We are due to have our consultation follow-up after our failed cycle last month and to discuss our 1 frozen embryo.
I have good egg reserve and quality, and good sperm. We seem to be totally unexplained. I always suspected I have mild PCO but not the full syndrome. I seem to be back ovulating again this month.
I did not respond as well as expected for stims and didn't develop many follicles. They managed to get 9 eggs and 8 fertilised and they said they were the best quality. But only 2 made it to 5 day blasto.
Due to this I think there must be something they are missing.
We are leaning towards medicated cycle as we are unexplained. Ladies on here gave me really good info in a previous post.
Any advice of things to ask the consultant or any additional tests people can recommend?
The only thing I can think of is to ask your clinic if they have any ideas why it might have failed. Sometimes even good quality embryos fail for no reason whatsoever, whether an IVF cycle or when ttc naturally. Of course with ttc naturally ladies never know that an embryo was there in the first place.
Don’t lose hope at this early stage. Your frostie might be the one to make it. My sister has a very similar story to yours with similar stats from her first fresh round. Her first embryo failed with no explanation but she’s just been through her first frozen round and her second embryo resulted in a BFP. There was no difference in quality between the 2 embryos so no idea why one made it and one didn’t. I do wonder if some ladies respond better to a frozen cycle than a fresh one and that might explain the difference. Good luck with your frozen cycle.
She had a medicated one. Not sure if her clinic offers natural but her cycle is all over the place so a natural one would have been more difficult to do.
Have they discussed genetic screening? Possibly even with good quality there is something chromosomal going on that resulted in only a few blastocysts.
However a lot of women do better on frozen cycles as less drugs in system rather than fresh so it may just work.
Did you get a BFN straight away after fresh? Did you have any bleeding during 2ww? If you had bleeding they may need to review your pessaries type and dose - more progesterone may be required.
Regarding natural vs medicated - if you have regular periods and are ovulating naturally- it’s usually better to stick to natural cycle. It may be best to track your ovulation over the next two months (days and times of when it happens ) to see if it’s consistent.
If you have a short luteal phase /early ovulation then medicated sometimes is better to control and prevent premature ovulation. It’s still far less drugs than fresh.
You often just take pessaries and patches /tabs from day 2 of your period. But you will probably also take cetrotide injections from day 2-6 to delay ovulation. The whole thing is wrapped up within the month though so much shorter time to wait too ☺️
I am leaning towards medicated cycle but like the idea of less drugs....I feel like there is def some hormone imbalance there as I normally have bad acne. Which went away with progesterone! Was over the moon.
Thanks for you advice. Hopefully they learned something from the last cycle.
I would def get them to review your progesterone levels in your next cycle etc and it sounds like you could do with more.
Btw do you know if you’re actually ovulating? Or are you just going by the fact that you’re having regular periods. As the two aren’t necessarily the same.
If you aren’t actually ovulating naturally (just bleeding) then it would explain why you have no progesterone (we only produce progesterone after ovulating)
If you have some PcO symptoms ovulation normally takes a knock.
Even with a ‘natural’ cycle they often will still give you patches/ pessaries etc for oestrogen and progesterone if they feel you need to thicken lining etc
It’s just the added injections to delay ovulation that is different in medicated.
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📍Also another thing- you could get tested for thrombophilia (blood clotting issues) and antibody testing to see if your immune system or blood flow is causing implantation issues. My embryos were ‘perfect’ too- but two bfn’s, and I bled early on both 2ww.
It’s quite common for women to have these issues and usually some blood thinners or steroids during treatment helps with implantation.
📍and thyroid tests! I can’t tel you how many women on here have thyroid issues but we’re never tested or treated. Very common issue with pregnancy and miscarriages etc but sometimes overlooked by GPS. Any good clinic will have tested you for it prior to treatment but worth checking if you haven’t. TSH levels should be below 2.5 for fertility treatment.
Good luck either way- I have my follow up next week also.
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