Turner Syndrome Support Group

I had my first IVF shot last night, it wasn't too bad at all, and in a week i'll hopefully manage my fears enough to handle a needle, but for now my husband has the pleasure.

The shot is to shut down my ovaries, then i'll get different meds to over stimulate my ovaries, and then a single shot to release the eggs from the ovaries and some pills to avoid infections, 36hours after which any eggs will be retrived or harvested from me.
Then I will have another shot to do which will support any possible pregnancy and some pills to help also.
Then any eggs which have occurred and are viable, will be fertilized with my husband's sperm in a test tube.

3 Days after fertilization of any viable eggs, then one cell will be removed from each 8cell embryo, this one cell will be tested for 3-11 chromosomal disorders(depending on success), which will allow us the ability to choose the embryos with the best likelyhood for survival for implantation.
They will implant a maximum of 2 embryos, and the rest will be frozen, and any with severe chromosomal abnormalities may be disgarded.
With those two embryos i will have a ten fold increased chance of carrying to term, so that will mean for me 20% chance of success, meaning that one baby might be born and the other embryo will not take or miscarry or still birth.

The testing on the embryo is called PGD or Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis. This test is a screening only and is not full proof, nor is it likely to pick up any mosaic forms of any chromosomal disorder. The point in our doing it is only to increase the likelyhood of a full term pregnancy, as depending on each pregnancy I naturally concieve:
either/and/or; my eggs are no good(leading to chemical pregnancies, blighed ovums and miscarriage), I don't produce enough hormones(cannot support pregnancy beyond 12 weeks without hormonal injections), or turner's has effected my eggs, (which as you will know is a 2% chance of live birth).
And then I also have MTHFR, which is a folic acid deficiency and can also lead to miscarriage.


I have had two documented miscarriages, although both my husband and I firmly believe we had a third at about 5 weeks when we were on honeymoon, and having had two miscarriages since I am certain of it.
Because of this, I am "not infertile", only "medically incapable of carrying to term", this is the jargon the insurance company have used, so we're paying for the IVF out of pocket.

So Far the meds cost around $2000-3000, and we're still getting the Dr's office visits with a co-pay as the insurance co. recognise the need for PGD, but not the need for the IVF used to facilitate the PGD.
Life is like that sometimes.
So we're just going to pay now and continue to fight the insurance co. for a re-embursment as it can take years.

So, for me, the IVF with the PGD will take the odds of me carrying to term from 2% up to 20% by using two embryo's a shot.

At the moment, without the drugs, I am at the begginings of early onset ovarian failure(menopause, associated with mosaic TS) so the Dr. is guessing at best i have a 2 year window until I have no eggs left at all.
After which we will be considering egg donation, as unfortunately adoption is not an option for us.

Please feel free to ask any questions at all, positive or negative, both are helpful to me as they help me think about things in different lights, thus learn more.

Kind regards to you all,
Joanna.