Low egg collection, will I ever get pregnant?!?

[ViVRe]

I am devastated 😭😭😭 I just came from my scan (I am stimming for my second egg retrieval) and the nurse said at the very best scenario we are looking at only 3 eggs retrieved. On my first cycle I got 5 eggs retrieved, 4 frozen. So I am doing even worse this time around. Per consultants request I waited 3-4months before doing another cycle because he wanted me to supplement with DHEA, I did very skeptically and now think I shouldn’t have it. The small change in stims (they added 75iu of Meriofert in addition to the Ovaleap I also did on first round). Both cases I am already on max dosage which is 450iu of stims.

I don’t know where to go from here other than preparing my heart and my pocket for at least another 3 egg collections in order to have a good egg count (if 15 total after 5 egg collections can be considered any good 🥴) and a chance of having a child. And yes, I know it only takes one good egg…but this is all even before adding fertilization and PGT testing (my husband also has issues), so I am just SAD today with the possibility that despite my very best effort it won’t happen for me.

I don’t know if I have it in me to go at this for years on end…I do want to be a mum so badly but don’t want to have the next 3-4years dominated by a life/relationship dealing with the pains of infertility. It just feels as if infertility slowly robs all the joy of all the other things you have in life and I’ve only be dealing with it for 1yr and 3 months so I can’t imagine how much impact it has on others dealing with it longer.

INFERTILITY SUcK$ 🤬

please, if you have any positive/success stories of not many eggs retrieved and then fertilization rates that turned into pregnancy, send them my way. God knows I need some positivity before my likely meager egg retrieval on Monday.

Hi @ViVRe. It can be really hard when you see others talking about higher egg collection numbers. You do need to look at things holistically though if you can - are you getting less eggs than would be expected for your age and AMH level?

My situation is a bit different than those, but I hope my story will give some hope. So my situation is same sex couple, no fertility issues, normal AMH, just needed donor sperm. We did 4 failed medicated IUIs before moving on to IVF. I did egg collections when I was 31/32. First egg collection everything looked like it was going fine - not a huge number of follicules, but was expecting around 7 eggs to be collected. On the egg collection day, they said the could not retrieve an egg from several of my follicules (they call it empty-follicule syndrome but my consultant said he believes its because the eggs aren't mature so 'stick' to the follicule wall). They collected only 4 eggs, and only 2 of them were mature. Both eggs fertilised and at day 5 we had a 5AA embryo transferred and froze a 4AA. My fresh transfer was a BFN and the FET transfer was a chemical pregnancy.

The clinic retested my AMH to try to understand why I had responded poorly for age, but result came back actually higher than it had before my 1st egg collection. We changed pretty much everything for the second egg collection - did a short protocol rather than a long protocol, different stim drugs and different trigger. I decided to take co-enzyme Q10 and myoinositol supplements ahead of the second egg collection. As it was felt my eggs hadn't mature properly, they let my follicules grow larger the second cycle than they normally would. They also increased the time between the trigger shot and egg collection. The second egg collection we were told they were expecting maybe 8 eggs to be collected and we got 6 eggs which were all mature and all fertilised. They were all still going on day 5, but only 3 looked suitable to freeze (they left the other 3 for an extra day but said on day 6 they still didn't look viable for freezing). We had a 5AA, 3BB and 3BC frozen

I had a FET with the 5AA at the end of 2021, and had my DD in 2022 😍
I had another FET earlier this year transferring the 3BB, and I'm 13 weeks pregnant.

Getting lower number of eggs than you were expecting feels crap. It feels like you're climbing an impossible hill, and it feels unfair particularly if no one can give you a good reason WHY you're not seeing the larger number of eggs collected that you see others on this forum getting.

However, it doesn't mean you wont be able to conceive 😀

It sounds like you've not fertilised your eggs, just frozen them? So its really hard to know at this point how good your egg quality is - you might have AMAZING egg quality and have very little drop off. You just don't know until you try to fertilise those eggs.

I would maybe speak with your clinic about whether you should be trying to fertilise your eggs and do the PGT testing as you go? It would prevent eggs being lost when they try to thaw them, and whilst it might mean more cost for the PGT testing doing it in batches rather than all together, it surely would be cheaper than having to do a lot of egg collections. At least you would get a better idea of the egg quality and how many PGT-normal embryos you have as you go along.

Wishing you the best of luck x

@2mumlife Thank you so much for sharing your story, I appreciate it more than you know. Congrats your pregnancy 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

I am 37, AMH is on low-normal range, as you mentioned my AMH also had a slight increase from one month to another, but truthfully AMH is a bit of a fluctuating number and on the grand scheme of things with fertility every month/cycle is different so it is hard to predict, but with age things won’t get easier. I noticed a change in my cycle length on Jan’23 and that prompted to save some money and invest on preserving my fertility. Apart from diminished ovarian reserve I have no known other fertility issues, l have a very healthy lifestyle, so it almost feels there’s very little changes I can make. I can advocate for a change in meds/stims, protocol to see if I will do better BUT again don’t want to build my hopes up if this is just how my body is and what it can produce. I have lots of faith and am praying so hard that these 4 little eggs I got back in October and whatever I get on Monday are of good quality.

My husband also has fertility (other health) issues - we are waiting on some results on his end before we can do a cycle together later this year, this was agreed between consultant and ourselves (husband and I) that I would do 2 cycles by myself to bank some eggs as a safety net and then attempt doing cycles with him. Since my husband and I have different views on potentially needing to use Egg/Sperm donation in order to have children, we thought it was best to bank some younger eggs whilst I could as time wise we both don’t want to transfer until later this year/early next year.

once again thank you so much! Wishing the best for you and your little family.

@ViVRe So pleased my story has been helpful. Nothing sounds like getting pregnant is a write-off for you and your partner. It definitely complicates things when you've got a couple of issues to address, and from what I've seen PGT testing can feel a bit brutal after all the effort to make embryos finding out some aren't suitable to use. Hopefully your husbands results all come back ok and you can give a cycle together a shot and see what happens.

We have friends who were looking to go PGT due to a health issue on male side, and after 1 round where there were low numbers of eggs and no embryos suitable for freezing at the end are having a big rethink.

I guess just try to keep in mind that 4 eggs is a good start, and there will be some people on this forum who would be ecstatic to get even 4 eggs - it really is all relative. Good luck for Monday, I hope you get more eggs than you're expecting x

We are an example of ‘it only takes one’. I had 5 eggs collected and only one embryo survived once fertilised so we just had the one chance. Currently 30weeks pregnant. Easier said than down but try not to focus too much on numbers.

I had 3 eggs collected, only one fertilised and that one is now my 3 month old daughter. Fingers crossed for you, I was disappointed at the low numbers too but just goes to show that it can happen!

Thank you @ACR7 @Bims2019 I’m trying to stay positive and keep telling myself “at least cycle wasn’t cancelled last minute” bc there was nothing there. I hope that even if they only get 1, and that 1️⃣ gets frozen, it is better than an egg lost during period 🥴 I don’t know if I will be as fortunate/lucky as you ladies to actually get any embryos and then pregnant, but I’m certainly doing all I can about it and at the end of the day, that’s all there is to it! Can’t hate myself/my body for not “producing” more than it does! 🤷🏻‍♀️

No, the frustrating thing is there’s just a complete lack of control and you just have to hope for the best. It’s such an awful process. I hope it all works out 🤞

Ladies, may I ask…have you always had poor ovarian response to fertility treatments? What stims/protocol (if you don’t mind sharing meds and dosages I would truly appreciate that)…particularly would love to know what you used that turned into viable pregnancy/live birth?!?

I have my egg collection on Monday and the best scenario will be 3 eggs collected. So, this being my 2nd cycle (4 eggs frozen last time) on max dosage of stims (450iu) it makes it official that I am diagnosed with “poor ovarian response” to treatment.

I am just getting ahead of myself and want to prep for a post-collection review consultation with the fertility clinic. I want to advocate for different meds (since I’ve been twice on Ovaleap and didn’t get good numbers) just for peace of mind and see if there would be any difference with a few changes. If you had different cycles did you change meds? Did you respond better on one cycle over the other? I know it’s a bit far-fatched…but I would like to try things differently next cycle just to say “well, I’ve covered all bases” 🥴 sorry for all the questions 😬

@2mumlife @ACR7 @Bims2019

thanks in advance for the support! 🤗

To be honest I don’t really know the meds and doses. I just went with the flow and took each stage at a time and did what they said. I know I went for bloods a few times a week and they never told be to up or decrease my injections so I must have responded in an average way. I did short protocol which was 10 days of injections then egg collection and as we only had one fertilised embryo they did a transfer on day 3 rather than wait for 5 days after collection. We have been really lucky as this was our first round of Icsi ivf on nhs.

@ViVRe My first round (the poorer round) we did a long protocol. Had Prostap injection for downregulation then we used menapur (and I think gonal-f as well?) for stims. Ovitrelle was the trigger.

Second cycle we did a short protocol with Ovaleap (I think I was only allowed the 400 dosage, as originally they said 450 but because my amh was high they said I was at risk of OHSS despite getting bugger all eggs) and Busserellin trigger, and that worked better but could also have been letting follicles mature more and delaying egg collection after trigger (they added an hour I think it was to their usual egg collection timing to try to make sure eggs had matured)

@ViVRe I hope it went well today.

I have my first EC on Wednesday morning and I have a lot of anxiety. I can’t wait for it to be over, although I will likely need a couple more cycles (can’t think about that now though…)