right direction as far as diet and supplements for my specific predicament.
I understand exercise/weight loss will play a huge roll....I'm on it.
Otherwise, I feel totally lost.
Katie
wife to Tim (7 1/2 yrs)
mom to Cale (5), Megersa (2 1/2), Thaddeus & Shepherd (14 months) :)
Welcome fourunderfour! I'm sorry I don't have any info for you b/c I do not deal with PCOS and unfamiliar with IUI, but just wanted to say that your children have beautiful names!! I LOVE the name Shepherd.Quote:
Originally Posted by fourunderfour
Bumping this up for you so Atomic sees it ...Quote:
Originally Posted by fourunderfour
Thanks so much! Boy names can be tough - so many little girls are getting boy names, so we had to try and find some super masculine ones (well, with Megersa, we kept his Ethiopian name). ;)
Hi four, sorry for not getting back more quickly but one of my older sons is taking his driving exam later this week and I've been trying to drive with him as much as I could the last few days becasue we really need for him to pass!!
IUI does sway blue. The reason why there aren't any threads about how to sway pink while doing IUI is because when you do IUI, you bypass all the things that probably sway and put sperm directly at egg. High numbers of capacitated (washed) sperm at the egg = more boys unfortunately.
You CAN'T do timed intercourse with IUI or do any swaying at all. The odds of getting pg with IUI are not super high to begin with, and you need to do whatever it takes to get pg when you do IUI. You were very lucky to get pg your first round of IUI - typically it takes more cycles than that and that is with ideal timing. If you start messing around with timing, you are only wasting your money on cycles that won't achieve pregnancy. Timing doesn't sway anyway, so you only reduce your odds of success for something that does not even sway to begin with.
My advice would be to skip the IUI and return to the Clomid (as long as you're under 35). Clomid sways pink, and while PCOS does tend to sway blue, and people do conceive both boys and girls on Clomid, there are still plenty of women with PCOS who've conceived girls on Clomid (Kate Gosselin conceived 5!)
If you have high testosterone, you're more "set" for boys regardless of what you eat. There is conflicting data on whether high dairy intake even sways pink anyway. I conceived 4 boys eating tons of dairy, one of whom was a failed sway where I was also popping cal-mag-Vit. D supps like a madwoman, then I conceived my DD while I was eating the lowest dairy intake I've ever had in my entire life. On this site we've had 15 successes of people swaying without taking cal-mag, and only 5 opposites - at the same time, the people who were taking the cal-mag and eating dairy had 13 successes and 13 opposites. The data simply does not support the idea that dairy intake sways pink. Please read the following essays for more info about that (three part essay with links in the first essay to the other two)http://genderdreaming.com/forum/tryi...roversial.html
Cake doesn't sway pink, high blood sugar sways blue so if you eat cake all day long, your blood sugar stays elevated all day. Also, if you ate cake with milk, the sugar in the cake causes your blood sugar to rise and then the protein in the milk keeps it high longer. For swaying pink, you want LOW blood sugar. Also, for people with PCOS (who cannot digest carbs as effectively as others can) the more carbs you eat, the higher your blood sugar goes and with PCOS, high blood sugar = high testosterone. You may have been swaying blue with PCOS, and a high dairy, high cake diet!!
My point is, your diet was VERY VERY VERY blue-friendly for you with your PCOS, and so I wouldn't hesitate to try swaying again with Clomid on a different diet. If that is not an option medically and you need IUI, I suggest looking into one of the sperm spinning methods and the HT crew can help you with that - you might want to message Ashkash and ask her because she went that route.
Hi Atomic,
There are a few things that I need to correct, for fear that my initial question suggested I only did certain things.
I have already been on clomid and conceived a boy (and another I lost). After I had my m/c they bumped my clomid to 150mg and my body wasn't responding so I was told it had "run it's course."
So, we did follistim with our twins.
I could suggest to my RE at the end of this month that I'd like to be on clomid, but I can almost guarantee she would consider it a waste of time with it proving to be ineffective in the past 3-4 cycles I've used it. And that makes sense. Clomid has way more side effects than injectables...
That being said, we do not NEED IUI. We merely used it because the RE docs here said it would help us get pregnant - bumping the odds of conception from 15% to 18%.
I understand now that sways blue, which is why we will try timed intercourse instead this time (I know you can't do both IUI and TI...but you can do follistim and TI - a friend of mine just had a baby GIRL using that method).
I will also say that I COULD eat cake all day - not that I do. Basically that I like sweets but not that I indulge in them or did when ttc my sons.
I was on metformin and progesterone when doing follistim (supposedly swaying pink?) but it was probably cancelled out by the IUI.
There is some that say IUI could favors girls in that many of the weaker XY sperm do not survive the wash...but other thoughts are that it is really just equal attempt since the sperm is placed directly next to the egg. :think:
ANYWAY...we aren't necessarily "wasting money" with doing infertility treatments. We have a HUGE cap before we aren't covered anymore - and we can do up to 6 IUI and 3 IVF cycles for free.
This will be our last pregnancy and it hasn't taken me more than 3 months to get pregnant with the 3 I achieved before - but we were just following orders from the doc w/ when to dtd.
I guess I just need to look at diet. My dx of pcos is it b/c of high testosterone and irregular periods.
Kate Gosselin was most likely a unique case at best. Seems as though they were not monitoring her at all. Most of my friends using fertility meds do not have multiples...
I have read the calcium essay you mentioned once before so I am not convinced it is best for me - esp with higher testosterone.
As far as sperm spinning - I've have found and called only 1 place that can do anything with regards to gender selection (we do not believe in PGD) - and they do not do microsort. Their quote for a girl was up to 65% at best with IUI, but I dont think it'd be worth $1450 a cycle with those odds...
what would you suggest for diet? Are you sorta saying that the odds of conceiving a girl are VERY slim...b/c that's kinda what I'm getting. :tissue:
Oh, and thanks for getting back to me. :)
Quote:
Originally Posted by atomic sagebrush
1)Yes, if you weren't responding to Clomid then you have to move onto Follistim. From what you'd written it sounded like the RE's had moved you onto IUI possibly because of your loss on Clomid - they do that sometimes.
2)There was just a woman on here who had talked her doctor into doing a so-called "girl timing" with IUI and she was not doing good timing at all for IUI, and reducing her odds of conception by quite a lot. I just wanted to make sure that's not what you were talking about. You can absolutely conceive naturally on Follistim and in your circumstances, that's what I would recommend since you'd like to try some swaying tactics. Timing doesn't sway and I just don't want you to waste your time or money doing IUI with less than optimal timing, if that makes sense.
3)Sorry, I didn't mean to imply you ate cake all day long or would. I was simply attempting to explain why you can eat foods that appear to be pink friendly and still conceive boys. It's totally possible to eat sweets and conceive boys, I've done it 4 times over! ;)
4)Metformin does sway pink, but the problem with IUI is, you are placing lots of capacitated sperm very close to the egg and you totally avoid things like the vaginal environment, CM, glucose levels (which would be where the Metformin would come in anyway) and other things that may sway along the way. I'm not saying no one ever gets girls with IUI, far from it, but I do believe more boys are conceived that way. Like with everything having to do with swaying/fertility, there are studies that point both ways but I think the data supports it.
5)Y sperm are not weaker than X sperm, that's been debunked. Please read the following essays for a full explanation of this. http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...le-timing.html http://genderdreaming.com/forum/scie...m-y-sperm.html
6)Sorry again, I'm not trying to imply you're wasting money on fertility treatments, I'm trying to help ensure that you DON'T waste time/money attempting to sway while going HT. As you already know, IUI has to be carefully timed to make sure that the sperm are present at the right time. From what you said it appeared to me like you were considering altering timing of your IUI to include some sort of Shettles techniques (which have been debunked anyway) and since it's recently been brought to my attention that at least one fertility clinic is doing this, I was concerned for your sake. That's not the case for you, clearly. I also wanted to warn you against trying to lower your husband's sperm count or either of you taking swaying supps, because you need to have good numbers of healthy sperm and optimal conditions in your uterus and tubes for the IUI to work - pink swaying generally consists of methods that are sperm-hostile. It's great that IUI worked so easily for you thus far, that hasn't been the case for everyone unfortunately and I'm trying to look out for your best interest.
6)The only reason I mention Kate Gosselin was to give you hope that it's totally possible to conceive girls even when you have PCOS. Kate was actually being quite closely monitored, her IUI had been cancelled because she had so many follicles, and she had natural intercourse against her doctor's orders when she conceived the sextuplets. That's neither here nor there but there are women with PCOS who have girls, that's all I'm saying. Please don't give up hope.
7)Microsort is off the table unfortunately, they've decided not to pursue the technology (altho it may be still possible in Mexico and the HT ladies will know more about that.) There are the spinning technologies available - I personally am in agreement with you, I wouldn't spend the money on it either but I did want you to be aware of their existence.
8)I am absolutely NOT telling you your odds of conceiving a girl are slim. I'm simply saying a) don't sway while doing IUI b) IUI may not be the best method for you if you want to sway (which is why I suggested Clomid). I believe, and I feel that the data supports, the idea that it is the sperm's journey to the egg that sways and IUI bypasses much of that journey. But plenty of women DO get girls from IUI. I simply don't want you to ruin your odds of pregnancy if IUI was the best option for you to conceive with. If you can't get pregnant, you have no chances of your DG.
Please understand I can not read minds and can only go off of the snapshot of data I get from your post...I can't know your medical history as I'm sure you can understand. I'm terribly sorry if I've given any offense, it was not at all my intention.
Atomic,
Thanks again for writing back to me.
I'm not an easily offended person, so please don't apologize! :) I hope I didn't seem snotty to you!! All of this swaying stuff is so confusing and SO different for each person that that is overwhelming in and of itself - so when adding on fertility issues, its kinda making me a lil batty!
I get the feeling that we were 'encouraged' to do IUI b/c it makes the RE more money, not because of the m/c. We lost baby #2 when living in another state and adopted DS#2 in the meantime....
We are not going to do IUI for conception this time...so we are essentially working with follistim, HCG (trigger shot) and timed intercourse. (Well, with me being on metformin and progesterone too)
(Interesting to know about Kate G though - thanks for telling me! I surely thought there had to have been something off for her to conceive so many with clomid!!)
If timing has been 'debunked' and supplements are debunked (note: hubby's sperm is "champion sperm" according to our RE)...what WILL help?
Diet and exercise? Would you recommend the LE diet for someone with PCOS and higher testosterone (note: mine is on the "low side of high"?
And can I ask why Clomid is suppose to sway pink so much? Because it lowers estrogen?
I'm still at a huge loss....I feel like I have absolutely no idea what to do.
What would YOU do if you were me?
Quote:
Originally Posted by atomic sagebrush
fourunderfour - I'm posting this link on swaying and PCOS in case you haven't already seen it:
http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...rt-3-pcos.html