What's a 'good' number of eggs to get at retrieval?

[EmbarrassingMama]

Anyone able to help me with this please? Supporting close friend who is going through IVF and desperate to make sure I don't say something stupid. Her heart is breaking.

What's a 'good' number of eggs to get at retrieval?
Fresh vs Frozen? Are either more successful?

Thanks very much.

[Chooklass]

Quality is more important than quantity - I don't think there is an optimal amount? It only takes 1 good one 😊. You sound like a lovely friend! X

[itwasalovelydreamwhileitlasted]

Definitely quality more than quality.....

Cycle 1 - 14 eggs - 3 average quality blastocysts

Cycle 2 - 12 eggs only 4 fertilised - 2 average quality blastocysts

Cycle 3 - 2 EGGS - 2 GOOD quality blastocysts

As to success of fresh vs frozen really depends on how her body is responding at the time - if estrogen levels skyrocketing or lining too thick or thin after weeks of down reg and stimming then going for frozen probably better idea

[EmbarrassingMama]

This is really helpful thank you. I'm not usually a foot in mouth person, but I'm so aware of hearing horror stories about idiotic things people have said to others (even when trying to be well meaning).

Wishing you both success in your journey.

[Persipan]

This is such a thoughtful thing to ask about. You sound like a lovely friend!

One thing to bear in mind about the whole process is that the numbers tend to drop off at each stage. So, someone might get, say, eight eggs (random number for the purposes of this discussion) - the mistake some friends and family may make at that point is to think of that as, basically, eight babies. But in practice, then comes fertilising them - let's say six fertilise. Then the lab cultures them for a few days. By day 3, maybe one isn't progressing but the others are still hanging in there. On to day five, let's say maybe there are three blastocysts at varying levels of quality, and one more that's behind the others. So, imagine the best one gets transferred - then eventually you get through the lab report telling you they've been able to freeze just one of the others, as the remaining ones weren't of suitable quality. And then you have to wait and see if the transfer works, which they don't always. So, you've gone from eight possibilities down to two, max, over the space of less than a week. (And this scenario doesn't incorporate things like PGS testing, which some people may have done at part of their treatment and which, again, can cause a big drop off in numbers.)

Don't necessarily pay attention to the specific numbers above - I pulled them out of thin air to illustrate the bigger point, which is that as a process, it tends to be pretty brutal with lots of stages along the way where it can all go wrong. Every time you get through one stage, and get your head round one set of numbers (whether they're better or worse than you'd hoped for), you're then straight on to waiting for the next set.

[EarlGreyT]

10-15 is a good number of eggs to get. As the posters above have identified though, outcome depends more than on just number of eggs collected and often if high numbers of eggs are collected the drop off is higher.

However the number of eggs collected is important and if your friend gets significantly fewer than 10, I imagine she will feel pretty upset. I was pretty devastated when after 3 weeks of stims they collected a measly 2 eggs.

In terms of success of fresh vs frozen embryo transfer, the success rates are pretty comparable. If your friend has enough embryos to have a fresh transfer and anything left over to be frozen, that’s pretty good going. The thing is though, she may not feel very reassured even if that is the case, as there is always the what if.....