Follicle count

[JasW22]

Hi all,

A huge thanks to the members of the forum for their help so far - you’ve been a huge help.

My wife and I have been for a scan today to check her follocle growth. I don’t fully understand it but she has been told that she’s got 7 follicles with 5 of them growing at a good rate. She read up online somewhere that she should have about 15. We (me) are unsure as to what this all means. Our consultant says to continue with the injections and medicines as normal.

Is anyone able to explain?

[Football61]

Hi. I’m definitely not an expert on this stuff, but let me have a go. I’m not sure there’s a “should have” when it comes to antral follicle count - it’s different for different women and also depends on age, etc. During an IVF cycle, the stimulation medication will help the follicles to grow. Each follicle (usually) contains an egg - although not all will be mature.

I had my first IVF cycle in May and I had 13 follicles on my baseline scan on Day 2. Before trigger, I think they had 15 follicles at the right size - and managed to get 16 eggs at egg collection (14 mature).

I wouldn’t get too hung up on follicle numbers - and 7 is decent. Quality is more important than quantity at the end of the day. Even though I had a fair number of follicles and got 16 eggs - unfortunately I had nothing to transfer because of low egg quality - due to my age.

Wishing you the best of luck x

[HollyT7 in reply to Football61]

defo agree with this. I had 24 follicles, 16 collected, 9 mature, only 3 fertilised and bfp with each. It’s so subjective to each case, you just can’t call it 🤷🏽‍♀️

[StarsAllAround]

Follicles are small sacs filled with fluid inside a woman's ovaries, this is where the eggs grow. Once the follicles get to a certain size your clinc will book your wife in for egg collection hopefully each follice will contain an egg for you. The amount of growing follicles varies from person to person and also varies from month to month so there isn't a fixed amount that someone going through IVF should have. However your wife should of had a baseline scan before starting treatment where they would of counted follicles and used that along with other information to plan your treatment cycle which should of been explained to you. I would advise to not Google things as there is no norm for IVF its impossible to compare so Google can just make you go crazy (I know from experience). Good luck 👍

[Kismet_x]

I had 3 follicles which resulted in 3 eggs. 2 eggs got transferred and my baby girl is now 16 months. Hope that gives you hope x

[RACMumm]

was this your first scan? More follicles can sometime be recruited during the process. How many follicles were there at your baseline scan? Usually that’s a good indication of how many follicles you will likely have at egg collection. I had 4 egg collections in total from age 30 through to age 40 and got the following numbers: 10, 7, 8 and 3. My first ended in an early loss (that was the collection where I got most eggs). Second my first born, third my twins and the last was unfortunately a negative. Don’t panic about follicles, as the ladies have said, it is definitely quality over quantity. No point in having huge numbers if the quality is not good. I only ever had 2 on transfer day and my successful transfers were on day 2 and day 3. Best of luck to you both.