17 days stimulating, anyone had success after stimulating for so long?

[ButterscotchBabe]

I'm going through 3rd round of IVF, the follicles are growing slowly and so doctors and nurses have kept trying to cancel the cycle, saying it's not working and I need donor eggs. I've insisted we carry on (we're paying) and hoping for egg collection next week. By Monday I will have been stimulating with FSH & LH for 17 days, has anyone had success stimulating longer than the norm?

Some background info:
Age 31
AMH 5
AFC 5

1st IVF cycle - long protocol 300IU - disaster, ovaries didn't wake up after down reg, cycle cancelled

2nd IVF cycle - short protocol 300IU, 13 days stimulating, retrieved 5 mature eggs, only 1 sort of made it to blast (wasn't developing properly), unsuccessful transfer

3rd IVF cycle - short protocol 225IU, on Friday (after 14 days stims) the 3 biggest follicles were 9mm, 12mm and 14mm, hoping for at least 3mm growth on Mondays scan

I decided to reduce the stimulation dose from 300IU to 225IU in the hope it will improve egg quality, although my clinic insist this will not happen. However Create have a whole business model around using low dose stimulation for better quality eggs, so there must be some science behind it!

Without wanting to sound unkind - I really wouldn't be paying a fortune for experts advice and then not taking it! If they are advising you to stop, I would do so. Have a consultation (either with them or another clinic if you've lost faith), and then try again at some point with a different protocol if you wish. Dabbling with things yourself is not a good idea.

I had almost identical stats to you and did a short protocol. Our first round was near identical to your second but luckily we were successful with an early blast transfer on day 5. Your second round stats are probably pretty typical for what you could expect with your numbers. Not sure why they dropped your stims for the third cycle. Definitely worth further discussion or perhaps a clinic move if you've lost faith.

Just seen it was your decision to reduce the stims. I think unfortunately you're seeing the effect of that. At 31 egg quality shouldn't be an issue so I wouldn't have gone down that route personally and that's why the clinic wouldn't have advised it. With a low AMH and AFC you need the high stims to get your follicles to develop enough. 1 embryo to transfer from 5 eggs collected is pretty standard stats, it was just unlucky it didn't work. 1 unsuccessful round doesn't mean anything unfortunately. Hope the clinic can reassure you and you can feel more positive if you try again.