To wait or not to wait?

[Hopewishprayer]

Hey- just looking to get some thoughts - my head is pounding 🤯 I am 38 low amh 3.9 and we have been referred to our nhs hospital for ICSI - we have a MF and he will require to undergo a surgical sperm retrieval.
Comparing private to NHS we can speed up waiting for first round by 6-7 months.
One day I think £10k for 6 month difference is crazy we should wait and keep private for if NHS round is unsuccessful.
Next day I panic that in 6 months my amh may be even lower (not sure how much it can reduce in that time?) so we should just go for it.

Help! Any advice greatly appreciated 😊

@Hopewishprayer if you can afford it I would personally go private. Everyone is different obviously but my AMH went from 5.7 to 2.1 in 6 months.

If it's definitely only 6 months then I'd wait for the NHS if it's any longer then I'd go private x

If you have the funds and the private sector can start your treatment soon, I'd go private tbh. I ended up waiting over a year for NHS treatment, and if you've got an AMH on the low side it's probably best to get started sooner rather than later to maximise your chances. Also, we don't know what could happen re: Covid impacting upon services in the coming months...

If you can afford private without having to really scrape around and go without for it, I'd go ahead with that now. As @Scirocco said, who knows what will happen with COVID next (particularly over the winter) so a bird in the hand and all that.

But if it's going to be a massive financial stretch and that will cause stress, I do understand why you might wait it out - IVF is hard enough without the money issues it can cause.

If you can get some assurances that 6 months isn’t going to become 12 months, then I’d wait for NHS first. Anyone doing IVF should expect to do 3 rounds on average, so you need to think about how many private rounds you could end up paying for. Maybe use the 6 months to get started on supplements for you both.

I'd second the advice given by @FabricPigeon and @Scirocco

Not only do we not know what pressures the NHS might be under in the following months, you yourselves might experience an unexpected event such as ill-health or some other life's curve ball, which can all end up delaying your treatment even further possibly.

As well as both you and your partner having fertility issues, I wouldn't waste any time and I'd go private as soon as possible (providing of course the private fertility treatment's cost is manageable).

IVF is intense and I was extremely fortunate that so far my journey has gone according to plan (a single female currently 16 weeks pregnant, from a fresh cycle using sperm donor) aged 39, but you just never know how you might respond to the protocol: the medication, the egg retrieval, the fertilization wait, the transfer, the two week wait etc. The unpredictability of it all is brutal so the more time you have to recover should there be issues along the way, the better.

Thank you everyone - always useful to have a sounding board and you have given me some good things to think about. Thanks for helping make it a bit clearer! And all the very best to you all in your journey x