IVF or FET

[kitscat]

Hi all,

I’ve been for my follow up appointment today. I had a failed ICSI last month. One frozen grade 4/5AA. My AMH is 9.4, it has been repeated today. I am 33.

We had a long discussion about whether to go ahead with FET (plus prednisolone and doxycycline) or to keep this one on ice and go ahead with another IVF cycle to start in Sept. this would help preserve my fertility as my AMH is on the lower end. I am unsure what to do? Any advice? Xxx

[Orla9298]

I would transfer since it’s such a good grading. Why the doxycycline?x

[kitscat in reply to Orla9298]

Thank you for the reply! To try and reduce the inflammation apparently. X

[Seha04]

For my clinic, they’ll advise to FET first before proceeding with new cycle.

[kitscat in reply to Seha04]

Thanks for the reply. They have left it with us, they were aiming more for another cycle, but o think we are going to think it through.

[emiliajj]

Hi cat, we are in the same boat. I’m 29 and had failed ICSI last April. Our clinic advised us to do FET as I have 4/5AA we are trying the Natural FET this time. I will have my 1st scan on Friday and will keep you updated. Good luck on what ever treatment you’ll take xx

[kitscat in reply to emiliajj]

Oh yes! Keep me posted and best of luck!!! Do you have any frozen embryos left? Xx

[emiliajj in reply to kitscat]

I have 3 left.. is your frozen embryo same grade as before? xx

[a1234567]

I was on the same boat with you two years ago. The clinic advised a FET and we followed their advise. I would go with whatever the clinic advised. Good luck xx

[Prayingforafamily]

I was in a similar boat, although I’m 40 and my Amh is 6.6 after a failed fresh cycle I had one top quality embryo frozen but we decided to do another fresh cycle instead of transferring that one while I still had a chance. We lost the nhs funding to transfer the frozen one and had to self fund this second cycle but time wasn’t on our side and if the fet has failed and we had to wait for another fresh it could be a year down the line. I am currently waiting to see if any of my eggs have fertilised. 🙏. I am of course older than you and was fortunate to have savings to use. It’s such a difficult decision. We did see a counsellor at our clinic before taking that decision x

[Esme78]

I was in a similar situation to you in 2017. We had one frozen embryo but were 'suggested' to consider a fresh cycle. I felt little skeptical about this advice as it felt very much financially driven by the hospital (we were self-funded patients). Ultimately, we decided to go ahead with FET first - it did not work out for us but it was the right thing to do. We have then made further lifestyle changes and followed a rigorous naturopathic pathway, alongside another fresh round of ICSI, which resulted in much better outcome - 6 embryos! Fresh transfer worked out so we still have 5 in the freezer - and I am due to give birth soon! Do what's right for you. You are only 33 - I would go for FET first.

[Gueritarubia]

For me the question is mostly about what kind of family you want to build. If you think one child would be just perfect, I’d start with the FET. Why send your body through another cycle if you might not technically need it? But if you definitely want more kids, and if you don’t think you want super short age gaps, then maybe doing a fresh cycle now, hopefully to “store” future siblings as well, could be a good idea. Good luck with whatever you chose!

[Skippy1982]

Hi Kitscat,

Sorry for your failed ICIS- I know how you feel. I’m 36 now and have a low ovarian reserve and low AMH. Despite this last year I got 7 blastocysts and my fresh transfer worked first time! However I had a missed miscarriage at 10 weeks. After getting over that our embryologist said he believed our Frosties to be a good batch and that one will defo get us pregnant. End of jan this year did our first fet and it failed. Had to wait until May to do our next one as hospital was so busy. Just done it now and I had a chemical pregnancy. Now we have 4 blastos left in the freezer. My worry is that we could go through all 4 of them and none of them might work. This is our one and only nhs cycle. By the time we’ve tried all them I’ll be 37 and if I have to do another fresh round then I’m worried the quality of my eggs will be even lower. So hubby and I are thinking of paying ourselves to do another fresh round and see if we can get any more embryos in the freezer as a back up. It’s so hard to know what to do when you feel like times not on your side.

Xxx

[Bistbee]

Hi kitscat, i’m sorry your first cycle failed,

it’s such a heartbreaking thing to experience. We also had a frozen embryo from our first round but decided to keep it on ice and tried a second round in order to bank some more embryos - plan failed spectacularly as although we had slightly more eggs collected second time around, only one fertilised and i ended up having a transfer at day 3 which didn’t stick. So we’ve decided to try with our frozen embryo just to see whether that makes a difference in terms of my body dealing with the meds (although we’ve had no issues so far) and keeping everything crossed that it’s third time lucky for us 🤞🏻 it’s a really hard decision and i guess you just need to follow your doctors advice if they recommend banking as many as possible now in case of low/diminishing egg reserves. I’m soon to be 35 and everything seems ok on that front although our doctor has said we should delay things too long or take any long breaks if we do want more than one child (will be a bloody miracle

if we get one right now!).

Wishing you the best of luck for whichever route you go down xx