Terrible egg quality - under 35

[CatyZoo12]

Has anyone else experienced terrible egg quality at a (reasonably) young age?

I'm 32, have endo, have had 3 rounds of IVF, each an utter disaster. I've changed clinics, done both long and short protocol, tried mild and high dose stims, and from these three rounds I've only ever made one blast - a day 7 extremely poor quality one they didn't even want to freeze.

I've followed everything from It Starts with the Egg, had supplements coming out of my eyeballs but that did absolutely nothing. I've tried DHEA for one cycle, growth hormone, dexamethasone, high protein diet, nothing has made the slightest bit of difference.

The clinic just say it's egg quality but don't really have any other answers, they seem confused why my eggs are so bad at this age.

I don't really know what I'm asking - I guess if anyone else has suffered such bad quality that isn't likely related to age?

Are you getting decent numbers of eggs collected? Sperm dna issues? Seems a lot of different ingredients for just 3 cycles. Try throwing every perk all at once? Anecdotally growth hormone 6mg x 5 dosings seems to have improved my egg competency this cycle from last.

It is awful for you to be left without answers or progress sorry

@CatyZoo12
Hi,

I'm in a very similar position but haven't had my review with my consultant yet. I'd be keen to hear how you get on with replies in this thread and I will keep you updated.

My first cycle we got 22 eggs, 21 mature, only 1 blast (3BB, downgraded to 3C after thaw)

Our second cycle we've got 34 eggs, 31 mature, day 3 we have 4 embryos. Day 5 is on Monday!

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How were you initially diagnosed with endometriosis and how has it been dealt with since?. It is possible that endometriosis could be affecting your egg quality.

Age 35 my egg quality wasn't great. Less than 30% fertilising each time and very average quality blastocysts.

I had to strip everything back to natural modified IVF focussing on 2 or so follicles to have success and then my fertilisation rate jumped to 100%

If u have known endo I would look at getting it removed before ur next cycle?

So sorry for ur failed cycles xxx

Thanks everyone for replying

@indub - 5-9 eggs each time, just a huge drop off at each stage

@unknownscot - good luck for Monday!! But yes that is a big drop off, I hope your consultant had some answers for you, please do report back here!

@Atila and @Cream123 - I had a laparoscopy years ago, they removed some endo then but no doubt it's grown back. It was on my ovaries so they don't want to do it again in case it destroys then even more. The drs are just surprised that stage 2 endo has had quite such a bad effect, but that's the only explanation we have.

@ivfbeenbusy - yes I was thinking about doing a more natural / natural modified yet - if only because it's the only thing I haven't tried!! Either that or a long protocol with a longer down reg to control the endo but worried about the ovaries not bouncing back since they're obviously not in the best shape.

Also very disappointed about the fact that the supplements have done absolutely sod all! It's made out sometimes that they are the magic solution to egg quality, but now I see more and more people saying they had no effect for them and sometimes even the more supplements they took the worse their eggs were!!

What about a different clinic? It does sound like they tried very hard though and 6-9 is quite a reasonable amount.

Most of the supplements don't have great/ any evidence. It's easy to spend a lot of money and not get any change in outcome

@CatyZoo12 I have 2 good friends with endo and both had similar ivf results. They did much better once removed. If u look for an endo specialist to operate that’s first step as it’s often poorly treated from what I’ve seen with my friends journey. The BSG has a list of endo accredited centres. They went private in the end....

Endo is a funny thing. I know one of the girls was stage 4 the other a 1 but the one with 1 had terrible pain while the 4 didn’t! It doesn’t seem to correlate or make much sense. You can also have silent endo which must be super confusing! I’m sorry it on ur ovaries I don’t know much about that....

ps They both had success in end :) I know it’s annoying when people say that but wanted to let u know.

Supplements made no difference to my egg quality - the much lauded Sperm Meets Egg Book is apparently based on one persons experience of Infertility and by no means will have the same result for everyone

Just wanted to update to say we have zero blasts today, our cycle is over 😢

Hi 🙋‍♀️
this is an old thread but wondering what happened with you ladies ? I'm 32 with apparently " bad eggs " we've already done 2 cycles of mild ivf ( both with 7 eggs results; 5 emrbyos ) none of them made it to day 5
I'm thinking of doing natural modified next as thats what the consultant advised does anyone have any advice ?
Xx