"It starts with the egg" book

[backinthefog]

Hello all,

I'm interested in whether anyone has read "It starts with the egg" and whether implementing any / all of the recommendations made any difference to you?

Some background:

• I'm 37 with low AMH
• In the last 15 months I've had 2 natural pregnancies and 2 IVF pregnancies - 3 miscarriages (at 11, 5 and 8 weeks) and a TFMR (16 weeks).

I'm thinking poor egg / sperm quality is our issue.

Since June 2022 we have:

• Not drank any alcohol or caffeine
• Eaten at least 5 fruits and veg a day
• Not eaten chocolate, cake, sweets etc (apart from maybe a dozen of examples)
• Reduced processed food to only occasional oven chips and sandwich meat slices
• Taken prenatals, ubiquinol, vit-D, omega 3
• Switched to natural cleaning products, toiletries and replaced plastic kitchen items.

I recently bought and read "it starts with the egg" to see if there are other things we should be doing to improve egg quality and it's stressed me out because there's advice in here which is at odds with what I have been doing but to follow the book completely would be really restrictive (and it's not like I'm exactly living the high life at the moment!)

Eg the book says to eat no more than 2 portions of fruit a day because of the sugar, avoid vegetables like carrots, sweet potato and to remove carbs from one meal a day.

I'm wondering whether others have found the book worked and, if so, to what extent did you follow the advice or whether it's unlikely to make any difference and therefore I should just ignore it and stick with what we were doing.

Hello OP, people rave about this book but to be honest I didn’t find it any help for us. We had our first IVF round after following a lot of the advice in it and I had a miscarriage.

I didn’t bother taking any supplements after that, just folic acid and in our second round we got our normal embryo which I’m pregnant with now (third trimester 🤞)

I don’t personally think the advice make a big difference if any and looking back I wouldn’t have bothered with half the supplements I tired…IVF on the other hand, was a miracle for us. good luck to you on your journey, I hope you get your little miracle soon x

Sorry OP, I didn’t read fully. Really sorry, I see you’ve gone through IVF before. I know how hard it is to have a miscarriage and especially through IVF which is supposed to be the ‘cure’. We tested our embryo in our second round, I honestly think this made all the difference. Our embryo we had a miscarriage with was a 4AA but the one I’m pregnant now with was a 4BB. Morphology doesn’t mean much at all….

Also we had a lot of shit eggs and sperm. In my first round we had 14 eggs but only one embryo which I miscarried and in our second round we had 15 eggs but only one embryo again….
Feel like we were always going to get one embryo no matter what we did…but I might be being skeptical. I think after years of supplements I’d just become cynical to the whole industry…

@summerpoolandsun thank you for replying to me.

Sorry to hear that you had a challenging ride with IVF too. It's great to hear that your second round worked.

IVF is a challenge for us as we don't get many eggs. First round got cancelled due to lack of response. Second round I got 6 eggs and 1 3AA blastocyst. Third round I got 1 egg and 1 day 3 embryo. I think I might be done with IVF and I'm hoping I might be able to fall pregnant naturally again (unless we moved onto DEIVF but I'm not sure I'm quite ready to do that).

Thank you for your thoughts on the book.

All the best with the rest of your pregnancy.

Thank you for starting this thread. I'm having my second miscarriage so was also wondering about egg quality being a factor.

I had also avoided caffeine and alcohol for several months in advance of the most recent pregnancy, though I can't say I was as good as you at avoiding chocolate/sweets, and hadn't made any changes around plastic use.

My concern is that I don't want to be too restrictive and then get stressed as a consequence.

@KokoNights I'm so sorry to read that you're having a miscarriage.

I think you're right to have the thought about being too restrictive. I'm not really sure what the right answer is. You read all these success stories from people who say they've done these things so I start implementing all these changes but it does start to dominate your life and it's impossible to know how much this helps. It certainly hasn't been a successful strategy for me yet.

I really do wonder whether this is all just down to luck and chance rather than things you can control.

Hi, sorry to hear about your miscarriages OP.

I read the book too. The one thing which stood out for me (because I also have low AMH) is the DHEA. Our dr also asked me to take it as it is meant to improve egg quality - he did say that there is 'some' evidence to support this and while not all the drs in the community agree about its benefits he as a dr does suggest it when appropriate. I cannot tell you about results yet as we have not started our cycle yet. Our main issue was MF but we had had my low AMH thrown into the mix too so feeling quite nervous.

Hi @backinthefog so sorry for your losses, have you tried looking at any further testing for the miscarriages? I too have low amh and I’m 35. I have never had a natural pregnancy but have had 2 IVF miscarriages. I have just found out I have some immune issues with elevated natural killer cells and am exploring protocols for that at the moment.

@Loulaki good suggestion. I have heard good things about DHEA. I did ask my previous fertility clinic about DHEA and they dismissed it. I'm not going to do IVF anymore so I'm not sure how to go about legitimately sourcing DHEA. I'm trying to get to referred to a recurrent miscarriage clinic so I might ask my GP or the gynaecologist about this.

Good luck with your IVF cycle. We have MFI too, although his results move from "poor" to "just about acceptable" depending on when you do the test so I'm assuming they were on better form in the months we conceived naturally.

@Ems123456789 sorry to hear about your miscarriages. After my third miscarriage I asked the fertility clinic about testing but they said it was likely to be poor egg quality, and also dismissed the research about NK cells. However, I am now trying to get referred for testing as I think it makes sense to look into this. It's just a slow process getting GP appointments and waiting for specialist appointments whilst my AMH is probably ticking downwards! I hope you have some good news soon now that they have identified a possible reason for your miscarriages.

@backinthefog glad you are looking into more testing.

Keep us posted with how you get on. I know what you mean with all the waiting.

I did my last ivf cycle in October November time (which ended in miscarriage) and I’ve been mentally ready to start again since February but waiting for all the tests/follow ups/more tests etc, whilst it’s good to do more testing to try and get to the bottom of things, I also feel impatient as just want to get on with my next attempt! Like you my AMH is low so I know what you mean feeling like a ticking time bomb.

Thank you @Ems123456789

I hope you get some answers too and can start your next cycle soon. Good luck. Let me know how you get on x

Hi everyone. I have recently gone through two rounds of ivf which have failed drastically! Not blastocyst on both cycles. We initially went through ivf for male factor infertility but now doctors and suggesting that my egg quality may be an issue. I have got the book it starts with an egg with the hopes that it will improve my next cycle. I’ve read the reviews about the book but most positive reviews are from people who have conceived naturally but not enough from people undergoing IVF or fertility treatments.

has anyone implemented information from the book and received a positive outcome from their Ivf treatments?

Hi everyone,

I can see this thread was started a few months ago - how is everyone getting on?

I am 32, low AMH, low follicle count during my hycosy scan. I wasn’t leading the healthiest lifestyle last year with full time work/stress, take away food and alcohol every so often.

after reading “It Starts with the egg” I have bought all of the listed supplements including DHEA and have switched to a Mediterranean diet with no alcohol for the last few months. I am following the book rigidly so I am hoping it has a positive impact.

We are starting our first IVF cycle next month. The book is what has given me some hope back so I want to make sure we are now doing everything we can to improve our chances.

It would be great to hear any updates? Xx

Hi @Clarabelle10 good luck with your round and well done on the lifestyle changes. I have amh 2.0 and follicle count of 6 (though it’s been lower before). I’ve had 2 eggs collections in the last few years (2 eggs on first one and 6 on the second due to probably taking DHEA). Unfortunately I’ve got pregnant each transfer (3) but lost each of them and so I’ve now moved clinic and will be doing genetic screening on future embryos. I have changed job now too being a freelancer which is less stressful for me and easier to manage around my schedule. Also being healthier this time ahead of a next potential collection in March! My new clinic tested my testosterone and advised I didn’t need to take DHEA which is interesting. Wishing you the best of luck.

Hi @Clarabelle10 I wasn't on the original
Thread but both me and a friend followed the book. We both got pregnant with our second round of IVF. I also did fertility accupucture weekly. I think she did too. I'm soon to be 41 with baby due mid March. I think it helped me as I upped from intermediate to advanced for the 3 months prior to my second round. Best of luck x