Experiences of Mild IVF

LetMeIn321 · 2021-03-29T09:38:11+00:00

Hello I've had 6 IUI's over the last 3 years. I have been pregnant twice through this but both sadly ended in miscarriage. I'm due to start IVF in May/June through Create which I believe is Mild IVF. Can you please share your experiences of Mild IVF? Thank you

A1b2c3d4e5f6g7 · 29/03/2021 17:49

Can't help sorry but would be interested to know more on this also

Lockdownbear · 29/03/2021 17:54

What's Mild IVF?

I had normal IVF and actually found it less stressful than IUI.
I had 2 IUI, 1 abandoned, 1 IUI that resulted in a chemical pregnancy, and another IUI. Before I decided to move onto IVF, fresh cycle failed, FET worked but by then I wasn't actually caring, I just needed to get on with living.

A1b2c3d4e5f6g7 · 29/03/2021 22:23

@Lockdownbear thi expplains it better www.createfertility.co.uk/fertility-treatments/mild-stimulation-ivf Its less drugs, shorter time, and focuses on fewer better quality eggs supposedly

A1b2c3d4e5f6g7 · 29/03/2021 22:24

I'm so glad the FET worked for you!

Anyscrapiron · 29/03/2021 22:27

My partner and I have spent £700 on just the testing process with create and we have found found hopeless. Getting in touch with them like bloody from a stone. You go to call centers first first promises of "we will call you back"

many times no calls.

Consultant always "meant" to ring us, can be anything up to a hour+ later than scheduled, if you have busy working lives I wouldn't recommend.

Today we were waiting for a call at 3pm together, by 4pm we both had commitments to go back to work. Call back was finally aprox 4:45pm when we were no longer together.

Hopefully we have terrible luck, as we heard good things, but even getting started has been a nightmare for us.

Good luck on your journeys.

Anyscrapiron · 29/03/2021 22:28

Apologies so many errors! My phone is on the blink and I'm exhausted and obviously not proof reading before hitting "post"

A1b2c3d4e5f6g7 · 29/03/2021 22:45

@Anyscrapiron thank you for the feedback, that's interesting. Which branch are you using (if you don't mind saying)

Original poster

LetMeIn321 · 29/03/2021 22:51

@Lockdownbear I'm so sorry to hear that. It is hard isn't it because it takes so much from you. Over the last few years, there have been times where I've felt like it's taking over our lives.

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Original poster

LetMeIn321 · 29/03/2021 22:55

@Anyscrapiron I'm so sorry to hear you've had a difficult experience.

Yes, we've had similar experiences with them. Consultations where they've been really late and we've had to go back to work, and then they've called us hours later to apologise. Or they've double booked us and left us waiting. It's been quite frustrating. We were with another clinic for the last 3 years but decided to change as we felt like we needed a fresh start, after having 2 miscarriages with our previous clinic, we just felt sad to go back there. But our experience with create has had a few problems but hope it will improve. We've heard really mixed reviews from people's experiences there and with the Mild IVF in particular

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Original poster

LetMeIn321 · 29/03/2021 23:06

@Anyscrapiron Further to my previous message, when we have managed to have a consultation, it has actually been really good and we have felt like we have been given reassuring information. Also when I've been for scans etc, they've been great. But the call centre situation is a bit of a nightmare..!

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Springb0ks · 29/03/2021 23:07

Interesting. I've never heard of "mild IVF". Is it not just the short protocol? I had long protocol and it was absolutely fine. I'm pregnant now for a second time after a FET and both times had to continue with medication up until 12 weeks. My first child was born two years ago. I have been very, very lucky.

My thoughts at the start of the process were... just do whatever protocol to get the desired end result! I had a lot of eggs from collection (27) but didn't overstimulate. I think 17 fertilised and 8 of them made it to be good quality day 5 embryos.

My clinic looked carefully at hormone levels to determine protocol choice.

It is very interesting the claims they make about mild IVF being safer for babies in terms of not having a low birth weight, etc. Something that I didn't think about at the time. My first child was born early and on the 0.4th centile.

Juno231 · 29/03/2021 23:17

Create are having a webinar on this tomorrow if that helps?

I think I've seen a recent thread on mild ivf on the infertility sub as well, it was overwhelmingly positive.

ivfbeenbusy · 30/03/2021 05:55

I had twins via Create Birmingham in January

Mild IVF is just another name for short protocol- so no down reg. the whole process is over in less than 2 weeks instead of 6-8 weeks.

Before covid once you were a patient you didn't go through the call centre - you got the mobile number for the patient coordinator which was much quicker and always answered straight away. I believe with all the non clinical staff working from home etc it has reverted back to the call centre

Calls were sometimes late but a lot of the time it was because they were waiting on blood test results etc coming back in - plus it's ridiculously busy at the moment with everyone switching from the NHS clinics and the backlog to get through

thislittlebird · 30/03/2021 07:20

I’m interested to hear experiences of this. Keen to avoid the down regs and I have already been told I’d need short protocol in a consultation with another clinic, but I thought all regular ivf used down regs. As you can tell, it’s still early days and I haven’t done enough research on this yet.

Lockdownbear · 30/03/2021 10:00

[quote LetMeIn321]@Lockdownbear I'm so sorry to hear that. It is hard isn't it because it takes so much from you. Over the last few years, there have been times where I've felt like it's taking over our lives. [/quote]
LTTTC is hard because as you say it takes over your life. Stupid things like planning a holiday, bigger things like moving job, doing stuff in the house and garden everything seems to be on hold.

Reading that link it possibly was short protocol I had but basically the clinic just told me this will be best for you based on the test results we have.

You've done the injections before. You'll know immediately how many eggs they harvested, within 24hrs you'll know how many fertilised, they put 2 back fresh on day 3, and another couple of days I knew how many of the rest made it to freeze. So knowing there were 'spares' helped too.

Original poster

LetMeIn321 · 30/03/2021 20:12

@Juno231

Create are having a webinar on this tomorrow if that helps?

I think I've seen a recent thread on mild ivf on the infertility sub as well, it was overwhelmingly positive.

Thank you. We have attended one before but it was months ago. It did provide some information that was helpful but I wanted to hear more of what people's personal experience has been and successes. But from the comments on here, I feel a bit more hopeful.

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Original poster

LetMeIn321 · 30/03/2021 20:17

@Lockdownbear Yes, it really does take over. When we were doing IUI, we left our holiday early because I ended up ovulating earlier than usual! We just don't book holidays now in case we have a clinic appointment etc and we don't want to hold anything up. It's hard to plan anything really when going through this process. As we've only had IUI before, we haven't yet been shown how to do the injections but we have an appointment booked in a few weeks for this.

That's great to have the extra embryos there. Does that also mean that if you wanted more children in the future you're able to use those same embryos without going through the whole IVF process again?

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Original poster

LetMeIn321 · 30/03/2021 20:18

@thislittlebird I'm still researching it all myself too really. I've previously only had IUI (6 cycles) but this will be the first time having IVF. It's been good to read others experiences on here.

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eurochick · 30/03/2021 20:21

I did two rounds of mild ivf and two rounds of natural ivf with Create about 6 years ago. I got pregnant from the first round (miscarried) and fourth round (baby). I didn't live the clinic but I did live the low drug approach. I started a standard long protocol round on the nhs and walked away from it as the drugs sent me loopy. It was the right choice for me.

Original poster

LetMeIn321 · 30/03/2021 20:23

@ivfbeenbusy

I had twins via Create Birmingham in January

Mild IVF is just another name for short protocol- so no down reg. the whole process is over in less than 2 weeks instead of 6-8 weeks.

Before covid once you were a patient you didn't go through the call centre - you got the mobile number for the patient coordinator which was much quicker and always answered straight away. I believe with all the non clinical staff working from home etc it has reverted back to the call centre

Calls were sometimes late but a lot of the time it was because they were waiting on blood test results etc coming back in - plus it's ridiculously busy at the moment with everyone switching from the NHS clinics and the backlog to get through

@ivfbeenbusy Oh wow, that's great! Yes I did wonder if COVID had anything to do with it as we only changed over to Create in around August I think. That's really great to hear you had twins. When we started this process about 4 years ago, I imagined we would have 1 or 2 children by now..! When we have had a consultation and scans etc at create, they've been really good. I'm glad to hear that the mild IVF can be so successful. I definitely feel more positive after reading your comment. Thank you.

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Original poster

LetMeIn321 · 30/03/2021 20:27

@eurochick I'm sorry to hear you miscarried. It's such an awful thing to happen. I've had 2 miscarriages and it was just such a sad time.

I did wonder about the drugs as I know of some people who have said they needed time off work when doing the long approach IVF as they felt exhausted with the injections and it was quite difficult to go through. So the mild approach will probably be so much better.

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eurochick · 30/03/2021 20:34

Mild was not just another name for short protocol, at least when I did it. They aimed for 2-4 eggs per cycle rather than a bigger batch and used lower doses of stims to achieve that. Natural works with just the one egg you produce naturally each month (assuming you ovulate).

Original poster

LetMeIn321 · 30/03/2021 20:34

@Springb0ks I didn't actually know about it being safer for babies. That's really interesting to know. I'll have a look into that. I hadn't heard of mild IVF or the short protocol before being with this clinic as the one I was with previously never mentioned it. So I was surprised to hear there were different options of IVF as I thought there was just the one standard approach.
I have low AMH so I was told by my previous clinic that with IVF they may only be able to retrieve 3 or 4 eggs. But when we went with create, they explained that this is fine because their focus would be to retrieve some 'golden' eggs as the quality can still be really good, and not to focus on having low AMH which is initially what I was worried about.

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MySocalledLoaf · 30/03/2021 20:52

Mild IVF is not another name for the short protocol. I had two failed rounds of conventional IVF (short protocol) then one successful round of mild IVF. The oocyte quality was night and day. I could have had several frosties if we had wanted a 3rd child, all AA.
The mild IVF was the same drugs as in my first failed cycle at 1/6 of the level plus a course of clomid.
Pregnancy was not great as I had vasa previa but this is a risk of all types of IVF, and luckily it was diagnosed antenatally.

thislittlebird · 30/03/2021 21:00

I did think it was different @MySocalledLoaf. Amazing your egg quality was so good. How many eggs did you get on your mild ivf round? I’ve been considering it.

@LetMeIn321 yeah, it is an option I’m really interested in. Think I’d go straight to ivf and skip iui to save some time. Waiting for nhs appointment where I might get clomid or similar but this would be the next stage after that. I’m interested in the thread @Juno231 mentioned, need to have a look for it.