Anybody on Femara?
382 Replies
SashaP - January 28

I have been ttc for 25 months. I finally did my sonohistogram and HSG test last month. I had debris in my tubes which the HSG flushed out. I started Clomed this month but there was to many side affects. My DR put me on Femara for my next cycle. Has anybody had a similar situation to mine and had success with Femara?

 

Bubblesofjoy65 - January 28

what is Femara?.. I am on Metformin.

 

SashaP - January 29

Similar to Clomed. Less side affects. It's usually used for breast cancer.

 

SashaP - January 29

Whats Metformin due?

 

cw - January 29

hi sasha! i was on clomid for 2 cycles adn it didnt make me O so my doctor switched me to femara and i have been on it for the past 3 cycles. i didnt O the first cycle however i have the past 2. i havent had any side effects form it at all, although i didnt have alot on clomid either. i guess in that sense i am lucky b/c i know alot of women have severe side effects with clomid. i am testing on 2/3 so i will see if it worked this time or not! good luck!

 

SashaP - January 29

Hi cw I did O with Clomid but it was on cd6, plus with all of the side effects she thought it was best to switch me. Good luck to you and let me now if you get pg with it I need encouragement.

 

cw - January 29

i will def let you know although i am not really counting on it. i dont think that we bd enough around the right time. i know it sounds crazy but dh was working alot and was sick. i think we only hit like 2 out of what should have been 4 days. but i guess we will see this week. i am due for af @ the 3rd. what days do you start your first pill?

 

K - January 30

The HSG/ Femara combo worked for me. I got pregnant within the 3 month window of increased chances after the HSG- I got pregnant the 2nd month after the HSG and my 2nd month on Femara. I'm 34 weeks pregnant now. We had been trying for almost 4 years with one m/c at three years. Good luck!!

 

JND - January 30

I got pregnant first cycle of femara. I am 12 weeks pregnant now. Good luck :)

 

SashaP - January 30

hi cw I'll start my af today so on cd 3 I will start taking the femara. I know I'm not pg so I just want to start and get the next cycle going. Good luck on the 3rd.

 

SashaP - January 30

Thanks K and JND it's very encouraging seeing other people getting pg while on femara. I was nervous to take it after I read Canada won't allow it as a fertility drug. But nobody seems to be have the same problems they were having. Congrats on your pg I hope everything goes well. Good luck.

 

K - January 30

Sasha- I already posted this on another thread, but in case you didn't see it I figured I should post it again since you were a little concerned about the Canadian study. I was too because I was already pregnant with a Femara baby when it came out, so I did some in depth research, and based on my research I don't have any concerns about Femara. Here's what I found:

My research showed that most of the women who have reported birth defects turned out to have already been pregnant when taking the drug (the same thing can happen with Clomid). Also, I found a scientific analysis of the Canadian study that claims that Femara has a higher incidence of birth defects that complained that the Canadian study could have been skewed because a high proportion of the women taking the Femara of the 150 people they followed were older (already at a higher risk of birth defects), and it is also known that the incidence of birth defects is generally higher following infertility treatment, so because they only compared the percentage of defects with Femara to the percentage of defects with a group that had no fertility treatment whatsoever, you can't tell from the study whether the Femara would create any more risk of defect than any other fertility drug. That science group said that the Femara group should have been compared to groups undergoing other types of infertility treatment, not those who had no treatment . That scientific analysis also noted that the group of pregnant women studied that didn't take the drug (the control group) had an abormally low number of reported birth defects, so it might not be the best control group for comparison. According to the March of Dimes, 3-5% of babies in the United States are born with birth defects. The university of Iowa did a study which came out a few weeks ago that noted that 6.2 % of IVF babies have some sort of birth defect, 5% of IUI babies have some sort of birth defect and that the rate of birth defects in naturally conceived babies was 4.4%. In the Canadian study on Femara, the control group only had 1.8% with birth defects which is unusual, and the Femara group had about 4.7% which is not very far off of what would have been expected anyway, particularly as that group had a lot of older women. Plus the Femara group was not only made up of people who solely took Femara- some had taken other fertility drugs either before or with the Femara as well, which also could have skewed the results. The results of any research report can be misleading based on the data used behind the report. Based on my research, it's my opinion that the news reports were a whole lot of hoopla over a study that basically means nothing and appears to have been flawed, but everyone needs to decide for themselves. Hope this helps you feel better about it.

 

SashaP - January 30

Thanks K you put my mind at ease. There has never been any birth defects in my family and I'm only 25 so that dosen't put me at high risk anyway. You just get nervous when you get put on a drug you never heard of and the only info you can find on it is about birth defects or breast cancer. I'm glad you found other studies. Looking up femara was how I found this website and it was the best thing I could of found. It's put my mind at ease with alot of things. Considering I don't know anybody else with unexplained infertility. It's nice to find people with the same problems. Especially the ones who got pg it gives everybody hope. Thanks again for the info. What other thread do you go to?

 

Bubblesofjoy65 - January 30

Metformin, Is mainly used for type 2 diabetes, but can also be used for ttc. it helps regulate cycles. and bring on ovulation, most dr's use this with clomid.

 

SashaP - January 30

Bubbles will the Dr's put you on Clomid to or will you just stay on Metformin? Do they ever use Femara with it?

 

K - January 31

The other thread was Femara for pregnancy. Glad you found the website. This forum helped me so much when we were dealing with infertility. It was such a horrible time. That's why I still check and post now and then, especially when I see a question about Femara or the Canadian study. Without Femara, I might not have gotten pregnant (3 months of Clomid didn't do any good). I don't want to see it get an undeserved bad rap. My husband is a biochemist who used to be a medical research scientist and he can't even believe they would do a study without better "controls" than the Canadian study. He agrees with the scientific analysis I found and he thinks the Canadian study was completely flawed and useless.

 

SashaP - January 31

Hi K I start femara tomarrow 2/1 hopefully I will have as much success with it as you did. I started to figure there was no way my Dr would put me on femara if she thought it was dangerous. Your research confirmed it for me. I was happy to find out that my insurance covers this one since it's not considered a fertility drug. How's your pg going so far?

 

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