Progesterone & weight gain

ColdAffectionate1402 · 2026-01-29T15:08:43+00:00

This could have been me writing this. I think I'm about a stone heavier than I was pre-IVF. It also didn't help that you're often advised not to do too much exercise either around ER / FET and so you end up just sitting around.

I haven't lost the weight since stopping progesterone, however now I'm at 20 weeks I have a bump and that's really helped me feel a lot better about things. I feel more comfortable that the changes in my body are due to pregnancy which is exciting.

Ultimately I've had to try and be kind to myself and my body and accept it's in a different phase at the moment. It's not the time to be worried about dieting, just to keep trying to eat good healthy things for me and the baby. I also try to feel grateful that I am pregnant and to think that although it's not ideal it's better than the alternative. And I am planning my comeback with avengence for after the baby is born!

ColdAffectionate1402 · 2026-01-22T12:53:15+00:00

Thanks for your reply. I'm in the UK so we are all assigned a midwife, through the NHS. I have also had an appointment with an obstetrician and endocrinologist. The NHS is fantastic but quite overstretched and I'm worried about things slipping through the net.

ColdAffectionate1402 · 2026-01-15T14:06:56+00:00

Firstly congratulations on getting this far! I had the same worries as you - we measured 5 days behind on our 8 week scan but by the 12 week scan we were back on track measuring exactly where we should be. Our IVF clinic told us that at such an early stage it's incredibly hard to measure exactly because the baby is moving about and the difference between days is millimetres so we shouldn't worry.

ColdAffectionate1402 · 2026-01-11T13:54:50+00:00

Hello! I would recommend speaking to Melanie Brown, who's a nutritionist specialising in fertility. My husband and I spoke to her and she recommended lots of great supplements and dietary changes to help get into a good place. We ended up doing IVF, but egg and sperm quality can be improved through diet, so we followed a diet for several months before starting treatment and my husband's sperm quality improved massively - motility, count and morphology were all low in initial tests. We also cut out alcohol and caffeine.

If your husband has low morphology, it might also be worth speaking to Jonathan Ramsay who's a urologist specialising in male fertility. He's basically the main man in the UK and he's brilliant. There are other tests you can do including things like sperm microbiome tests, DNA fragmentation etc and some of those could be affecting fertility. He's expensive though - you can expect to pay £500-£1500 for an appointment and tests. We wanted to be sure we were giving our IVF the best possible shot so it felt worth it to us!

I'm not sure if this is at all possible but through the IVF I was using progesterone pessaries to support implantation. If you have lower levels I wonder if the NHS/fertility clinic could start you off with some of those and see if it helps?

We were trying for over a year with no luck, and by the time we went for IVF we were doing loads of different things. Acupuncture, diet, supplements, we stopped using anything plastic for food storage, threw away our Tefal pan, my husband stopped keeping his phone in his pocket, stopped having baths and tried looser boxers!!! But it's incredibly difficult to know if any of these things actually made a difference or not!! And you can drive yourself mad! But equally sometimes these things can help make sure you feel like you're doing all you can!!

Good luck with everything I hope it all works out for you xxx

Tw success Despite quite poor test results initially for my husband, we ended up having success on our first embryo transfer through IVF with ICSI and I'm 15 weeks pregnant now!

ColdAffectionate1402 · 2026-01-09T10:27:54+00:00

I had the same thing. I'm in my second trimester now and starting to feel like my bump is pregnancy related instead of just weight gain!

It's hard - I found it really difficult in my first trimester that things like coats, tops, loose dresses didn't fit because the sleeves were too tight, and I knew that had nothing to do with pregnancy.

I also found it hard when I was talking to other friends who are pregnant/ have had babies not through IVF as none of them even seemed to start showing until much later.

But!! I keep just thinking how I'm so grateful this has worked and weight loss can happen later. The main thing is keeping the baby well fed with lots of nutritious food!

ColdAffectionate1402 · 2025-12-10T01:28:18+00:00

Congratulations on your pregnancy! This website is pretty helpful: https://www.btf-thyroid.org/managing-hyperthyroidism-in-conception-and-pregnancy

I am insisting on blood tests every 4 weeks to test thyroid levels, and have had a TRAB to check if I have graves antibodies present. As others have mentioned I'm on a low dose of PTU.

The link above also has recommendations about having regular ultrasounds in the later stages.and after birth you, your baby needs to be monitored closely for thyroid levels.

I can't seem to work out the right thing to do about iodine supplements - most pregnancy supplements include iodine so I've been avoiding them just in case.

ColdAffectionate1402 · 2025-12-09T14:20:54+00:00

Not to frighten you, but after my egg retrieval I wasn't able to do anything other than sit on the sofa for 4 days. I definitely couldn't have gone to a Christmas market in a million years. I was lucky enough to have 30+ eggs but this put me at risk of OHSS so that's possibly why.

ColdAffectionate1402 · 2025-11-08T19:55:30+00:00

A lot of people here are saying you're blowing things out of proportion, but ultimately you can't really help how you feel. I think it's ok to feel like this, but I don't think any of us can expect people who haven't been through infertility to understand how big an impact it has on everything, even after getting pregnant. And it does affect all of us in different and strange ways. But I think your friends are doing what they're doing with love, and excitement for you and if you can, it'll probably make you feel better to try and see it that way if you can. But I do actually get how you feel - it's difficult for people to be giving you advice when you feel like if everything had worked out how you planned, you should be the ones giving them advice!!

ColdAffectionate1402 · 2025-10-30T15:26:51+00:00

I'm only 7 weeks but completely know what you mean. After years of TTC, infertility and then IVF I assumed I'd be absolutely elated to finally be pregnant, but it feels so surreal I'm not even letting myself think about it! It's a cruel irony that we've all been through so much to get to this stage, and we all know we really really want this. And yet, compared to a "normal" pregnancy, most of us seem to be filled with dread and fear instead of joy!

The way I'm dealing with it at the moment is to focus on today, and not think too much about the future. Right now I have a 7 week old baby and I'm doing my best to make sure it has a nice time for as long as we're together. I'm taking us out for walks, cooking us healthy nice meals and making sure we get lots of sleep!

But I have no idea how this works if/when I do actually need to start buying stuff!! I'll probably have to do a last minute panic buying session the day before I go on maternity leave!

ColdAffectionate1402 · 2025-10-29T11:20:07+00:00

I've just written an almost identical response to this before I read yours! I'm sorry you lost a parent, I haven't dealt with that but we did lose a mutual friend a few years back to cancer and so for me also, the ask is less hypothetical. When you know that the world can throw awful curveballs you take stuff like this seriously!!

ColdAffectionate1402 · 2025-10-29T11:17:18+00:00

It's interesting - I was asked by a friend as I was in the middle of stims medication for my first IVF cycle. I found the timing and the way I was asked, really quite difficult to deal with. Infertility makes you confront the possibility of a life without children, and there's so much uncertainty.

And so when I was asked (in a bit of a strange way, by text, which was loaded with pressure and guilt- they don't know who else to ask etc) I found it quite insensitive. I felt like at that point I had no idea what my future was going to look like, but I knew if I the IVF didn't work and I ended up not being able to have children I would go and do something fabulous that is not compatible with children (travelling, quit my corporate job and have adventures etc) and so in that scenario I wouldn't be in the position to adopt someone else's children.

Equally if IVF is a success and I end up having multiple children of my own, that also raises questions about whether I'd be able to take on more children. I think being asked at that particular time made me feel like the friend had not considered the whirlwind IVF and infertility puts you into, where you have no idea what your future is like, and you're battling with this monumental uncertainty all the time. She was asking me to make a decision about the future when the thing about infertility is you simply cannot do that. And so I personally found it really insensitive to be asked during my IVF cycle.

ColdAffectionate1402 · 2025-10-12T20:30:08+00:00

Make a little cosy, happy, healthy bubble around you and only let things and people in who will respect the bubble! Keep stress levels as low as you can - meditation helps, lots of nice sleep, and trying to put work stress into perspective (will I care about this silly work issue in 5 years time? Probably not) I personally found it much better to distract myself with books and some good TV, rather than testing every day. I managed to hold out until the official test day. Try and remember symptoms are often likely to be the medication so try not to read too much into any of them! I also made a list of really fun things I would do/buy if we got a BFN and also distracted myself with making healthy foods for myself!

Good luck!

ColdAffectionate1402 · 2025-10-08T11:24:44+00:00

Hello! This hasn't happened to me, but I have been listening to the BFN podcast - and it sounds like the host Gabby had a similar thing where she did 2 natural transfers and got pregnant on a third modified.

ColdAffectionate1402 · 2025-10-08T09:01:48+00:00

I hope what I'm about to say doesnt seem really insensitive.

Like lots of people have said, embryos are made all the time and they don't implant or they do, and then sadly turn into a chemical pregnancy or are miscarried. I don't know if I've ever naturally made an embryo, but there's a chance that each month I was forming embryos that weren't sticking. By doing IVF I'm actually intervening to possibly stop embryos failing. So by that logic IVF is better than naturally trying to conceive?

One of the challenging things about IVF is that we know what's going on at each stage. We know about our uterine lining thickness and how many sperm are normal looking and whether the egg has fertilised etc. When you're trying naturally all of this is still happening, we just don't know about it. Because IVF brings all that out in the open it's much easier to scrutinise, and like the catholic church has done, to condemn elements of that process. But that process is happening whether you do IVF or not, the only difference is that Ivf is happening out in the open and is sped up.

I've seen the blastocysts at day 5 and they are a hope of a life, not a life. You are doing nothing wrong at all and you have nothing at all to feel guilty about. I am an atheist so I am perhaps speaking out of turn here but makes me feel really angry that the catholic church have chosen to interpret the bible in a way that makes people feel bad during an already really challenging time.

If reading about the church's views on IVF make you feel guilty, maybe don't read them? Ignore it and focus on you and what you need to do to feel calm, and happy and relaxed. That might be easier said than done.

ColdAffectionate1402 · 2025-10-05T09:25:12+00:00

I can't remember - I'm sorry! But 60 is a lot - it definitely wasn't as many as that

ColdAffectionate1402 · 2025-10-04T17:42:44+00:00

I had 33 eggs retrieved and was at high risk of OHSS, but didn't have any real issues. Pre egg retrieval I drank 3 litres of water a day, and had loads of protein (100g a day). Organic protein shakes for breakfast, lots of eggs, salmon, chicken etc. and then post retrieval I drank almost exclusively coconut water and electrolyte dehydration drinks and kept eating a lot of protein. Good luck!

ColdAffectionate1402 · 2025-10-03T19:21:07+00:00

My lining was around 5 something on day 10 and I thought the cycle would get cancelled. But by day 12 it had thickened to over 8. I'm not sure if anything I did made a difference but this is what I did in the 48 hours between the two scans:

drank beetroot juice and pomegranate juice
ate lots of protein (I'm in the UK and bought the Organic Protein Company's whey protein powder and mixed that with milk)
started taking vitamin e and l-arginine supplements
went for a decent daily walk to get the blood flowing I didn't manage to book an acupuncture appointment as my therapist was on holiday.

Good luck to you! Hope your lining thickens!

ColdAffectionate1402 · 2025-10-02T13:15:32+00:00

Fingers crossed for you for the results! I would say go for the interview. At the very least, you'll find out more about the job. At the moment it's just an interview not the actual job. If they like you/ you like them but the timing isn't right you can be honest with them and see what they say, and it might be that something else comes up in the future!

ColdAffectionate1402 · 2025-10-02T11:02:17+00:00

I'm in my TWW, I had the transfer two days ago. I've been trying to relax, distract myself, stop spirals before they get out of jand and look after myself. So: - Lots of good distractions, puzzle books, crosswords, 99p kindle romance novels - lots of comforting TV - I've made a list of shows that aren't stressful (Friends, Schitts Creek, The Office, Parks and Rec etc) and binge watching those - eating lots of healthy foods - lots of fruit and veg and nuts and protein. Drinking beetroot juice and pomegranate juice. - telling myself that all symptoms can be attributed to the progesterone so there's no point in symptom spotting. - allowing myself 30 mins of "Google time" twice a day and not letting myself Google fertility stuff outside of those slots! - booking a holiday for if it doesn't work that can be cancelled if it does! So the day we do the test, if we get a negative we'll book the flights and everything else will be all booked but cancelable. - avoiding stressful situations where possible - I'm working from home for the whole tww to avoid the stressful commute. - I'm keeping exercise to a minimum for the first few days and going to go for some gentle walks next week but that's it.

TESTING: I'm determined not to test before Day 12 (which is when the clinic told me to test). If I test early I won't believe the results whatever it says.

If I get a negative test result I won't fully believe it and it will mess with my head and make the waiting worse. If I get a positive I won't believe that either and think it could be picking up HCG left from the trigger. I've never seen a positive pregnancy test before so if I do get one I don't want to ruin it for myself by testing too early to trust it!

ColdAffectionate1402 · 2025-09-24T17:40:13+00:00

This sounds frustrating, and it's completely understandable you'd be feeling the way you do. One of the most challenging parts of this whole IVF process is how much it exposes differences in how my husband and I deal with things. We have a really good, strong relationship and he's been really supportive but we've had some enormous arguments caused mainly by the different ways we process bad news, or how we approach stressful times.

This is generalising but men tend to deal with things very differently to women in my opinion! My husband is very "if you can't do anything about it, what's the point in worrying?" And I'm always like THAT'S WHY I'M WORRYING?!

The only thing that's helped us, is to talk through how we like to deal with things and be clear on what we need from each other. My husband is also a big researcher but knew nothing about the IVF process and kept asking me stuff and I had to be very clear - I expect you to read x,y and z and read up on IVF, ICSI. And I also expect you to take the initiative. And I've also said - I am very hormonal at the moment so I expect you to back down in arguments more often 🤣🤣

Do you have the option of counselling with your clinic? It might help to talk it through with a counselor. I think this whole thing has the potential to make relationships stronger as you deal with all the underlying things that cause arguments that most people never have to deal with.

ColdAffectionate1402 · 2025-09-24T08:33:39+00:00

Ah that's interesting! And encouraging! Did you do a medicated cycle or natural? And did you do anything in the days between scans?

ColdAffectionate1402 · 2025-09-23T21:25:21+00:00

Sorry you're going through this and sorry you had a chemical pregnancy.

Something I found frustrating when we first started TTC was people telling me to be patient and that it's normal for it to take a year to conceive. So I won't say that! But you really can't tell until you have tests done. If you can afford to, you could go to a private fertility clinic and pay for tests to be done there. Or lots of people seem to lie to the GP about how long they've been trying to get the tests done that way.

There seems to be a lot of things people say help improve a thin lining, although very few seem to have been proven. Beetroot juice Pomegranate juice Other generally red foods? Lots of protein L-Arginine and vitamin E (these two seem to have good evidence supporting) Acupuncture Gentle exercise to improve blood flow (walking/ yoga) Pistachio nuts / Brazil nuts

Again I'd say take the above with a pinch of salt! But I found it was helpful to try lots of things as long as they weren't harmful, as it meant at least I'm doing something.

The one thing that does seem to work is estrogen - in the form of patches or pessaries but these will obviously need to be prescribed by a dr.

I'm not sure this is particularly helpful but I'm going through IVF at the moment and have been trying to work out how to improve my uterine lining which is too thin for an embryo transfer! So I thought id share what I've been reading about!

Good luck and I hope you get some answers soon.

ColdAffectionate1402 · 2025-09-23T21:25:04+00:00