Lots of eggs, bad quality

[Nats19]

Hello Everyone,

I am wondering if anyone has had a similar experience, and possibly a happy ending?

I am 35, just finished my second IVF egg collection. Doing PGS as have had 1 ectopic and 2 miscarriages.

• First one got 20 eggs, 10 fertilised and we had 4 blastos, all had chromosomal issues. Apparently very rare not to have even 1 good one at my age..
• Second round 28 eggs, only 7 fertilised, and yesterday on day 3 we still had 5 in the running. Who knows...

Doctor says it is likely I have poor egg quality, but remains cautiously optimistic... Any stories welcome.

Thank you!

[itwasalovelydreamwhileitlasted]

I had the same feedback following my egg collection but have lower than average AMH and was doing short protocol so collected 12 eggs but only got 3 average quality to blastocyst

To be honest was a total shocker as naively thought they would be ok!

After egg collection I started planning for next round (I know not very optimistic!) and changed vitamins to Proceive Max plus 200mg daily of coq10, high protein diet, reduced Diet Coke intake and drank more full fat milk

I actually got pregnant naturally twice after my failed transfers (did a single and then double transfer) however one was miscarriage and the other ectopic (I lost left tube last year and had to have right tube removed last week)

I'm hoping that our next ivf cycle in September will show an improvement in egg quality - I suspect it might as we didn't have any natural BFPs in over 15 months before (hence why using ivf) and within 6 weeks of changing things up I got 2 both times we tried naturally!

[itwasalovelydreamwhileitlasted]

Also I was 35 when did egg collection in January - I've just turned 36

With the whole PGS thing my clinic advised against it - it's only 60% accurate and embryos do have the capacity to "fix" themselves - a study in America where women only had abnormal embryos and agreed to transfer them as it was their last hope - a significant number of women actually went on to have successful and healthy babies x

[itwasalovelydreamwhileitlasted]

Also in terms of reaching day 3 that's a good sign - egg quality generally dictates day 1-3 after that sperm quality takes over so if you lose any day 3 onwards it's likely to be down to sperm so your partner should get further tests done like dna fragmentation etc

[Nats19]

Thank you for sharing @itwasalovelydreamwhileitlasted, I am so sorry to hear about your ectopic- I also had one, it was awful!
I was told pgs was closer to 95% accurate, and I understood that in the study you mention they put back mosaic embryos- ours were full on with one chromosome missing or extra- no mosaics.
It’s so hard to know who/what to believe. Feels like they actually know so little, especially when it comes to egg quality.

[itwasalovelydreamwhileitlasted]

@Nats19
It is difficult to know what to do! We debated PGS for ages - one clinic told us we needed to do it due to history of recurrent miscarriage as well as ectopic and the other clinic (the one we ultimately chose) said about the 60% success rate. The HFEA also only has it down as "amber" and that's only when it's a 5 day blast as it says there may be some benefit but more research needed

I've read of quite a few people miscarrying PGS normal babies so I don't think there is a right or wrong answer unfortunately x

[hoping2018]

Hello, I had 2 cycles of ivf. Husband had borderline semen results but my fsh was high and Amh low (age 31 at testing) so they said to get on with ICSI ASAP.

Cycle 1 we got 20 eggs, 14 fertilised but only had two poor quality blasts by day 5. We had done time lapse monitoring which showed they were doing funny things day 1-3 and day 3-5 and after our BFN the consultant said we had clear quality problems - most likely combination of egg and sperm quality.

Cycle 2 they put me on loads of vitamins, melatonin, DHEA etc. Gave me less menopur and we tested husbands sperm dna fragmentation - which was borderline high (19.5) so they suggested surgical retrieval of sperm (at the time it felt like we were clutching at straws) they said we had a 5-10% chance of conceiving with ivf.

The second cycle I got 22 eggs, 13 fertilised with TESE sperm and the same thing seemed to happen that lots died off by day 3 (egg in charge day 1-3). We transferred two best embryos on day 3. By day 5 we had two frozen! And I have my almost 6 month son old next to me.

For us I think surgical sperm retrieval made the difference day 3-5 of development and made the difference between no good blasts and several!

Hope my success story helps xx

[Nats19]

Thank you for sharing @hoping2018! Congratulations- I love these success stories. I have often pondered about the fact that the immediate analysis is poor egg quality, and that is that. But in our case, my husbands sperm test results are great- the doctor even asked him jokingly if he wanted to be a donor (I didn’t laugh...). So that seems to rule out an issue on his end.

[hoping2018]

I was under the impression you could have normal sperm parameters but still have high dna fragmentation? Have you done emvryoscope/time lapse monitoring to see if they are dying off day 1-3 or3/5? I’d its days 3-5 i’d Pug for the fragmentation test. With cycle 1 on the day we did ICSI DH’s semen was actually all in the normal range!

[Nats19]

I will ask about it again, when I mentioned it, it was deemed unnecessary. In terms of numbers:

• cycle 1- we had 10 out of 20 (14 mature) fertilise; 10 still left at day 3; and then 4 at day 5
  
• cycle 2- 7 fertilised out of 28 (but apparently few were mature); 5 left at day 3; 3 at day 5.
  

All our day 5 were freezable and biopsied- which indicates good quality and I think that’s why they don’t think it’s sperm.

But I will definitely ask again. If we don’t get any euploid embies, we will ask for another opinion in any case

[hoping2018]

Yes that does sound a bit different to us - 14 fertilised on cycle 1 and we had no good quality blasts on day 5 (we did put one in but it wouldn’t have been good enough to freeze)