Good response to stims, no good quality embryos to show for it

[Lizlou92]

Hi all,

Just having a bit of a rant and looking for a bit of advice really. Me & my husband have just finished our first round of IVF and we are left feeling totally deflated and pretty devastated. A bit of background on us- we have one son who is now 6 years old. He was conceived naturally on the first month of trying and I had no complications during pregnancy & birth. After 2 years of trying naturally to conceive a second child we decided to go to a private clinic for help. On paper we were told we are the "perfect candidates for ivf success". High AMH levels (PCO but not PCOS), good sperm parameters (although two previous NHS reports we were told my husband had low morphology rates?), regular periods etc etc. On our first round we were so happy to have 18 eggs retrieved (more than we thought we would get), 12 were fertilised using standard IVF, but then we got the devastating news yesterday that only 3 made it to the early blastocyst stage on day 6 and that none were good enough quality to freeze. Round 1 over.

We were initially told that due to the number of follicules we would need a freeze all cycle to reduce the risk of OHSS. I was lucky not to have any symptoms this time after ER, and understand that this can be very dangerous, but I can't help but thinking that we didn't even give those early blastocysts a chance before they were discarded. I have seen a lot of people say that lower quality embryos can still result in a pregnancy. I'm worried that if a similar thing happens on the next round and I am told to have a freeze all cycle again, will I ever get a chance to have a fresh or frozen transfer?

I don't think we fully understood going into this that in order for the eggs to be frozen, they would need to be in perfect condition otherwise they would be discarded. I even asked if the blastocysts could have one more day to develop, but was told a firm no.

Has anyone else been in a similar situation where they have had a good number of eggs collected and then nothing to show for it at the end? We feel totally confused and not really sure where to go from here.

What makes it worse is that whilst waiting for the results, we were sent consent forms on our clinic app to complete in preparation for a frozen transfer ☹️. They clearly didn't check the results before sending this to us

Thanks in advance x

[Dietcoke2025]

Hi I'm really sorry you have been through this. We were in a similar position to you, we conceived our son naturally and then have suffered secondary infertility. But like you we were told that we ticked all the boxes and would be great candidates for ivf. On our first round we had the exact same as you, 20 eggs and were left with nothing to transfer. Our second retrieval we had 20 eggs and had one good quality embryo which unfortunately didn't implant. On our third we added in a growth hormone which the clinic said we would end up with less eggs but hopefully better quality embryos. When I only got 12 eggs I was really panicking but we ended up with 8 embryos on day 5 to send for testing. (We pgta test ours).

Think it is worth speaking to your clinic and getting more information in exactly why they didn't think they were good enough to freeze.

Secondly I would ask about changes in protocols to see what you could do differently this time.

Also have you read it starts with the egg for more advice.

Always here if you want to chat xx

[Lizlou92 in reply to Dietcoke2025]

Hi! Thank you so much for replying. I'm so sorry you were in a similar position to us. It really is the pits and so confusing when you know your body was capable of pregnancy before!

Can I ask what the name of the growth hormone you used was please? I mentioned this to my fertility Dr yesterday and he didn't seem to know what this could be and said they don't offer anything like that at the clinic.

We came up with a bit of a plan for our next round to see if anything changes. We are going to switch to a stim that contains LH as well as FSH, do ICSI instead of IVF and try for a fresh transfer if my hormone levels allow.

The consultant spoke with the embryologists to see what went wrong this round. They were equally as confused and said the sperm and eggs looked good, so can't work out what caused such low quality blastocysts.

Xx

[Bisquisite]

im sorry you’re going through this.

We are secondary infertility also and with a 5 year old. And echoing posters above, also given encouraging vibes from the clinic that we would be great candidates for their stats…

I would urge you to consider the first round as almost diagnostic in nature and to not have many expectations. A good reframe for us was to consider it as (yes, a very expensive) data gathering exercise - to see how you respond to meds etc and this will inform how a future round will go.

We had had some miscarriages so knew we wanted to PGT-A test embryos (secondary infertility is so frustrating and answers hard to come by).

First round we didn’t have anything survive to even test.

Second round we had two blasts to test - both didn’t pass.

Third round we had five to test and three (even a 3BC) came back euploid. We have implanted one of the better ones and that didn’t stick.

I am okay with the idea of freeze all after experiencing mild OHSS on round 2 - have had to make peace with the fact that it does mean it eliminates the choice of putting in a fresh. But if there’s a risk of OHSS and fresh that’s something worth avoiding in my experience. Even mild OHSS is something you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy (took me 5 days of suffering to realise that it was bad enough to take cocodomol for the pain - felt like my ovaries were going to explode and when they’re the size of grapefruits you really feel them press on everything else).

Even tho I know two people who have had random freak success on a first round I’m aware that getting lucky on round one is incredibly rare.

[Lizlou92 in reply to Bisquisite]

Hey, thank you so much for your reply.

Sorry to hear you have been through a similar thing to us. It really is so hard and confusing.

I'm definitely going to take your advice and look at this failed round as an attempt to look into what went wrong and why. I spoke with my consultant yesterday and we are going to change a few things up this time (mentioned on the comment above). He has encouraged us to try for a fresh transfer next round if we can, but will monitor my hormone levels etc throughout to try and avoid OHSS. It sounds so nasty and really want to avoid this if we can.

Xx

[Bisquisite in reply to Lizlou92]

Best of luck - all is not lost, this is highly valuable, individualised data you now have.

I should add we did ICSI - first round we were on 375 menopur and successive rounds after that did 450 (markedly better results). By third round I was also taking all the supplements as mentioned in the book “it starts with the egg”. I think the CoQ10, NAC, ALA May have made quite the difference.

Couldn’t believe the difference on my third round compared to 1st and 2nd… I had to snatch joy where I could, have been satisfied just to see things go in the direction of progress at least. I still have no live birth or BFP to show for yet - and here I am 12 months down the line…

Imo the hardest thing in this process is definitely mustering patience.

And if you get fed up with your clinic or feel anything about them is sus - don’t be afraid to walk and try elsewhere…