looking for some hope…

[BW14]

just had my 3rd egg collection following two failed rounds. Before this we had lots of investigations carried out and found out my husband had high DNA fragmentation. We changed our lives and with supplements on top we managed to get it down to normal. We changed clinics as our previous didn’t offer Zymot & PICSI. Fast forward to Monday we had our collection and got the devastating news that we only got 50% fertilisation. This is the lowest fertilisation rate we have ever had. We had so much hope as felt like we had covered everything and got answers. I now worry the embryos will drop off and we will have nothing to freeze on day 5. Does anybody know why fertilisation would be so low with improved sperm, Zymot & PICSI? Any success stories where people had the same but the drop off wasn’t as bad? We would usually get 70-80% fertilisation but after day 2/3 they would drop off considerably. X

[Ctk123]

Hi there, I hope you’re doing ok in such a stressful time. My husband had extremely high DNA fragmentation (1% healthy sperm) so we had PIMSI as well as calcium ionophore, which I believe are similar treatments. We got 9 mature eggs, of which 7 fertilised and 6 made it to blastocyst. So our drop off rate was far lower than expected. We also did PGTA testing (I’d suffered from miscarriages and failed implantation in our first round at a different clinic) and 5 of the 6 blastocysts came back normal. Wishing you so much luck x

[BW14 in reply to Ctk123]

Thank you for taking the time to reply. We discussed calcium ionophore , I think we will definitely do this if we need another collection. Your drop off rate was so low, I really hope ours is similar. We are yet to decide on PGTA, the decision will be made once we know the outcome. Can I also ask what clinic your with? Do you feel they have been better than your previous one? Wishing you lots of luck too xx

[Ctk123 in reply to BW14]

We were very lucky and happy with the outcome, I hope yours is similar 🙏. We were at CRGH second time round, I’m pleased we decided to change. My first clinic wanted to do everything the same as the previous cycle, didn’t even offer DNA fragmentation testing, so I’m really glad we switched. The miscarriages left us devastated so we were in a position where we wanted to throw the kitchen sink at it second time round. Unfortunately I went on to have another miscarriage with my first transfer but I’m now almost 34 weeks pregnant with my second transfer, still can’t quite believe it x

[BW14 in reply to Ctk123]

I’ve heard really good things about them, I will definitely consider them should we need it. Your clinic sounds like our first clinic, they never mentioned about DNA fragmentation either. We went off to Greece to do our own investigations to find out it was 40%. I’m so sorry to hear about your miscarriages but super happy to hear you are currently pregnant. That’s great news. Did you add in anything different, steroids or anything at all on this transfer? X

[Ctk123 in reply to BW14]

Thank you. I was on steroids, lots of progesterone and also have IVIG as I had high TFN alpha/NK cells from both cycles. Hard to know what difference it makes but it’s worked and that’s all that matters to us now!