I thought I'd pop on and give an update (although I doubt anyone is that interested so this is mostly a journaling exercise for myself!).
I did my egg collection today and 17 were collected. My last collection was two years ago and I think we got 22/23 eggs at that one. From this number we ended up with 6 blastocysts of which we have two remaining in the freezer. We decided to egg collect again because I'm now 38 and the remaining two are not GREAT quality plus I miscarried twins and had two failed transfers of good quality embryos from that cycle. We're hoping to get a decent number (6 would be amazing but is perhaps unrealistic) and then PGT-A test what we have. I believe it's the same price to test 1 or 8. Whilst I know I'm being a bit ambitious due to being 2 years older than last time and my numbers being lower to start I am still thinking it's possible to get a similar end result because my partners sperm quality has improved somewhat since last time as he had a varicocele operation about 18 months ago. They felt this was the reason for quite a high % not getting to the blastocyst stage. Of those that make it to blastocyst I'm told statistically at my age 54% will be euploid (if I'm typical for my age) so if we had 3/4 euploids I am thinking this would be good but also wondering whether if that's the case we should just opt to egg collect again to just have more in the freezer for peace of mind. So yes, no specific question but happy to hear from peoples experience of egg collecting at a later date and the results you got. I know it's not exactly relevant to me and there's tons of variation but I like reading people's stories ☺️.
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great to hear you go so many eggs and hope you get to a good stage at blastocyst over the next few days! I’m going for an egg collection in April and like you will hopefully have some embryos to PGTA test 🤞 I think if I could get 3 euploid embryos, I would probably then move to transfers. Rather than going to another egg collection. As realistically, if necessary, I would likely then transfer all 3 over a 6 month period max. So if none of them led to a successful pregnancy, then would go back to egg collection 6 months later. Which doesn’t feel like too long to wait. Especially as you have two frozen too, you could be looking at having 5 + frozen total after this egg collection, which feels really strong! Rooting for you and hope you get a good outcome!
This makes sense if you can cram in the transfers. I think because so far we’ve been on the nhs and done 3 transfers over 2 full years that it feels like if i fail three more times I’ll be egg collecting at 40-41 which slightly panics me but what you’ve described is less stress inducing xx
I feel your pain with NHS timelines, I have done 3 transfers over 1.5 years and it just feels so slow. The one good thing with private is that you can move quicker with transfers I think, so less waiting around when things don’t work out. X
Hey, firstly so sorry to hear about your loss. I did 2 egg collections initially when i was 38, the first resulted in no euploid embryos and the second resulted in 1 euploid embryo from 8 blastocyst. We then did a different protocol with a complete diet and supplement overhaul and fertility reflexology and did 2 back to back egg collections when I was 39 and got 12 blastocysts from the 2 collections. We now have 6 euploid 5AA embryos in the freezer. So I would say I'm pretty reflective of your Percentages! good luck and hopefully the varicocele operation will have made a big difference! X
Thanks for responding. This has helped in a sense to manage my expectations. I am wondering if zero of my first batch were normal if I’m honest but don’t want to be overly negative about things. At least I know if we don’t get the results we are hoping for there are people who have succeeded in getting euploids as they’ve aged.
hey great number of eggs collected so that’s great start! just to add to what others have said I would check the ‘same price to test 1 or 8’ part as that’s not been the case at either of the clinics I got PGTA testing quotes from.
Like others have said if you get any euploid I would personally start transferring too. Good luck! Xx
Ah okay mine was the opposite up to 5 was costed per embryo and then anything over 5 was cheaper/one price. Up to 8 is great though as one bundle x I ended up not testing as only had a couple of embryos so got them back in as transfers as quickly as I could, including fresh xx
Hi There! It’s a great number of eggs! I also read that there’s a “golden” number around 15 eggs that will likely be better quality and a good chance to develop enough embryos. Anything 20+ is likely to have a higher percentage of lower quality eggs. So you are at the good spot!
I also think it’s not only the age that determining the final egg collection result. But also protocol, if you opt for ICSI, your lifestyle changes you and your partner made since then etc.
I had 2 collections 1,5 years apart. The second round was so much better in terms of the embryos although the number of eggs was similar. 2 lower rank blasts in first round and 5 blasts in the second!
I didn’t PGTA tested but I’m currently 29 weeks pregnant with one of the second round embryos ☺️
All to say - two year gap is not necessarily an issue! Stay positive xx
Thank you for your support! I’m sat here waiting on them to call me to say how many have fertilised 🤞🏻. Congratulations on your pregnancy, I hope you’ve managed to enjoy some of it and it’s not been too nausea inducing!
No advice, I'm afraid, but fingers crossed for a positive call from them this morning!
Hope you don't mind me jumping on your post to ask a question... but when I had my egg collection way back in 2017 (one son born 2018 and currently 6 weeks pregnant, after several failed transfers and time 'off' IVF) I don't remember euploid or aneuploid being discussed - in fact I'd never heard of either of them until v recently... is there any way of knowing whether embryos are euploid without the PGTA testing?
Hi, this wasn’t discussed with me either as I’m actually an nhs patient and it can’t be done on the nhs. Now that I’ve had a couple of failures and a miscarriage they have negotiated and said if I lose a fresh transfer from my allocation (saving them money) and pay for my testing that I can still use my frozen transfers. A lot of the time it’s not deemed necessary to test them although I don’t personally understand the logic. I think they explain it on hfea website. It is more worthwhile I think when you are older in age and have evidence of failure so far. You cannot tell if an embryo is euploid without testing it. In my age group roughly 54% are likely to be normal. Whilst you can’t totally avoid a miscarriage transferring euploids will help prevent one. I personally don’t want to gamble quite as much at this point but it’s very personal.
On my first egg collection at 37 years old I got 11 eggs, and ended up with 7 blasts. We did 5 transfers, and got negative, X2 chemicals, a 9 week miscarriage and negative. No baby. Our clinic recommended PGTA testing. So I did a second egg collection just before 3 months before my 40th birthday and got 12 eggs. 10 mature and ended up with 4 blasts that we sent for testing.
2 came back good and we will be doing the first transfer of those soon.l and are very hopeful for a good result.
The cost was £2750 to test 5 embryos, as we only had 4 for testing, we got a refund of £440.
Thanks for this info. I’ve just reached to the clinic for costing clarification for if we don’t get many. Best of luck to you for your next transfer and well done for getting this far. It’s so long isn’t it?!
It is so long! We've been trying for 7 years (husband had 2 vasectomy reversals prior to IVF, then COVID lockdowns, then three years IVF) it seems never ending. But we are still very hopeful and think the testing may make all the difference - either way, it's one less worry for us going forward. Hope it all goes well for you too, good luck! X
update: 14 have fertilised. A good number but I did lose 13 last time days 3-6 so I am feeling anxious despite it being out of my control and not necessarily being the same.
There such variation so yes you could still get similar results! Or far better (or a lot worse of course). Mine - collection 1. 20 collected, 10 fertilised, 8 blasts. (Used 6 of them all fails even though PGTA tested after two fails 5/6 were normal the other euploid).
2nd collection - 17 collected. 15 fertilised, 11 blasts made! Eeek! Didn't bother with PGTA. Put two in, miscarry at 6w. Put another 2 in - twins currently napping!
Hey!(Noticed a mistake in what I said, meant to say 5/6 normal, one mosaic!)
The twins are well now! Thriving (they're almost a year old)! The pregnancy was riddled with anxiety at the beginning for me (expected i suppose with so many fails and a loss). I had some bleeding similar to the loss so expected it to fail. I also had pain in the first few weeks. Afte that settled down no "normal" symptoms. Ie no sickness. I had a small bump and one twin wasn't growing too well. So from 2nd trimester I had lots of extra scans and they monitored the growth (never were too sure why or how concerned to be so they just kept scanning and disagreeing with others!) Then my waters went 8w early (so 32w+2) and they couldn't keep them in. So tiny babies born 8w early at 3lb3 and 3lb13. Needed some help with breathing and growing in incubators. Fed via tube for a good few weeks. But we got there in the end. After 6w in hospital they came home and eventually fully breastfed. They're thriving now and you wouldn't know! (One is still on the small side but within the realms of normal and is meeting all milestones). Not gona lie the first 5m was so so so hard having twins and I must've said a million times "if I just had one". I am obviously so happy to have them but now knowing what it's actually like - I do think one baby would be so so so much easier. I did get quite jealous of my friend swith one baby being able to go out and about without a care in the world! I love how they play together now though! I just found it particularly challenging in the beginning (and thay was with a LOT of support from my partner and friends and family!) Amazing little dudes now though! X
This sounds so epic! Well done you! When I was pregnant with twins I said to my partner “it’s going to potentially be horrendous but then when they get older they’ll play together and always have a friend”. I’m not sure if we’d put two in again but we shall see .
Hi, hope you are well. I was happy to see your name pop up as it’s been a while….
Congratulations those are brilliant numbers. Everything crossed for you that you get some good blastocysts in the coming days.
I completely get the wanting to collect and have more in the bank. But If I was you I’d see if I got a decent number of blasts by day 5/6 then potentially move to test and transfer. This was my initial plan after 2 failed from my first collection. But the 3rd which wasn’t the best looking or highest graded was the one that gave us success. Had it not worked I was planning on another collection and moving on to PGTA testing. Best of luck and I look forward to any updates x
It’s nice to hear from you again! That’s what we’re going to do. It depends on numbers and quality etc. I’m just sat here waiting for my day 3 update xxx
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