Egg Retrieval Jan/Feb 2025 - IVF

[spttc]

Anyone else having an egg retrieval in Jan/Feb 2025? I've just started my first and hopefully only cycle of ivf, egg retrieval provisionally booked for Feb 5th 🤞

Hello @spttc , I guess I'm in a similar situation and very close to you timings-wise. My egg retrieval is pencilled in for 10th February.

It's a first IVF cycle, flare protocol. All very new to us. We're dealing with secondary infertility, conceived our firstborn naturally and very quickly so this whole process is unexpected.

I'm glad to be finally close to the actual date, started taking my Norethisterone yesterday and just counting days to February.

Would you like to share more details of your circumstances? And how are you finding the process? Do you feel prepared enough in terms of information and support from your clinic team?

I thought I was, but now fall into worrying over possible outcomes with increasing frequency, as time grows near. So definitely trying to agonise less and stay positive.

I hope you will have an easy time and a positive outcome! Best of luck 🤞

Similarly to you we conceived our first lo easily. We only started ttc number 2 in August 2024. Got pregnant first cycle. Miscarried at 6.5 weeks which was a huge shock. Then we ttc sept, Oct, Nov but I was doing lots of reading on miscarriage rates, and pregnancy rates per cycle by age (I'm 38) and we just decided..... what if we want a 3rd baby? So we are doing ivf with pgt-a and essentially to save time. And to hopefully bank an extra embryo so we can have a 3rd if we want to. We Havnt as such had an experience with infertility as we only tried 4 months, and I got pregnant 1 of those 4 months. But we decided we don't want to wait and see. Feeling positive about it all tbh. I think it's the right path as I think I would like that opportunity to maybe have a 3rd.

Hi there, we're not there yet but should be soon.

We had a first appointment with a nurse beginning of December and she said we should start in the spring. However our next appointment is early/mid March with the Dr. And online. Could this be the kick-off appointment?

Hiya all, not sure where to post this, so hope it’s ok here…. I’ve got 2 boxes of cetrotide and 1 300 gonal- if anyone wants to collect? I’m based in Great Yarmouth Norfolk, BUT they do expire next month, I’ve been meaning to post for a while and just haven’t got round to it lol…

It's illegal to do this with prescribed medication. Whilst it comes from a good place as the medication is so expensive you don't know the intentions of whoever receives it - they may sell it on for profit or try to do a DIY treatment at home without clinic monitoring

@spttc

Just to manage expectations here as clinics aren't always good at this - the chances of getting a PGTA euploid embryo are fairly modest at age 38 and chances of getting more than 1 even lower from the same collection. Find out from your clinic what their policy is on transferring mosaics as they may refuse and which case all embryos have to be destroyed and you won't have anything to show from your cycle - there are lots of Facebook groups where mosaics are transferred and women have healthy babies.

Also age 38 you may find you don't get many embryos to test - personally I wouldn't send off any less than 3-5 and some clinics won't test small numbers anyway as the odds of getting a euploid are low. Be prepared that if you only get 2 blastocysts that you decide just to transfer them. Most clinics only really expect to get you one to transfer and one to freeze they just don't like to publicise it!

(I did PGTA age 36 didn't get any normals and decided not to test again and did go onto have 2 healthy babies)

So sad, but yeah possibility I guess.

@brummumma I had a friend who did pgt-a at 40. She got 4 "normal" embryos. And got pregnant first try with one of those. It very much varies person to person. I'm choosing not to go into this negatively. Especially as I'm not actually suffering with infertility so I feel my chances are good 😊

@spttc @brummumma Its very interesting reading your views on PGT-A testing, it varies so much depending on our personal circumstances! We've been debating the same question and our clinic team really would not recommend any course of action, which left us rather confused.

Also anecdotal advice from friends and acquaintances was pretty evenly split: some couples had success with no testing (albeit with several frozen transfers) others swear by PGT-A 😅

In the end we've decided to do whatever will shorten our cycle time the most: so we'll do a fresh transfer if possible, and test any remaining embryos before freezing.

Just to give some context, we went with 2 cycle IVF package, but all embryos from the first have to be used (or confirmed as non-viable) before proceeding to the second.

We don't want to spend time doing frozen transfers of potentially aneuploid embryos, as even with just a few of these I may have drastically worse outcome from the second egg collection cycle.

Time will tell if we even have enough embryos to send for testing, but for now I feel a bit calmer 🤞

@Happibara yeh tbh I wouldn't even consider ivf without pgt-a testing. The reason being - I can get pregnant naturally quite easily. So ivf without testing for me is pointless. The reason I am trying ivf with pgt-a is that I potentially want to save time. I don't want to try a few months, get pregnant naturally; miscarry as it's not normal or it's mosaic. My consultant said to me that I'm essentially "cheat-coding it" 🤣😅 I'm trying to reduce my overall time to live birth. I'll never know of course - I may have gotten pregnant naturally this month. But I'm essentially trying to reduce the gamble/reduce the chance of getting pregnant with a non-normal/lower my miscarriage risk by skipping straight to that normal embryo.

I find this dr very informative btw - https://youtube.com/@nataliecrawfordmd?si=-wfe9xEfWXX9XMeC

@Happibara if you don't test embryos- essentially it's luck of the draw. You are carrying out got-a testing inside your body. You might get lucky and they pick the normal one. You might not. It might take several transfers until they do. This can work out more expensive than getting the pgt-a in the long run. Those transfers might just not implant or they might implant and miscarry - it depends if you have the time, and if you don't mind the heartache of miscarriage.