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Infertility

Our Infertility Support forum is a space to connect with others in the same position, discuss causes, treatment and IVF, and share infertility stories of hope and success.

PGT-A Success Stories after recurring miscarriage

19 replies

clhiu · 07/09/2022 18:36

Hi there lovely people.
As of today I've been confirmed to have had a second MMC in a row.
This is the 4th miscarriage in one year out of 4 pregnancies I've ever had and I have no previous children.
I'm 42 and 7 months and all pregnancies were conceived naturally and easily.
DH and I did a number of private investigative tests after the 3rd loss back in March and found no obvious cause for having recurring miscarriage so it's just put down to age-related poor egg quality as I understand the risk of aneuploidy at my age is 75%...I still hoped 1 on 4 would be good, but I guess odds don't really work that way and today I had to find out the hard way.
I also had NHS investigative tests done on POC from the last MMC and they found this to have been a triploidy - one rare type of chromosomal abnormality, but which isn't age-related apparently, something in a way I found even more frustrating. Following this find, DH and I were also referred for genetic testings to ensure we would not carry that translocation and it transpired we do not so the triploidy appears to have happened out of sheer bad luck.
The private consultant who did our investigative testing suggested IVF with PGT-A for improved chances of success and lower risk of miscarriage, however I am aware there is paucity of evidence in support of this procedure and even the HFEA website rates this add-on treatment as red. I'd still chance this as we don't really have anything to lose and I don't know if we can put ourselves through the stress of conceiving naturally again just to face another disappointment, however the costs are considerable so I would love to get some real life stories of how this panned out for other people.
If you have any positive stories of successful pregnancy outcome via PGT-A after unexplained recurring loss, especially past the age of 40 please send them my way, it would truly make my day and give me hope that maybe there's still a chance for me. Flowers

OP posts:
Addidas · 07/09/2022 19:36

6mc aged 28-33 . 1st pgs worked. We had 3 of those being ivf and 3 natural.

then worked again (once I had some surgery for secondary infertility as 2pgs gave me a bfn but my uterus needed some work and no 3 worked ) .

I wish you all the luck x

clhiu · 08/09/2022 07:47

Thank you @Addidas , I really appreciate you taking the time to share your experience.
So sorry for your losses, 6 must have been so hard! After this 4th I honestly don’t know how I’m going to cope, so devastating isn’t it?

If there’s anyone else out there able to share any experiences I would be eternally grateful x

OP posts:
Bubblyinblanch · 08/09/2022 08:26

Are you sure your womb lining is OK? Have you been checked for adenomyosis? That can be age related. I am 41 and have it. Might be worth a check.

clhiu · 08/09/2022 10:10

@Bubblyinblanch oh no, in fact I must say I never even heard of this one before now 🤦🏻‍♀️! So much to know about the female body isn’t there? I learnt more in this past year following the losses than I think I would have ever imagined.

i had a 3d scan of my uterus following recommendation of the private specialist and found no abnormalities. I think the specialist ruled out any problems with the lining based on the fact that my periods are very regular and not especially painful or heavy, but I’ll be sure to mention this as part of my next consultation, thanks for the suggestion.

My I ask if you also suffered losses or had fertility issues and were told that may be responsible for it?

Tx x

OP posts:
Mazzaroo2022 · 08/09/2022 14:14

@clhiu Came across your post as I'm currently miscarrying. I'm so sorry for your losses and can't imagine how difficult it must have been. My experience has been infertility for 4 years and then a failed round of IVF and egg quality deemed the reason why. After this I read the book it starts with the egg by Rebecca Fett and 3 months after implementing the changes got pregnant naturally. I've devastated to say we've lost that pregnancy at 11 weeks. But I now know I can get pregnant naturally and believe it is all down to the supplements the book recommended for egg quality. If you read the book reviews on Amazon there are loads of ladies on there your age plus that have had success. It's worth a go x

clhiu · 09/09/2022 17:29

Hi @Mazzaroo2022 , I am so sorry to hear you are going through this. It is absolutely rubbish and nobody should have to, especially more than once. I hope the physical side at least isn’t too painful or lengthy and you can make a quick recovery.

Thanks for the advice, I am familiar with that book, read some reviews and a sample, but decided against it for now, especially since my private consultant put me on a number of supplements already, which are believed to improve egg quality and I believe to be very similar to the ones in the book. Needless to say, even those did not make a difference, at least not on this occasion, but I will continue with those and maybe try the full book in the run up to the IVF cycle.

thanks x

OP posts:
clhiu · 09/09/2022 17:31

If anybody who’s done IVF with PGT-A has stories to share on here, it would really help me with the decision process. I feel like I have really tried everything else at this point

OP posts:
birdbybird · 09/09/2022 22:53

Hi @clhiu i think there’s a thread here for ivf with Pgt-a testing.
im similar to you. Will be 42 in a couple of months and suffering secondary infertility. Had ivf two blastocysts. One transferred and resulted in a mc - found out yesterday it was trisonomy 18. And found out today my spare blast that was Pgt-a tested was aneuploid. So not a good round. Am contemplating another couple of rounds with Pgt-a and then call it a day.

clhiu · 10/09/2022 12:10

Hi @birdbybird, sorry to hear about your loss and fertility struggles, appreciate you taking the time to share your experience.

May I ask if the blastocyst the was transferred and resulted in mc was PGT-A tested and found to be an euploid or whether it was not tested?

I’ve come across some other threads on this subject, but all posts seem to be really negative or at best vague about outcomes, yet to find someone saying they would recommend it or that was definitely worth the money, but I’ll have another look, probably more to find that I have missed x

OP posts:
birdbybird · 10/09/2022 15:18

Hi @clhiu the one transferred wasn’t tested and why I’m planning to test next time. I’m now feeling Pgt-a is the way to go.

seven201 · 11/09/2022 11:17

This probably isn't helpful. I recently had a eupaloid embryo transferred and still miscarried. I am complex though as I also have immune issues, so I think my body attacked the embryo, despite the steroids and other stuff I'm on. I have one eupaloid left. I don't think I regret doing the testing as it saved us a wasted round (4 tested - one didn't survive defrosting, one mosaic and 2 eupaloid - I was 38 I think when they were collected, am 40 now).

I'm under an ivf clinic and a separate private miscarriage/immune clinic and my dr there doesn't really rate pgta testing. It's all very confusing.

Blueskies4 · 02/12/2023 20:10

@clhiu hi there, wondering if you got any good information on this that you’d be willing to share please? I’m considering this route too xx

clhiu · 04/12/2023 15:42

Hi @Blueskies4, pleased to meet you, but sorry to hear your journey isn't as straightforward as those who'll ever even have to know what PGT testing is!

Let me preface this with the fact that if I had the financial potential to do this, I would have done multiple rounds of EC in the first place or most certainly would have wanted to do more now, but that was it for me, only enough funds for one round.

I went ahead on account of the fact it seemed a good solution to my problem, although I was skeptical about paying so much money to do IVF, when I could get pregnant easily. My consultant's concern was that we wouldn't get any euploids, but that if we did she was not at all worried about transfer as she could see implantation was not my issue...
On account of being able to afford just one round, I was put on high dose stims to try and create as many blasts to test as possible in one go and also did IMSI to try and minimize sperm-based defects. I got 5 blastocysts in one cycle out of 10 fertilised eggs, which I was really happy about as I was quoted a 30-40% blastulisation rate. Out of 5, only one was confirmed euploidy, 3 aneuploidy and 1 tested inconclusive (it was tested a second time and it tested inconclusive again, it's currently on ice, but no idea if it's any good or not).
Whilst I was really hoping for at least 2 normal ones, I was happy to have got just the one, after all my consultant said she wasn't worried about implantation or the transfer.
This is when things started taking a more complicated, costly and frustrating turn...because we only had a shot at one, my consultant convinced me to have all these extra tests to assess endometrial health etc, etc...because you know, since we only had one, we wanted to give it the best possible shot. I had ERA, EMMA, ALICE, Natural Killer Cells Chicago tests (bloods and endometrium) and a hysteroscopy. These tests confirmed there is nothing wrong with my uterus, despite 2 ERPC and 4 MCs in total by that point, I had no infection or bad bacteria. The only 2 finds were, slightly elevated Natural Killer Cells toxicity (for which I was prescribed intralipids upon transfer) and low volume of lactobacillus in my endometrium (for which I was prescribed a course of vaginal probiotics and started taking some oral ones off my own back).
Because of all these extra tests, but also the wait for PGT-A results, the time that lapsed between my 4th miscarriage and my FET finally was 7.5 months - a long time in which I could have almost certainly gotten pregnant naturally again, at least a couple more times, but I strictly abstained from trying as I trusted the process and didn't want to screw things up halfway through (a choice I now fully regret).
Unfortunately my FET resulted in a chemical pregnancy, MC number 5 and precisely what I was trying to avoid by spending all that money and going through all that length. The embryo was low grade 6B-C, but I was told euploid status trumps grade so much that in certain countries they don't even look at grades of tested embryos. I was told that based on my clinic's own statistics, the clinical pregnancy rate for euploid embryos in my grade was 36%, the chemical pregnancy rate was 12% and the BNF rate was 52%, so I literally fell in the lowest odds once again.
I was given a couple of possible explanations for such outcome, one being that PGS may still miss between 3-5% of abnormalities and the other was that I might have had an even stronger auto-immune reaction than the NKC test were able to identify and that for future transfer I should be on a stronger immune protocol than just intralipids.

Sorry I went off on one and this post is very long and probably not very helpful now. The reality is that at my age, egg quality is an issue and likely to cause the only way to get around poor egg quality is to screen the embryos so as much as I'm very disillusioned with the whole thing on account of my personal experience, if I had the cash to do more rounds I absolutely would.

After the IVF fail I went to see a reproductive immunologist - thinking if an euploid embryo still failed me, there must be immune issues at play. I spent 3 months trying to get pregnant on their immune protocol with superovulation and completely failed to conceive, the one thing that used to come naturally to me suddenly wasn't happening anymore. I ditched the immune and superovulation stuff and got pregnant immediately that month, unfortunately that was another chemical, so 6 losses now in total, one of which IVF with PGT-A.

I hope this can be of some help to you and feel free to ask any other questions xx

OP posts:
Blueskies4 · 12/12/2023 10:12

@clhiu I’m so sorry for your losses and what you have been through with it all, that sounds incredibly tough. I can imagine after all of that your hopes are massively up because you’ve ticked so many boxes.

Thanks so much for taking the time to reply, it is helpful.

Wishing you all the best for the future x

Hklg · 30/01/2024 06:49

Hi
i wondered if anyone can share more similar experienced relating to this post. I am 38 and had 3 miscarriages in 7 months- the last one being december/jan and one loss being down to trisomy 21. My miscarriage Doctor says dont bother with pgt-a and IVF doctor says go for it to avoid more losses. Any advice appreciated. To add - assume miscarriages are related to egg quality/age for the purpose of this post (if i find out it’s something else we will try again naturally). I have one DD who is almost 3.
thanks!

Caipulli · 02/02/2024 18:22

Hi I would recommend reading It Starts with the Egg even just for all the information on avoiding toxic chemicals (which are scarily prevalent in our daily lives… from tinned food cans lined with BPA to PFAS in anything that contains fragrance). These are endocrine disruptors and known to impact fertility /linked to foetal abnormalities and MC. Even if you don’t follow the supplement advice it had some good lifestyle advice.

I am 38 and have been pregnant four times since 2020 (1 molar pregnancy, 1 MC at 7 weeks, 1 TFMR for brain abnormality detected at 5 months and 1 CP)
The TFMR just killed me and I took a long time to even be able to start thinking about trying again. I know I will never get over it.

My fertility doctor advised me to do PGTA if I could afford it because I had so much anxiety. But I live in France and it considered to be eugenics here so it is illegal. I have to go to Spain (luckily only two hour drive away) and pay private even though we would have had three free rounds of IVF here in France.

I did one ET and got two 5AA blasts - only one was viable as one had trisomy 21 (DS)
Second ET and we got 2 5AA and 2 6AA. We tested two (as it’s 400€ each) and only one was viable.

We did a transfer last week so I’m currently in the agonizing 2WW - going to do a pregnancy test on Tuesday.

so this isn’t really a success story (yet…maybe…) but I can say that doing the PGTA has given me peace of mind. And if we hadn’t doing the testing then I may have miscarried the second non viable embryo and not sure what I would have done with DS.

Although the whole process is so slow (I had several cancelled cycles because endometrial lining wasn’t thick enough) sometimes I do wonder if we had just tried naturally would I already be pregnant.

i hope you make the decision that brings you peace of mind and hopefully a BFP :)

Caipulli · 02/02/2024 18:23

Sorry that should be EC egg collection, not ET egg transfer ! Mixing up my acronyms !

Caipulli · 02/02/2024 18:39

Also synthetic fragrance contains pthalates not PFAS - but both are bad and should be avoided!

Hklg · 02/02/2024 21:31

Thank you for sharing your experience with me. I am so sorry for what you have been through and really hope this time works out for you.

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