What could have we done better?

[Zayelle]

Hi everyone.

Kudos to all of you for even thinking and going through this IVF Journey.

Me (36) and my wife (33) started our IVF journey last July 2024. I used my eggs at that time and had 9 eggs collected, 6 fertilised, and only 2 eggs made it to Day 3 which was not good quality due to fragmentation but we had Day 3 of both eggs transferred and unfortunately failed.

We thought it could be because of my age, so we decided to use my wife’s egg since she’s a little younger than me.

So we started this journey this March 2025, we got 15 eggs, 9 fertilised, and only 2 made it to Blastocysts Day 5. One egg was transferred and 1 is freeze.

Today is our 10 days post 5 day transfer and it is Negative.

There are no words how to describe what we feel at the moment.

My wife takes: (before egg collection)

Ubiquinol 200mg twice a day

Inessa Pregnancy Multinutrient

Vitamin E 200iu

Vitamin D3 4000iu

Omega 3 1000mg

NAC 600mg

R Lipoic Acid 240mg

Folic Acid 400mcg

Calcium 333mg

Magnesium 133mg

Zinc 5mg

Then after Egg collection & embryo transfer:

Vitamin D3

Folic Acid

Inessa Pregnancy Multinutrient

Vitamin E

Omega 3

Calcium

Magnesium

Zinc

I’m just posting if anyone has any ideas how to Best prepare for our only egg FET in the future.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this. I really appreciate it.

[Hopefullme]

So sorry you are both going through this! You are both young! And taking all the right stuff( you need to take all of those supplements for 3 months before egg collection to have meaningful help). I am also 36 and have had 4 IVF cycles with eggs that didn’t fertilise well or progress well and I understand the devastation, frustration and disappointment you are feeling. It does get easier with time.

You have one more chance all frozen and tucked up. A FET cycle is soo much easier to go through! And you only need one! Hold onto the possibly of your frostys success to get you through!

My last IVF cycle they changed the stimulation drug from Ovaleap to meriofert and it seemed to have helped with quality of eggs collected. I had my first +ve preg test in Dec, unfortunately MC. But had a FET last week with one of the frostys and keeping positive about one day holding my miracle baby.

You are probably doing all the right things- eating healthy, regular exercise, minimising stress- I took up weekly yoga and monthly reflexology. But I hear lots of positive reviews on acupuncture on this forum. I don’t know if you can check the success of the sperm doner as that’s the other half to the embryo.

A lot of the time the negative result is just dna abnormalities and that can all be down to chance so don’t be hard on yourselves. Be kind and take care of each other going through this! Again so sorry you’re going through this. It utterly sucks!

[Zayelle in reply to Hopefullme]

Hi.

First of all, Thank you for giving your time to reply to me in this difficult time. I really appreciate it. I’m sorry about your MC, but hang in there, I’m sending you lots of positivity 🤞🙏

[leo1980]

Firstly! You are both still young

I think you are doing all the right things. I can see a list of multivitamins! I took them all too under a nutritionist when I started iVf 9 years ago.

For both my positives pregnancies I only did the pregnancare. I am guessing you are both healthy - high protein diet, colourful veg etc. did you check thyroid levels? Needs to be u set 2.5 to maintain a pregnancy. I didn’t do reflexology or acupuncture but it worth a try. I did a monthly massage instead. I not keen on yoga or exercise in federal so did a weekly ballet class - would that help.

Mentally I kept myself as busy as possible (just to keep of Google) did lots of charity work, (I like animals), and put a lot of effort into getting my home/life admin sorted just as well as I was sick (indigestion) throughout the pregnancy I did nothing but throw up for 9 months.

I didn’t do the vitamin D multivitamins just vitamin D jabs monthly. I don’t know if that was it for us but it worked on both occasions.

I don’t know if this is an option but did you do any further testing? ERA/alice/emma - I know it’s going down the rabbit hole! But also worth looking into - if the embryo is good then it’s the lining and if it’s neither than it’s just timing… best of luck and baby dust!

[Zayelle in reply to leo1980]

Hiya. Thank you for taking time to reply. I really appreciate it. Thank you for your ideas I will take it into consideration. My wife is scared of Acupuncture, maybe the monthly massage then.

[Twiglet2]

hey 👋🏼 I’m so sorry to hear this one didn’t work. I think you guys are doing enough already and sometimes it just takes a few tries. Something they don’t prepare you for is the embryo just not implantating and it’s really really common for it to take a few transfers and egg collections before success.

The good news is that you have one frozen so all you really need now is folic acid and vitamin D as the embryo is already made. You might also want to ask your clinic about extra progesterone in case they think n that might help but doesn’t sound like any early bleeding etc before test day so maybe not.

Both my successful transfers have been FETs rather that fresh transfers (fully medicated FETs) so I am a biased fan of them and hopefully it will be the lucky one for you too! The main thing I want to say is you aren’t going anything wrong or missing anything it can just take a wee while to find the miracle embryo for some (most) people.

I also wanted to say that on both times it worked for us i didn’t eat healthy, had a drink and chilled out and went on holidays etc. so whilst everything is in moderation please don’t forget for both of you to relax and enjoy life as much as much as you can as well. Best of luck to you both! X

[Zayelle in reply to Twiglet2]

Hello.

Thank you for taking the time to reply.

Yeah we have been really into all these 2nd cycle, took all vitamins, maybe 70% Mediterranean diet, changed hand wash body wash and shampoo to organic due phalates. No perfumes. My wife even had cervical polypectomy because I think it’s all side effects of the Ganirelix inj. that gives her polyps. I don’t know. Yes we are taking a break and see when my wife is ready for the FET, but Thank you for your time.