Letrozole Vs IVF

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Hi - just looking for some advice/ past experience please

We went for fertility tests and everything has come back normal. Which is great. But still doesn't give us our baby 😞

They have suggested we could have stimulated ovulation, but the clinic is pushing IVF due to my age (39).

I'm unsure whether to just go straight for IVF rather than delay things with letrozole

Any thoughts?

X

At the age of 39 you have 14% chance of having a baby via IVF (this is the statistic that our clinic gave us, all tests came back normal). I would definitely not wait much longer, chances will be dropping every month.... Sorry for the negative spin on this.... But I think this statistic is true.

Thank you - think I'll get the ball rolling ASAP

Also, another statistic that was given to us, that for someone of age 38-40, it takes around 3-4 cycles to be successful. So that is at least 1.5 years of your life. Again, in our case this was spot on.

I started TTC at 33, after 3 years of trying naturally we underwent some private tests which showed that there were no issues for either of us.
They tried me on Letrozole and Chomid even though it had been proven I was ovulating (I understood it to be that these meds are used to kick start ovulation). That month I produced 4 good size follicles and was advised NOT to have sex incase of multiples. I hadn’t paid hundreds of pounds for the tests/meds to be told not to proceed that month so I did … nothing happened.
We were finally accepted for NHS funding for IVF a few years later and now have a beautiful baby boy (started IVF at 38, got pregnant at 39, had baby at 40).
In my case the Letrozole/Chomid done nothing for me so IVF was a must.
You have to do what’s best for you but once I started IVF the clinic put the fear of god into me by stating statistics of how much a woman’s fertility drops at 37 then again at 40.
Wishing you all the best x

Hi. We did 4 rounds of medicated IUI with donor sperm in my early 30s, using letrozole and gonal-f. Not a wiff of a pregnancy. We then moved to IVF.

What you could do is try a few cycles on letrozole whilst you do the paperwork and wait for IVF?

I have pcos
And am on letrozole
Cycle 2 of letrozole atm..

Its bought ovulation fwd
And shortened cycle length of pcos cycles

Think theyll offer us a shot of nhs ivf early next yr

We have miscarriage history

My amh is high
But lots of eggs - doesn't mean gd qual eggs

@contentsmayb sorry if mildly irrelevant but I've just got a question on something you wrote:

, it takes around 3-4 cycles to be successful. So that is at least 1.5 years of your life.

How did you get 1.5yrs from 3-4 cycles?

The reason I ask: so my situation is a little different, I was just scrolling the infertility forum to get as much info on different options and what worked for people / what didn't as I can, because I'm an absolute newbie - I've only had 1 IVF cycle. The IVF cycle was unsuccessful so I'm hoping to now maybe do 3-4 cycles of freezing embryos whilst I'm still young (29) to them have a few good ones that I can transfer for my 2nd, 3rd, 4th child. In short, im 29, AMH 13, AFC 20. In my IVF cycle we got 13 eggs, 8 mature, 8 fertilised, 3 made it to day 5/6 but none were euploid. So my thinking is that I'm more likely to have euploid embryos now than in, say, 5 years so it makes sense to just freeze a bunch now for use later. I thought a cycle takes maybe 3 weeks? And then next month I could do another, no? So 3-4 cycles would be 3-4 months? Or would I have to wait between cycles? Doing it privately if that matters, not NHS.

before you start ivf, they will do various investigations, tests, etc. that is 1-2 months. Then depending on your protocol (long or short), it will take another month or two to do a cycle. Sometimes they change your protocol or want to run additional tests based on your response. If you freeze eggs and want to test them, then it’s 2 weeks waiting for results after egg collection, so that’s another month. Then if you are doing a frozen transfer, then it’s a month of meds/transfer. You cannot do cycles back to back usually because your body needs to recover. Usually they do one month off. Let’s say you transfer a fresh or frozen egg, then you wait for results, another month gone. What if the transfer is not successful and you have a chemical pregnancy? You wait a month after before you can start a new cycle. Sometimes your body gets overstimulated and and a fresh transfer is not recommended.

in other words, there’s a lot of breaks depending if you are doing transfers or just freezing all eggs. Even if you are just freezing all eggs, you will probably want to do a month break between each cycle. It also gets a lot emotionally and physically and you might need a break between the cycles. Sometimes you can get an infection after egg transfer and need a break again to heal.

I think 4 months is probably not realistic unless they do something like duo stimulation which is not for everyone.

You would also want to know if your embryos are coming back euploid or not before you start a new cycle. Because your meds might need to be adjusted for example.