Hi @Gillywater

I'm sorry to hear your cycle isn't going as well as hoped.

My situation is not the same but after cycle one we were incredibly deflated and told 5-20% chance of success per cycle - I'm now 25/40 after cycle 2. I hope my story can give you some hope!

Age 32, (31 for first cycle) fsh 12, AMH 8, AFC (can't remember but letter says reassuringly good). Needed ICSI for MFI and told to get on with it due to my FSH. I got 20 eggs on cycle 1, 14 mature, 14 fertilised but by day 5 we had only 2 blasts. Both poor quality and not good enough to freeze - one put back and BFN. We were heart broken. Clinic couldn't say why our embryos were such crap quality - though they did say using timeline/embryoscope was really useful and gave them lots of information. Lots died off day 1-3 (more likely poor egg quality) but hardly any survived day 3-5 (poor sperm quality). We were told poor quality and probably both of us!

We applied to access fertility for our self funded cycle and they agreed to 3xICSI and money back at the end if not pregnant. Seemed good to us as doctors had said with such poor quality blasts chances of success per IVF cycle were 5-10%.

Cycle 2 we reduced my stims and surgically retrieved husbands sperm after a borderline high DNA fragmentation test. 22 mature eggs - 13 fertilised via ICSI. By day 3 we had four in the running (so loads had died off again) and none of them were the 8 cells they should be. Neverthless we did transfer on day 3- 2 best looking embryos and by the time we went to transfer one had made the ideal "8 cell."

Of the two not transferred on day 3 both went on to make blasts one on day 5 and one on day 6 and are now frozen. I'm currently pregnant with one baby.

Egg quality was a problem for us as so many died by day 3, but sperm quality was a problem too and surgical sperm retrieval seemed to make the difference.

Sorry for the length - but I hope it can give you a bit of hope that they learn things from cycle one and this gives you more chance of success for cycle 2 (even if cycle one is abysmal!) access fertility were great and it took the pressure off but in the end certainly not the cheapest way to do it! I don't regret our decision though - especially given the %chance of success we'd been told.

I am your age with pcos so my problem is immature eggs . My first cycle was similar to yours except I only had 1 useable embryo. I was recommended coenzyme q10 by my consultant to improve egg quality and ended up with 14 mature eggs / early embryos and 4 blastocysts. Consider your first cycle a test.

Yes, CoQ10 or ubiquinol may help to support fertility. One thing to note is that a water or fat-soluble form of CoQ10/ubiquinol absorbs better.
For DHEA, this is a hormone, and should be monitored by your doctor. Discuss all supplement changes with your doctor, either way.

Yes it's worth saying my consultant got me to take a host of medications to boost quality - we went straight into a second cycle so not much chance for them to help but I was taking co q10, DHEA and melatonin (AMAZINg - never slept so well). I wouldn't take any of these without consulting the doctor though

I was told to avoid dhea because it can cause pcos symptoms to worsen.

We had serious issues with each of our 3 cycles. I have pcos and we have mfi. I got like 8 eggs each cycle but certainly 1 cycle was messed up by the clinic and i was triggered too soon due to ohss risk. That was the unsuccessful cycle. I dont know why but our fertilisation was really low every cycle. Cycle 1 we only had 1/2 embryos. But it did work.

Good luck