Soy and Luck
I’m still trying to mentally calculate the crazy odds of this pregnancy. My eggs suck, no one knows why, and while doing IVF I get crappy eggs that aren’t mature enough to use. And even then when we do actually put back a real embryo my implantation rate seems to be between 33-50%. So then I lost one tube to the ectopic so that right there cuts my crappy odds of getting pregnant naturally in half again. Oh, and I’m still breastfeeding, which you’re not supposed to do during IVF because it could lower your chances of success. (No actual data on this one, though, but the hormones in breastfeeding kind of work against the hormones of a normal cycle.)
I swear the soy did something, though. I know people are wondering, so here’s what it was: I heard friends online talking about soy isoflavones having a similar effect on eggs as clomid. Soy isoflavones is sold in pill form on the shelf as a treatment for menopause. Now I did clomid for a few cycles and got a bunch of eggs but no pregnancy. So I didn’t really have any high hopes for the soy, but I was in a “I’ll try whatever” kind of mind space. I took 150mg/day, days 5-9. Apparently you can take it days 3-7, but I went with 5-9 in the hopes that it would mature my eggs more instead of making more of them.
Unfortunately from the time I started taking the pills all the way through my cycle I felt HORRIBLE. I was bloated, my ovaries hurt, I was bitchy as HELL. I was not a happy person. My ovulation was no earlier or different (except I certainly felt it!). And then? I got my period. I didn’t quite throw the pills in the trash, but I definitely did say, “Fuck this, I’m not feeling that shitty every month until we do IVF!”
So in August – this last cycle – I didn’t take anything at all. I was still feeling kind of gross from the soy, and still grouchy about it too. I tried not to pay attention to my cycle, but by week 3 I realized I was still getting fertile signals from my body and no ovulation signals. My estrogen was definitely up, but no egg. For the first time in a long time I actually cannot pinpoint when I ovulated, but I know it happened around the end of August (around cycle day 23) because come September my body went back to normal no-longer-fertile.
In the second week after ovulating I started feeling slightly nauseated every day, which made me wonder, and it was cycle day 34 when I took the first pregnancy test (the one that I thought was an evap).
It seems bizarre to me that taking soy the prior cycle would have gotten me pregnant, but it’s very clear that I had estrogen running amok this month with a good two week fertile period and delayed ovulation. Looking back at my IVF cycles that at least does make sense, as the cycles when I stimmed slowly were the ones where I had better egg maturity. They just need more time to soak, I guess.
So you took soy isoflavones but NOT this past cycle? I took them my last cycle (in July) and got pregnant but miscarried at 9 weeks (still bleeding now actually).
Do you have any more thoughts about soy?
Yes, I took soy the cycle before the one I got pregnant! Bizarre. I don’t really have any more thoughts about it because I honestly don’t know much more about it – I was winging it this time. Crazy for me, I know.
I’m very sorry about your miscarriage, that’s terrible. :(
Thanks Nat.
Honestly, I can’t help but think that the soy did something (like pushed out an egg not quite right) and it attributed to the m/c :(
Aww, Alyssa… it’s hard not to blame yourself. But I doubt that’s the case. Unfortunately miscarriages happen to a lot of people, sometimes the embryos just don’t form right. :( The soy is just estrogen, as far as I can tell…. if the egg was messed up from too much estrogen and released too early it simply wouldn’t have fertilized (that’s what happens to me all the time… immature eggs, no fertilization).
For me… I do think I’m going to do soy next time again (if there is a next time).
My experience with Soy, made me nauseous, made me bitchy and gave me hot flashes. I took it on days 3-7 and it gave me a long 46 day cycle. My next cycle was perfect (compared to my usual), I used opks, caught my surge and had a 13 day LP (when I normally have only a 11 day). I don’t remember my symptoms, but I think it gave me an extra boost. The cycle after that went back to 11 day LP, until Evening Primrose Oil gave me another 13.
Interesting!! I never expected it to continue affecting things after I took it.
This happened to me. I took soy one month, didn’t work. Didn’t take soy the next month and got pregnant. I’m currently trying to get my period which I haven’t had since April (ugggh!!). Then, I’m going to try soy again. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I’m over the moon for you guys!!!
Interesting! I am definitely gonna try it before trying the prescription route. I’ve just sort of accepted at this point that getting pregnant in the future will be an ordeal for us because my body does not ever do what it is supposed to do. My body tries to ovulate I think, it gears up for it and then it has difficulty getting over that hump so I’m thinking increasing my estrogen levels might facilitate getting that boost to get the egg to fully mature and release.
I googled the soy further a few days ago because your experience definitely peaked my interest and for somebody in my situation it sounds like it would definitely be worth a shot.
At any rate it is intriguing…. I want to try it just to see if it does anything different to my cycle but I actually don’t want to get pregnant in the near future so I don’t know if that would be a safe idea considering it seems to be a bit unpredictable in what it does even the month after taking it.
I will have to share info about it with my sister, she is wanting to have another baby and Tristin was a Clomid baby and she has wanted so bad to avoid all the medical stuff this time around, maybe the soy would be an option for her.
And you… you should totally play the lottery ;)