Can’t decide on clinic - have low ovarian reserve . Please help!

[Starlight38]

Hello

I'm 38 and single and have a low AMH of 1.54 and AFC 7. I have never TTC. I really want to have a family and am weighing up my options or either going for it solo now or freezing eggs and embryos with a sperm donor now. I thought the latter would be a decent back up plan and would give me the headspace to date in a more relaxed way and hopefully meet someone, and if not, at least I could go back to the embryos for example.

I had a consultation at the lister who recommended freezing my eggs and said I'd need 10 frozen to have a 30% chance of success. Because of the reduced ovarian reserve they said I'd need 3 cycles probably to produce enough eggs. They recommended using what I think is the highest dose of stims (450iu FSH) . All in , 3 cycles of egg freezing would be about 20K at the lister. if I do sperm donor plus embryo freezing he said it could be another 20K on top of that.

I had another consultation at ARGC and they also said freeze eggs and could freeze embryos too with a donor sperm. They wanted to do a monitoring cycle and if my FSH is too high, sounds like it's gave over there. I haven't had this yet as I'm a bit drained by bad results tbh. Has anyone had good experience here? anyone frozen eggs successfully? there was one awful review on google by someone who had their eggs frozen and 17 out of 20 perished when they tried to thaw them. That's scares me! again it's similar price to Lister.

I've also wondered about Create as they say their thing is reduced ovarian reserve and they do this natural modified approach.

Has anyone with reduced ovarian reserve had any experience with these places or can anyone advise?

I would be so very grateful as just picking a clinic seems like a really tough decision

Please don't take this the wrong way, but at your age and with your AMH I wouldn't be freezing eggs. 30% isn't really a high chance of success, it's not even a third.

I had 13 eggs from my first egg collection cycle, 10 mature, 7 fertilised, 2 made it to blastocyst stage. Neither resulted in a BFP.

I would use donor sperm now and get going. If it doesn't work you still have time, but at least you know where you stand and can try something different.

Clinic wise, I have heard ARGC are a bit brutal on bedside manner but get results. It's my next choice of clinic if it doesn't work out with my current one (Evewell).

@LosingHopeIVF thanks so much for your message. Can I check did you freeze your eggs somewhere and then go back to them and none of them worked? or was this standard IVF you mean ie they fertilised them when they took the eggs out? do you mind me asking how old you were when you had this done?

When you say to go for a donor sperm do you think have fresh transfer or put some embryos on ice? I'm worried that I might put them on ice and then later down the line realise they've all failed. It's so so difficult.

I've just left a relationship whereby I had my time wasted by a guy who lied about wanting children. I'm really panicked by all of this! I really wanted to be in a relationship but also will kick myself if I don't meet anyone and miss out.

How has your current clinic been and how did you pick it?

@Starlight38 I’m so sorry to hear about your relationship. I think I saw your post the other day about breaking up. Awful situation but sounds like you made the right decision for you.

We did ICSI because of some male factor issues, but otherwise normal IVF, a fresh transfer and then a frozen transfer later. I’m in a relationship so we never froze eggs, only embryos. This was at my previous clinic.

I was 33 when we did that egg collection cycle, and 34 when we did our next one, with pretty similar outcomes on eggs/drop off rate. However we had a chemical pregnancy last time and maybe a BFP this time (awaiting beta test) so more success with Evewell. I do feel like they’ve been much more “on it” - I have blood tests every few days and my protocol is individualised to me and my challenges.

We chose our first clinic based on the success rates online, but also proximity to our house because it was all during covid. In the end I felt their approach was too standardised and I wasn’t impressed with their technology. Our consultant there wanted us to do PGT but previous clinic couldn’t offer it, so they recommended some clinics that could.

We chose Evewell for a few reasons. Partially because I had previously had a business connection with them, so I’d got to really see ‘under the hood’ and believed in their ethos and approaches, but was also really impressed by their clinic/technology. Their Patient Director told me their lab is “the cleanest room in London” because of the air filtration system they use.

The other factor was my acupuncturist really rated them. She’s a fertility acupuncture specialist so she sees a huge number of women going through IVF, and had positive stories to tell about their results and approach/care.

Your situation is so hard and only you can decide what’s right (with guidance from your consultant), but if it were me I wouldn’t be putting anything on ice (apart from any spare good embryos of course!). I would do a fresh transfer asap. We’ve been TTC for coming up 5 years and doing IVF for 2 without success, you just don’t know how long it will take and when it will work. With low AMH and older eggs I wouldn’t want to wait and see.

If I was going to move to ARGC it would be because their approach is brutal but effective. I’ve heard they have you in every morning for bloods so they can ensure your hormone levels are perfect, and they do a lot of in depth testing. But given you don’t have any known issues apart from the low AMH that might be overkill for you...