Coronavirus and fertility clinics.

[mabel92]

Has anyone’s fertility clinic told them they will close due to Coronavirus? I’m due to start treatment and now confused as what to do or whether I’ll be able to start. Thanks.

I never had an issue with lining on short protocol either - on the timing point they used norethisterone to schedule my period so it would fit with timings. They also didnt want to switch off my already sleepy ovaries with long protocol. AMH has now dropped so low that natural modified is my best bet.

Waiting to hear back from clinic on next cycle, AF due week of the 11th so I might miss it for this month! Hope everyone is able to resume again soon xx

@xx40years

Mine was 12.9 last year when I was 36 - my antral follicle count is usually 10-15 and that correlates to the numbers of follicles I tend to get depending on protocol. They did think the follicle numbers should be higher but because I had surgery for two ectopics and one ovary is stuck to my uterus with scar tissue they think this has reduced the numbers a bit

In terms of response my left ovary tends to respond better and I tend to get two dominant follicles that grow way bigger/quicker than the others but it's very much luck of the draw that month

Thank you everyone and good luck 😘

@ivfgottostaypositive

Thanks so much .......where you mention ‘depending on what protocol’ have you ever done the long protocol or do you mean variations of short protocol?
Do you get 10/15 eggs from those 10/15 follicles or do the lead ones mean you just get a couple . Just intrigued as my AMH and AFC is similar and wondering why my clinic is so fixed on LP.

@Xx40yearsyoungxx

I've never done long protocol so my "different" protocols are either short protocol or natural modified - with short protocol I got 14 follicles each time and all contained an egg. With natural
Modified it's ranged between 2 to 7 eggs collected but I would have up to 10 follicles which weren't large enough to collect from on the day

Natural modified cycle 1 - I had 2 follicles which grew much quicker and bigger than the others. I had about 8 smaller ones but they just didn't grow that time. I decided to go to egg collection because I figured if my body thought they were the best two then go with it. I got 2 eggs from 2 follicles and both are frozen as top quality blastocysts

Natural modified cycle 2 - same thing happened - 2 started to outgrow the others so they reduced my drugs to 75ml bemfola (from 150ml) and added 75 luveris - some did catch up and I got 7 follicles large enough and 7 eggs.

Because I'm a control freak I have spreadsheets of all my cycles and follicle growth! Every month it looks like I always have around 14 follicles at the baseline scan. With natural modified only around half of these will grow big enough to collect from

It would be interesting to know which eggs ultimately became my 2 really good blastocysts - was it the 2 which were the biggest right from the start......my suspicion is yes

@ivfgottostaypositive - wow absolutely loving the spread sheet.
I suspect my best egg last time was the one they let overmature to get some of the smaller ones to catch up - in the collection they said one egg was collapsing/destroyed which I suspect was the lead best overmature one.

Out of interest did any of your short protocol eggs make it to blast as getting 14 is a great achievement. If this was so successful why did you change from short to natural modified?

Thanks so much for the responses - it’s great having people that are so more knowledgeable than I am in all this . Thank you.

I think you might have told me before but my brain is a sieve at the mo worrying about one thing or another - did you take DHEA / ubiquinol etc in your best cycles ?

X

@Xx40yearsyoungxx

Yes out of 28 eggs collected over 2 short protocol cycles I got 5 to blastocyst in total but they were all average quality and my egg quality was rubbish and less than 30% fertilised each time. I PGS tested 2 and wasnt allowed to transfer 1 as it came back complex abnormal and the other was mosaic. So I've done 3 transfers from those cycles - 2 BFN and 1 ruptured ectopic (although to be honest I suspect that was a naturally conceived one as we were also trying at the same time as transferring to up our odds!)

I changed to natural modified after I got my PGS results as clearly short protocol wasn't doing anything for my egg quality - what was the point of forcing 14 eggs if only 4 were fertilising - I expected at my age a 50% success rate and get 1 PGS normal embryo and was shocked to get none. I was (until I lost both tubes) getting pregnant on my own loads (7 times) but either miscarried or were ectopic (although I suspect they may all have been ectopic looking back - I don't think my tubes ever worked again after my c section).

I figured that our bodies are the best ones to select which is the best quality egg each month (after all they usually have 15 to choose from). So rather than forcing it to produce 15 eggs which it may never have chosen itself I'd let it pick instead. So we chose natural modified with the intention of just giving my body a little push and see which ones it chose? And for me it's made massive differences - I'm now getting 100% fertilisation and top quality blastocysts (4 so far from 9 eggs)

I swapped to Proceive Max after my first short protocol cycle last year. Didn't seem to make any difference by the time of my second egg collection about 8 months later

This time I added In ubquinol and royal jelly tablets for the natural modified cycles (royal jelly because I read that the queen bee makes hundreds of top quality eggs a day so If it's good enough for her....🤣)

I asked Doctor about DHEA and he categorically said no - it's a testosterone based hormone really only for women who only have a couple of follicles on their antral follicle count. It can actually reduce fertility if taken when you don't need it

Posted on Instagram!

Never thought I'd be so excited to go to the hospital 😂

Thanks so much @ivfgottostaypositive

You should write a book with all the stuff you have learnt and researched !!

Do you think ubiquinol made any difference this time around? How long did you take it for before EC

X

Ha yeah I know! Google has been my friend through many a sleepless night and hospital stay 🤣

I actually only started the ubquinol a couple of weeks before the first cycle of natural Modified - I was taking coq10 before that - and I suppose the second egg collection about 6 weeks later has been the best so far in terms of quality so maybe it helped? I was on 200mg and then upped to 300mg but then had a really long cycle of 40 days which messed up my 3rd egg collection and led to it being abandoned and I read that ubquinol can delay ovulation so I dropped back to 200mg

All so expensive a month though - I probably spend £100 a month!

Feel like a weight has been lifted with the announcement yesterday.

I feel excited.

"Mr Hancock will write to all Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) this week to confirm they are able to begin resuming fertility treatments to those in their area, either through a private clinic or an NHS service, "to ensure fair provision".

Does that imply that if an NHS provider is unable to re-commence treatment at present the patient will be referred to a local private provider?

@SaddleryStudent

Yes I would read that as being the case - simple fact is some CCGs are still treating a lot of Covid cases eg some boroughs in London or Birmingham and they may rule that NHS clinics aren't able to meet the safety criteria or may still have staff deployed elsewhere

Most private clinics take NHS ones - although I'd imagine if you were part way through treatment or had your embryos stored with the NHS then it would be more difficult/time consuming to arrange a transfer and so better to stay put where the doctors are knowledgeable about your specific case. It would work more for those that have been approved for funding but haven't nominated a clinic or haven't started any consultations yet

@ivfgottostaypositive that was going to be my next question put to the thread! What you're saying does seem to make sense as the most likely and practical way forward.

I was midway through NHS Hospital treatment and had my EC just before the lockdown and was due to do a FET the next cycle, so I have 2 blastocysts in the freezer. I have other issues too that they were monitoring (extremely low haemoglobin due to fibroids) and the plan as it stands was to do one transfer and then if unsuccessful, have surgery to remove the fibroids. My MRI etc. for this have been postponed to June, I assume now it will go ahead then, fingers crossed!

Thanks for the input :)

@ivfgottostaypositive

Also, that's great news on the improvement of your egg quality! Like you I had a disappointingly low fertilisation rate, my doctors expected more. I had 11 eggs collected after a short protocol and only 3 fertilised. 1 discarded and 2 top quality blastocysts, this is my first round. I was very poorly during the whole process though and hospitalised after EC due to low haemoglobin and unstable blood pressure that kept dipping. I had been telling my GP for years that my menstrual bleeding was way off normal....but they kept saying it was fine, until they checked my blood after EC haha! I narrowly avoided a blood transfusion, they said they didn't know how I looked so 'well' .....I have been struggling for years!

For those taking DHEA - any recommendations on which online place to order from and get it delivered quick?!

@LondonIVF12 i don't think it's available from the uk - wherever you order it from it will come from America. I ordered mine almost 5 weeks ago now and am still waiting 😭

@LondonIVF12 my previous clinic recommended getting it from biovea but it gets shipped from America. I don't think you can buy it here

Hi Ladies,

Is anybody here a private patient with NHS clinic. Do you think it is worth moving to a private clinic? Just wondering what people’s thoughts are on how much longer NHS facilities will take to reopen. Time is not on my side x

@Simz01 am in the same position and at 41 time not on our side too! I’ve been told by one private clinic that realistically it will be around 3 months for them to do our FET. They are prioritizing existing patients who had cycles cancelled. We do have to transport embies too so that will slow us down. Given those timelines and the significant extra costs I wonder if better to stay where we are. The Drs are still redeployed at our clinic but they said today that management were discussing how to restart services and we would be prioritized to start treatment having been cancelled part way though. Not really sure what to do! I suspect our own clinic may well be up and running by the time we move private.

@lemongrass1, it’s so hard trying to preempt all the what ifs of what might happen! I agree with you, that if there is a long waiting list and have to transport or do a new cycle, things might get up and running.

I hope in the next week or so might get some idea of how things are moving , whether it be some clinics giving dates and trying to understand some timeline from my clinic. I thought if private clinic had no backlog and had capacity to start soon as best case scenario, it might be worth it. I have a consultation with one on Thursday so will ask then.

Who are you with? I am with Guys ACU x

I'm an NHS patient at a clinic that does NHS and they posted on the 1st that they were planning to apply to open. I emailed them this morning to find out if it would be for NHS also and was emailed back straight away to go over things and given an appointment via video for two weeks today. Our appointment is just to confirm my partner has stopped smoking and to put us on the waiting list finally. Had a HyCoSy in Feb but because my dp said he was a social smoker at our initial appointment they wouldn't put us on the list until after. I also think they secretly wanted to give us that three months after that you are supposedly super fertile for but nothing has happened for me

@Simz01 I’ve been second guessing what best to ever since our FET was cancelled in March! Have been going back and forth as to whether I should book a private consultation or not. Haven’t booked one yet... but thinking about it. Am at Hammersmith and they’ve said to call back next week for an update so I’ll probably wait until then to decide what to do. They don’t really have any social media presence so it’s pretty hard to know what’s going on with them. I know that I’ll have to repeat some things like blood tests etc if moving private as it’s incredibly hard to get this info (no one ever answered the ‘dedicated’ line for medical record requests even pre Covid!).

Hope your appt on Thurs goes well. If you don’t mind me asking who have you decided to go with? I’ve been in touch with both CARE and CRGH. X

@willithappen that’s great your clinic have been so proactive! Hope your video appt goes well

@lemongrass1 same with Guys, there is not much social media presence like other clinics.

Thanks a lot, will let you know. Of course I don’t mind, am speaking to Care for now, then same as yourself, I’ll give it a couple weeks to hear from Guys or will text my consultant so can make decision. It is very no frills, but I do like everyone there, although I know it has mixed reviews , I’d prefer to stick so hope there is some good news.

@willithappen, that’s great that you have had some communication, fingers crossed. My husband smokes and still had great numbers on his side when we started! They were so surprised! And he has cut down now due to my nagging and his numbers were slightly worse on later cycle. Of course no correlation , but just didn’t seem to impact either way xx