FertilityFactor.com Home

hi jcr! well today is my last pil of femara and i havent had any side affects or anything. i was on clomid for 2 months and didnt O so they switched me to femara (still didn O) so they wanted me to do 1 more round before increasing it. i have read alot and talked to alot of doctors and most actually perfer it to clomid b/c of less side affects and the lining doesnt thin out like it does with clomid. dont know if this helps or not but you may want to look for more info. :) good luck!!!

I am currently 28 weeks pregnant and I got pregnant while taking Femara, so when those studies came out it scared me and I researched them. It turns out that the cases where birth defects were found were cases where the women took Femara when it turned out they were ALREADY pregnant. If you look at the warnings for Clomid, it tells you the same thing can happen if you take Clomid when you are ALREADY pregnant. You should be sure you are not pregnant before taking either, because both increase risks of birth defects or miscarriage if you take then AFTER you are pregnant. That is why my doctor always made me do an ultrasound before starting rounds of Clomid (I did 3) or Femara (I got pregnant on the 3rd round). Even though I knew I wasn't pregnant, he had to check and make sure and he also checked for cysts. The Femara actually leaves your system faster than Clomid (much shorter half life), so I bet if they compared, it would probably be less likely than the Clomid to cause problems. Based on my research and my experience with both Clomid and Femara, if I try to get pregnant again, I have no worries about skipping the Clomid and starting right off with Femara.

K i have a question for you... what dosage were you on when you got pg? this is my second cycle and last month i didnt O. my level was only like a .2. they kept me on the same for another month and then they are going to consider doubling it. it is greatto hear that it does work eventually!!

K, Congrats on your pregnancy. I hope all is going well with you and your wee one. Where did you find the info to research it? Was it after December 1st? There was a lot of the studies released Nov 30-Dec 1st. Most were out of Canada. What was your dosage? Were you taking anything else wtih it like Metformin?

I was on 50 mg Clomid for three months and then switched to 2.5 mg Femara. Both were taken from days 5-9. I didn't take anything else with either one. After taking both, I definitely preferred the Femara. Of the three months I took it, the only side effect I had was that in one of the months it gave me a slight headache. Yes, I did the research after December 1 when all the news reports came out. I believe that although there are a ton of different news reports, they are all based on one study, a Canadian study, as well as actual reports to Novartis (the manufacturer) of birth defects (I think there had been 13 reports over the lifetime of the drug). I researched it on the internet, but I can't remember exactly where I found the best stuff. I know I looked at every site I could find that talked about it and that I looked at a ton of different articles and websites. I found some scientific reports and I also found that some of the news reports did mention the fact that in the cases where there were birth defects reported the woman was already pregnant when taking the drug. I also found some mention on a scientific analysis web page 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 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 of Femara to the percentage of 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 are born with birth defects. In this study the control group only had 1.8% which was unusual, and the Femara group had about 4.7% which actually is not far off of what would have been expected anyway, particularly as that group had a lot of older women. My husband is a biochemist and he has taught me that you have to really look at the specifics of any research report because results can be misleading based on the data used behind the report. So far my pregnancy is going great. I had a level II ultrasound at 17 weeks (which included an awsome 4-d), and there is no indication that my little girl has any type of problem. I get to have a second Level two next week (the one benefit of being old), and I can't wait to see the 4-D part again!

I just wanted to let you guys know that I just did a little research on the average number of birth defects to see how that Canadian study on Femara compared and I found a study that the University of Iowa released on November 30, 2005. It found 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 other words, the Canadian Femara study showed just a barely higher percentage of birth defects (4.7%) than the Iowa study did for naturally conceived babies. I think the media is going nuts over a study that isn't worth much of anything, and that Novartis is just reacting for fear the media reports will start a bunch of lawsuits.

K, Thank you so much for your information. I was hoping to not have to take clomid and use femera instead. I will definately do much more research before ruling out femera. I bet the 4D ultrasound was amazing. Do you know the sex? Thanks again for your informative posting! Enjoy your growing belly and give it lots of rubs. I have a 26 month old who I fall more in love with everyday (if it is possible). It is an amzing experience!

jcr- She's a little girl. She's my first and it took us a few years to get to this point (2 years with the RE and 1 m/c(on an IUI cycle before I ever took a fertility drug so definitely not fertility drug related)), and I am extremely excited! At 17 weeks she looked like a little alien baby on the 4-d. She was doing the princess wave to us- it was like she knew we were watching. I am hoping at the one next week we will be able to tell what she will look like when she is born!! I still look at this board now and then as it helped me so much, and I hope I can help. Plus, after my success on Femara, once I researched it and felt that the study was flawed, I didn't want people it could help like it did me to be scared away from it without doing the research. Thanks for the kind words and good luck!