Follicles during egg freezing (same as IVF) stims?

[Rosiestraws]

I'm going through my first ever cycle of egg freezing currently with DOR.

First scans in Jan showed 1 follicle on right ovary and 3 on left. So I went ahead thinking best case I might get 4 eggs (and even that is unlikely, I appreciate..)

Baseline scan my right ovary was hiding (It has a habit of doing this!) so they couldn't see it, but there were 4 on my left ovary which was promising (as 1 more than the previous month)

I've done 5 days stims and had my tracking scan and now the left ovary has 6 follicles and right (thankfully visible this time!) has the same old 1. I was happy that the left appears to have woken up and produced a few more but I was told the follicles were quite small still so they weren't happy with how it was progressing and I need to carry on my same injections for 2 more days (not adding in the new drug like I was expecting) yet to see if there's more growth. I glanced at the screen (know I should have just asked though ha!) and could see various sizes of the follicles plotted as around 7-9mm I think.

What size should they be at this stage then? I believe I recall when the biggest follicle gets to 20mm they'll want to stop stims and get ready for egg collection as they don't want me to ovulate early.

Anyone had a similar experience? I am on 150iu Menopur and 300 Gonal-F.

(In case it's also relevant, I had FSH and oestrogen tests prior to starting which showed both higher that they should be so I had to do 6 days of oestrogen priming before the cycle began which I believe does something to stop one follicle developing too quickly and stopping all the others from growing..don't know if this has an effect..)

Thanks in advance for replies - this forum has been so helpful these past few weeks! :)

Hi,
How did you get on with this in the end? Assume you've had your egg collection?
I have mine scheduled for Tuesday, but not feeling optimistic as only had four follicles yesterday that were over the line (out of 10)

Sadly I got no eggs after EC on Sat....I've posted another link about this but relatively new here so don't know how to link to it. the one about "egg collection no eggs" Gutted but I think something was maybe wrong with the timings or I ovulated early...won't repeat it here but hopefully you can find it and see. It only happens in about 2-7% of cases so I wouldn't worry for you

On my last scan before EC which was Wed I had 1 at 18mm, 1 at 17mm, 1 at 14mm and 1 at 13mm (and 2 smaller, 1 bigger one which had been at 14ish earlier was also hiding) but I continued stims Wed night and Thurs and then trigger on Thurs, EC sat

Ah how frustrating, so sorry to hear this. I know how much of a emotional rollercoaster this is and how unfair when you hear someone get 10 plus eggs from retrieval.
Yeah it sounds like maybe you did ovulate early as it’s so rare, hopefully you’ll be able to get some answers.
Are you going to try again with another egg freezing cycle?
X

Yes I'm going to go again.. I guess I'm still in the position of thinking "will I regret this later if I give up?" and I definitely feel like I will. I think there are numerous things to consider being changed and things that I feel might have gone wrong (i.e. going into theatre 36.5 hours after trigger, trigger being mistimed by clinic perhaps, three days between last scan and EC, no blood tests to see if I'd ovulated etc), along with new supplements to try/different protocol etc so I have to keep hope that it might be different next time! I was just so happy I had 3-5 decent sized follicles as I have quite bad DOR and was originally hoping for 1-2 so I ended up getting my hopes up :(

Good luck with your EC tomorrow x

Thank you.
Has the clinic admitted any fault?
Are you in London? I’m having my done at The Lister

No, not as yet. I am waiting to have a consultation to discuss. I doubt they would admit any fault anyway! I wouldn't want to go down the route of blaming in the sense of making a complaint I don't think, but just to understand what can be done differently next time.
Yes, London. Probably ought to not say the name of the clinic here but it is not Lister!

When was your last scan before egg collection then if it's Tues? I assume Friday? Do you have blood tests to check oestrogen etc?

I had my last scan on Saturday and blood and COVID 😤
I had four folicules I was told on track, two catching up and another two probably won’t...

Ah well it's good at least that you had a blood test - was it to determine oestrogen levels? I'll certainly be insisting on that next time. And a scan before EC like the day before maybe.
Hope it goes well for you :)

Yeah so everytime I’ve had a scan (four last week) I’ve had a blood test too for oestrogen levels and I assume it was all going up as expected.

I was expecting a scan the day before but they didn’t suggest it.

Thank you, will keep you updated.

Maybe try another clinic too and speak to a doctor if anything? Sometimes it’s good to get second opinions. So far I recommend where I am at x

It sounds like scans-wise I'm similar.. I had 5 including baseline scan but obvs no blood test.

Will wait and see what they say about changing protocol/what went wrong etc and then consider next steps. Don't really want to delay things further by having to change clinics but I certainly will if I'm not happy with their explanations/solutions etc. But yes, second opinion might be useful

I don’t get the blood test thing just assumed that was standard, was that an optional extra where you were or something?

I’d definitely recommend the Lister, had a really pleasant experience today and got more eggs than I thought (more folicules than on my last scan!) x

Congrats re eggs!

Re blood test - it's only something I even knew about after googling the lack of eggs and it came up in something I read. So I didnt know to ask for it and the clinic don't do it as standard.