Anyone doing IVF at 40+ pt 2

[lucymills1234]

Setting up a new thread as the old one was nearly at the limit.

@Anxiousbuthopeful
@Islandstars
@Woodcottage1
@Unicorn9
@SerenditySunshine

@99pctpractice thank you for your reply. I’ve been weighing up all the same things to be honest. I think I’m sticking with higher stims for now then may rethink after two more rounds. Were you successful in the end??

It’s all such a confusion to be honest. I’ve spoken to do many people with different views and no one seems to know what is best

Hi @Grateful03 - no, we weren't ultimately successful. Of 4 rounds, the low stims round resulted in the lowest number of eggs and no blasts. I'd expected less eggs, but not getting any blasts was very disappointing. It came immediately after just having had a miscarriage from a natural pregnancy (I didn't even have a period in between), so it may just have been that my body wasn't ready. There are always so many variables it's difficult to know what is down to luck and what is down to art. I'd go with your gut : if the more natural ivf resonates with you, then go with it. Best to have no regrets!!!

@99pctpractice sorry to hear that. Did you decide to take a different option?? My OH wants to do donor eggs. It’s a huge step

I hope everyone enjoys a day off tomorrow and I’ll be wishing you all well for this month/ your next steps

@Greenlee I'm with IVF Spain in Madrid. I'm happy with them so far, but I'm still in the embryobanking phase, so can't speak to personal success yet

@Hopeful199, Oh I hope the little embryo is a sticky one ! So hope this is it for you.

I triggered tonight, egg retrieval scheduled for Wednesday! So excited to be done with this phase - now just hoping for lots of blasts and good PGT-A results!

Hello all, I just wanted to come back and share that we had our 12 banked embryos PGT-A tested, and 6(!) came back as normal per the test! I was 41 for all 3 collections, so I wanted to give some hope that while the statistics aren't very good at our age, it really depends on the individual situation. I do seem to have some form of PCOS (my amh was still 16 a year ago, and I usually had about 10-13 follicles during stim cycle).
We are thrilled with this result from our clinic in Spain. They are now having me rest a month, and we will attempt our first transfer in November.
Hope you all are keeping well x

That is incredibly good odds when the usual is 1/3 normals. I got 1 normal out of 5 at 39 (out of 3 rounds). In fact it has been so depressing that I have stopped testing them, I’d rather not know! So we have two more untested (round 4) and going for round month.

PGTA is too depressing and took away all my hope as getting only abnormals in any one round is HARD. It’s not like it improves the odds in any way and I’d take more miscarriages over the finality of PGTA results…

^round 5 next month

Pondering it some more I think I’d rather not have ever heard about the exceptional cases like @Nessylink because it gives a misleading impression about IVF at an older age.

I would have preferred to know the sad sad truth that most embryos will be no use!

(I have higher than normal numbers of eggs for my age (amh 20.7) but statistically normal embryo results (i.e. most are abnormal).

Hi @Nessylink that's great news, pleased for you and hopefully you'll have a successful first transfer!

It really is just a rubbish, very expensive lottery isn’t it?

i did my egg collection just after my 40th birthday (my partner is younger which might help a bit). My amh was pretty high at around 40 so had a low protocol to minimise risk of ohss. Ended up with 9 eggs and got 7 of those to day 5 and frozen.

we chose not to do pgta testing. Our first transfer we had low/slow rising beta and ended with a blighted ovum which is thought to be due to chromosomal abnormalities so 100% down to my age.

currently 7wks pregnant with second FET and going for our first scan today and am terrified of the same happening.

i guess we just have to hope that out of those 7, at least 1 (or hopefully more) are normal 🤞

it’s a stressful time but I’ll never give up hope of having our baby

@Phrenologistsfinger, I'm sorry to hear you are going through all that. Last thing I wanted to do was upset anyone. I have been there, I got that call that there is nothing to transfer out of 2 stim cycles with the previous 8 months being a waste because all blasts were abnormal.

If you read back a few pages, our first 3 collections at age 39/40 resulted in 7 blasts, 6 of which were PGT-A abnormal, and the 1 normal we had didn't survive the thaw. So, I very well realize we aren't out of the woods yet.

We changed everything for this second set of 3 cycles, so I don't know it if the combination worked or it is a complete fluke, or perhaps nature's way of averaging out our previously worse-than-average numbers.

Lately this group has had a lot of bad news, so I thought I'd help even it out for those who may need a bit of hope as they are going through treatment. -- I truly am sorry if it upset you. I wish you a happy outcome after everything you are putting yourself through.

@LT103, I'm absolutely delighted to hear of your good news. I know it is nerve-wrecking, but 7 blasts is an amazing result already, so perhaps you are beating the odds, and this one will stick 🤗

Hi @Nessylink that's amazing - well done! What did you change for these cycles? After 4 cycles with no normal blasts, we're at the end of the own egg ivf road tbh and moving on to donor eggs. I have mixed emotions about it, particularly as I dig in more to the impact on the donor conceived children. I'm trying to get as much info as possible!

@Phrenologistsfinger my results are probably more aligned with your expectations...3 rounds were at 40, the last at 41...my clinic still gave me a 25% chance of success if we wanted to carry on, but I feel like that's looking at an average for my age, rather than necessarily my track record. My amh went up from the start (2.7) to the end (6.2), but I still didn't get normal embryos (last round they were untested but they transferred 3 on day 3 and none of them stuck, so I can only assume they were not normal!). Good luck for your next round, all you need is one good egg 🤞🤞🤞

Hi @Nessylink like @99pctpractice I too am interested in what you changed from your first 3 cycles. I had 2 tested and both were abnormal from my first cycle. The others weren’t good enough to test.

Amazing news @Nessylink and huge congratulations @LT103. We need to hear some good news on this forum. Hope has made us pursue IVF in the first place. Baby dust to everyone 💫

@99pctpractice & @birdbybird & @Lulu106
Thanks - as I said we changed a lot, but it could all just be a fluke.

Well, here's the list:

First 3 failed rounds: 1 short & 2 CAAP protocol with Luveris, Gonal- F and Gonasi trigger and ICSI (no other add ons) = 1 PGT-A normal out of 7 that didn't survive the thaw.

• already was on Proceive Max women, 600mg CoQ10, D3, Vit B complex and folic acid

Sep 2021: Due to terrible last 3 cycle results, we insisted on more testing:

• Hubby:
• Sperm Analysis: slight worsening of his stats, morning testosterone = 18.8,
• Found 49% DNA fragmentation & investigations found bilateral varicoceles (!)
• Hubby was recommended to add 1g vitamin E daily (already was on COQ10 and Proceive Max) and get urologist appointment
• me:
• AMH re-test = 16.6 (still good for my age of 41)
• Prolactin & TSH normal (still on 25mcg Eltroxin daily from an earlier round where TSH spiked)

Feb 2022:

• hubby got one varicocele embolized (Feb 2022)
• Started regular fertility acupuncture & Chinese herbs for both hubby & me
• Flew to Spain IVF clinic for pre-tests:
• most blood tests were fine, but my HOMA indicator (insulin resistance) came back high, so they put me on Metformin starting in March (this was the 3rd or 4th indicator that I may have some form of PCOS)
• Clinic recommended Spanish supplements Seidivid & Seidiferty for us. Couldn't get them in Ireland, but I was just missing myoinositol + melatonin. So, a few nights a week I took melatonin & my acupuncturist said that if I have trouble tolerating Metformin, myo-inositol supplements have similar effect, so I added that in
• We added in vitamin C for hubby and high-strength omega-3 with high DHA for both of us

April/May: 4th stim cycle : short protocol with Menopur & Gonal F and Gonasi trigger

• collected 20 eggs!
• Spain offers sperm selection: we wanted Fertile Chip method, but sperm was only good enough for PICSI, which we got all 3 rounds in Spain.
• Got 5x5 day blasts out of the round (we now know that only 1 of 5 blasts was PGT-A normal).

June 2022: started stims, but on day 3 tested positive for Covid. Cancelled cycle

July 2022: started stims, but on day 2 HUBBY tested positive for Covid -- he only had mild symptoms though, so we went ahead because he would be able to fly 10 days later just in time for EC

• collected only 9 eggs - was a total shock with same protocol after 20 last time. But, we still got 5 blasts! (4 x 5 days and 1 x 6 day).
• We now know that 4 out of 5 blasts were PGT-A normal from this round

September: same stim protocol again

• collected only 9 eggs - this time we "lost" the lead follicle or two and instead picked up more of the smaller ones
• only got 2 x 5 day blasts
• we now know that 1 was PGT-A normal, and 1 was not

Hope this gives some suggestions on what to investigate/what questions to ask clinic. Feel free to let me know if you want to know more.

Thanks @Nessylink !
I’ve been looking into sperm selection and heard about Zymot which is a chip. What’s is the “fertile chip” used for your cycles? Was it used in all 3 cycles?

Just to give you all some good news . We had our 7 week scan today and baby was measuring perfectly. Could see heartbeat and already starting to see limb buds. It was amazing. It’s still really wary and think we’ll book another scan between now and our 12 week scan so it’s not too long a wait

@LT103 that's great news. All fingers crossed for you.

Thanks @Nessylink - so great that the Spanish clinic could resolve things they didn't find / look for in the uk! Sounds like you might have had more of a sperm quality issue, which is a bit more potentially fixable than egg quality. On the basis of my oh's sperm quality being described as "optimal" from his dna frag test (!), that isn't a problem for us, and having had what felt like every test imaginable at my last clinic and no issues coming up for me, it seems like it really is just down to egg quality for us. Which we tried to address via lifestyle changes but ultimately is mostly down to my age...

@birdbybird , we really wanted to use the chip, but unfortunately the sperm samples were never good motility & quantity enough to use the chip (as was explained to us, the sperm would be too "exhausted" after going through that to then actually be used for fertilisation). We were fortunate that our clinic used PICSI as a backup methodology based on the sperm quality of the day. PICSI sperm selection was used for all 3 of our Spanish cycles.

@99pctpractice
Yes, we definitely had mfi challenges, and I agree those tend to be more addressable. However, our Irish clinic totally ignored that possibility so we "wasted" 3 pgs rounds before we ever got a DNA Frag test. The clinic just always blamed it on my egg quality because i was 40, so a word of caution that they like to write failure off based on eggs over 40 - which may not always be the case.
That's brilliant that your partner got an "optimal" frag result. You may not need the sperm sorting then, but with so few good eggs we have, I would be tempted to use it and hopefully get the best sperm for those eggs anyway 😉 The Spanish clinic also were the ones to suggest I may have PCOS and put me on metformin. My local "satellite" doctor also suggested that Gonasi trigger may be better for egg quality than ovitrelle, and I did also add in acupuncture and Chinese herbs this year. I do admit I didn't study all the statistics so I'm not sure what really does and doesn't work -- we just threw everything at it this time.

Thanks, @nessylink yes, we did consider it but the clinic advised against it given our history. And we have had 90-100% fertilisation rates throughout, so the sperm are definitely moving fast and in the right direction!! I've heard more discussion in the us of using special culture media (I think hgh or something similar) for embryo development that some think helps, but I don't think it's available in the uk...I'm sure there are always more different things we could try (PRP etc), but it just felt like even though we were throwing everything at it, our results were not really showing any improvement...and there are so many different factors you never really know what could actually make the difference (either positively or negatively!)

Hello everyone

I know this thread hasn't been filled with positivity these last few months I got one was one of those after having a missed miscarriage conceived between ivf cycles .

I am now at the stage of considering the future I was all set to start this week with a positive mindset and now I'm so very unsure awaiting a call today from consultant on whether to go ahead with my next cycle of naturally modified as I didn't respond on other protocol. I'm still unsure if I'm ovulating after miscarriage but know time is against me now and I'm so confused been reading about natural killer cells and further testing and my clinic don't do this they have just said to go ahead but I don't want to waste money if perhaps one of the London clinics could treat me it's a long way but I really like all of want a miracle if anybody has any advice before my consultation today I would be so grateful many thanks for reading xx

@Pinklady81

I'm so sorry for your loss. Did they sent the rests for testing?

I'd encourage you to see a Reproductive Immunologist, they can do other tests that a Fertility Specialist wouldn't do and he can add medicines to your IVF treatment.

@Cherry35 thank you unfortunately finances will not allow this as they are so expensive .