Hi there ladies,
We started treatments with IUI May 2007. I am a woman married to a wonderful person who was born male and is now transitioned and living full time as a female. We were married when she was still "male", but shortly afterwards, she began hormone treatments and such to become a transgendered female. We decided before she started the treatments that we would want children in the future, so we banked her sperm (13 vials) before the hormone treatments made it impossible for her to produce fertile "specimens".
Now we have decided that things are right for us to have a child and are TTC. We
have to use IUI because that is only way for us to use the banked sperm. We tried IUI naturally (no meds) for 6 cycles last year without success. I am 36 and we have come to realise that it isn't going to be as easy as we'd thought to get preggers. We took a few months off, during which I started acupuncture. Then, this year, since we have such a limited supply of the lil' swimmers the RE decided to step it up on our April 2008 cycle by having us use Clomid. My follies responded well to the Clomid, almost too well, but it also thinned my lining, it was only 6 mm when they did that IUI. It didn't take and we had to take a month off due to multiple ovarian cysts caused by the Clomid overstimulation. After those disappeared and we were cleared to try again, they had me do a cycle on letrozole (Femara) in June. The follies responded less to the letrozole, but we did have two good sized follies that they expected would release eggs. My lining was also much improved using letrazole. Unfortunately again, the IUI didn't work.
The RE stepped it up again with this current cycle, I took letrozole CD 3 to 5 then 75 IU of Follistim (injectible) for 4 days. I had responsive follies on both ovaries when we u/s on CD 12 with two looking like winners. The way the RE put it is that I was "shooting from both barrels".
I took an Ovidrel trigger injection on the evening of CD12 and we went in for the IUI on July 11th, CD14. The bloodwork looked good, the lining was at least 10 mm so hopefully we are preggers this time!
I will post updates of course and I hope to be better able to cope with all of this emotional up and down. I helps so much reading other people's experiences and see all of the wonderful support out there. Good luck to all of us!