ICSI with frozen eggs

[Ricecrispies2024]

Does anyone have any experience of using their own frozen eggs for ICSI? I’m 34 and have a high afc & hormone levels are good, but we are having ivf due to severe male factor. The clinic have told me they don’t have enough data on women in my age bracket using them so they can’t give me any idea of the likelihood of success. None of the sperm we had frozen survived the thaw and there wasn’t anything usable on the day of my retrieval so they had to freeze my eggs as a last resort. We got 13 mature eggs, we’re hoping to improve sperm count or worst case have surgical extraction. Thanks x

[JA-fnuk Partner Nurse Fertility Network UK]

Hope you get some replies to your post as this forum is an excellent source of peer support . Has your clinic suggested any supplements that might be help improve the smear count ? Might be an idea to ask them . Seems nuts are good for nuts ! Try walnuts ,almonds - not too much as have a high calorie count Healthy colourful diet - green leafy veg and brightly coloured fruit Not to exercise to excess -get enough sleep and try to reduce stress levels No hot baths- tight pants Vitamin C & D and zinc also important

Thinking of you

Janet-Partner

[Ricecrispies2024 in reply to JA-fnuk]

Thanks for your reply! We have a nutritionist and he’s been taking supplements and eating well (including nuts!) as well as other things (snowballs, acupuncture) but unfortunately it is very extreme so lifestyle hasn’t made any impact, we’re getting 0-3 progressive per sample. It’s due to an undescended testicle at birth. We’re hoping medication will improve it enough for icsi.

[CyclingAddict]

Hey lovely, our story sound similar to yours. I have no obvious fertility issues (ovarian reserve was high at the time of collection when I was 32 and hormone levels were normal), but my husband had a very low sperm count and poor motility and morphology due to an undescended testicle. At his lowest his sperm count was 1 million. He did manage to get it up to 10 million in time for our last cycle by implementing lifestyle changes and taking a cocktail of supplements, so everything your husband is doing should hopefully help! My husband was also wearing snowball underwear on evenings and taking cold baths. He also took up running too as some studies show that that can help.

My consultant managed to get 21 eggs out of me (19 of which were mature). He really pushed my body and did regular monitoring so we could get as many eggs as possible to increase our chances - what with the sperm quality being what it was. Out of the 19 mature eggs, 12 fertilised and 11 made it to blastocyst stage. We then did PGT-A testing and 7 came back 'normal'. Our first transfer worked and we now have a 12 week old son and 6 embryos in the freezer.

My husband is a lecturer in science, so he read loads of academic papers for advice on what to do. I can't remember all the supplements he was taking (it was a lot!), but I can ask him once he gets back from work if that'll help?

Happy to help where I can as I think in some ways it's harder when it's male factor as I don't think you get the same level of support or guidance as the focus is largely on the woman's body when you go through IVF.

Sorry I don't have any experience with freezing eggs prior to ICSI.

Hope this helps! X

[Wuhu85]

Hey, the egg freezing is very individual. It depends on your egg quality and how the clinic is good with freezing. I had frozen 8 eggs when I was 33 and just 3 fertilized and 3 day they had to be eleiminated due to severe defects. I have a friend and she had very good egg quality and she had embryos. So it is really individual. You have to count with some loses. The freezing proccess can damage the eggs. Finger crossed to improve your sperm count🤞

[Ricecrispies2024 in reply to Wuhu85]

I’m sorry to hear that, but thank you for taking the time to reply x

[Wuhu85 in reply to Ricecrispies2024]

My new clinic told me that when you have embryos from frozen eggs than to do a fresh transfer to avoid manipulation with the embryo.

[Ricecrispies2024 in reply to Wuhu85]

Yeah that’s what the doctor said, but surely that means you only get 1 chance? She did say they’d freeze any leftover embryos if there were some, so there has to be a possibility? Very confusing and sometimes I have more questions but to get them answered it’s another consultation… x

[Wuhu85 in reply to Ricecrispies2024]

Maybe thaw 4 and see what happen. Maybe none will survive. Than they have to thaw again 4 and so on. I would thaw the half and hope for a miracle. You have a male factor so can be expected a worse outcome. It is really hard sometimes. I thought that well yes we go and we become a baby straight away. But with advanced age in our case and issues it is somewhat difficult and it can take some time. So maybe make a new cycle and do at the same time surgical extraction of the sperms and at the same time thaw the eggs to see if there will be something. I would not do PGT from the frozen ones I think. It was for us not adviced.

[ellebee123123123 in reply to Wuhu85]

could you please elaborate on what they meant by this? is this because you'd be freezing an embryo that was made with a frozen egg? thank you!

[Wuhu85 in reply to ellebee123123123]

I am not sure which part is not clear but my embryologist told me that to freeze an embryo which was from frozen eggs is not recommended because it is to much load on the embryo.

[ellebee123123123 in reply to Wuhu85]

Thanks for replying.

I have 2 frozen embryos that were from frozen eggs. I was wondering if she was saying it in terms of the impact on embryo quality as I'm not sure what is meant by the term "load".

[Wuhu85]

I still have 7 eggs frozen and the embryologist told me there is still a chance because it is different batch but actually I am not really optimistic about my case so much. Maybe you will be lucky.

[Ricecrispies2024 in reply to Wuhu85]

When you say different batch was this from the same egg retrieval or a different one? The doctor told me when they thawed them they would do it in half eg 6 then 7, and they wouldn’t do 1 egg at a time, I wasn’t sure if this was because of how they store the eggs or just because 1 egg wouldn’t have a good chance compared with several? Not sure if you can clarify x

[Wuhu85 in reply to Ricecrispies2024]

No I had 2 separate stimulations. The eggs are frozen on some kind of holders where can fit few of them. They are not freezing the eggs separately but on the holders. I have no idea how many they gave on one. Usually they thaw then the holder with few eggs. You have to calculate with losses but it is highly individual. Maybe my eggs were already poor quality or the freezing process was bad, what I think that was the case.

[Ricecrispies2024 in reply to Wuhu85]

Ok that makes sense. I’m sorry for what you’ve been through, if there’s anything I’ve noticed from reading everyone’s experiences is you never know, sometimes it’s just random and suddenly works so I’m crossing my fingers for you xx

[Wuhu85 in reply to Ricecrispies2024]

No problem I accepted it. We did also fresh cycles and we get plenty of embryos but now we have implantation problems. I have some immunity problems as well. This thing is extremely complicated. We have also a make factor but we improve our quality with short abstinence time. But if you have small count it is not recommended I think.

[Sunshineseeker18]

yes I used my frozen eggs - I am 33 and we got 2 PGTA normal embryos from them - good luck

[Ricecrispies2024 in reply to Sunshineseeker18]

Congrats, that’s great news! Thanks for replying. Did you freeze your eggs in advance to preserve fertility or was your situation similar to mine where you froze them during ivf? X

[Sunshineseeker18]

I froze at 32 to preserve fertility as my now husband didn’t propose…. Fast forward 9 months and we are married and he had sperm issues so we did a new round of icsi and added the frozen eggs on (it was cheaper for us to do this) we live outside of the uk so had to fund treatment ourselves

[Babylove35]

Hiiii

*raises hand* I did! I used my own eggs. 9 were retrieved, 8 matured, 6 fertilized! We did one embryo transfer and it was a success! He’s 10 weeks today ☺️ My retrieval was in December 2023, they did ICSI end of January 2024( eggs were only frozen for a few weeks), transfer of embryo February 2024, I was pregnant by Feb 16. Gave birth 10/31. If there’s any consolation, I didn’t have anyone to ask any questions so I’m happy to help. I know the feeling! Feel free to message me ♥️ Btw, I was 34!

[Ricecrispies2024 in reply to Babylove35]

I’m so happy for you, that’s amazing. Thanks for your reply x

[Milo2011]

Sorry to hear you had no luck on the day. We have male factor since we TTC when I was 39 but we’ve been told by our consultant that there’s no magic bullet for male factor … you can improve diet and decrease heat by not taking hot baths and reduce the amount of high intensity exercise you do take supplements and do ICSI and ditch alcohol and caffeine but the bottom line is the quality and count might not magically improve. We are due to see a male fertility specialist to see if there’s anything else we can do outside the clinics advice but our two cycles have failed so far. First one OE with 50% blast and second frozen DE with 0 blast which was hugely disappointing. I’m not sure if the issue was with the frozen eggs or his sperm as it’s so hard to tell according to the lab but in my OE cycle with his sperm we still had 50% blast.

Wishing you best of luck with your thawing and your journey

[Stayinghopeful1]

Yes, I had ICSI with frozen eggs. I’m a single mum by choice so no known fertility issues. I had frozen eggs when I was 37, 13 mature eggs retrieved that cycle. When I used them, only 5 survived the thaw and 3 fertilised. Of the 3 that fertilised, 2 made it to being good quality embryos on Day 5. I transferred one of those last January and now have a 3 month old baby boy. The second embryo was frozen.

[Anonimatoz]

Our case is very similar to yours. Severe male factor with no known female factor.We also had trouble with frozen sperm. However, because we had 10 vials, we still had enough for 2 ICSI cycles with still very poor results.

We will now do another surgical sperm retrieval on the same day as my egg retrieval. This seems to work better for several male factor.

Although your frozen eggs could be fine with regular sperm, frozen surgical sperm seems to work best with fresh eggs.

If I were you, I'd do another fully fresh cycle and leave those eggs frozen. Depending on the result of the fresh cycle you can go back to those eggs.

Also, ask for all lab reports relating to the sperm. We found loads of issues with how our clinic handled his sperm which could have cause the poor results and waste of frozen sperm. We have changed to another clinic now.

Feel free to message me privately if you need help with this.

[Hopeful221107]

Sorry if this is obvious, but has your clinic suggested IMSI? We were a bit sceptical as it’s so new as an add on there is not yet strong evidence, but my consultant was persuasive and I will say both our euploid embryos came from the IMSI batch not the ICSI one.

[Anonimatoz in reply to Hopeful221107]

In general, IMSI and other sperm selection methods are not applicable to surgically retrieved sperm as only single digits are extracted. It is not really a matter of selecting the best as you may only have 6 to 10 sperm in total, not millions as in ejaculated sperm.

It is more about taking the time to search through the vial for a long time to find any and using substances to reactivate sperm that may look dead at first.

[Mai94]

We had icsi with a frozen transfer, third one was a double success with twins. We used embryo glue, a endometrial scrape, progesterone, aspirin and fragmin. Threw everything at the last one so not sure what exactly helped. Wishing you all the best x

[Ricecrispies2024 in reply to Mai94]

Thanks for your reply and congrats! - do you mean just a frozen embryo or was the frozen embryo made with a frozen egg? x

[Mai94 in reply to Ricecrispies2024]

Sorry I didn’t read properly, we used fresh eggs/sperm and had embryos frozen. Thank you x

[ellebee123123123]

My 3rd old son is thanks to an egg I froze that was fertilised with icsi (did it between the ages of 35-37, and interestingly, he was an egg from when I was 37).

We've since had 2 bfn, and 1 cp, all with my frozen eggs.