Not responding to STIMS well

[TTC1209]

Hi

I had my day 8 IVF scan today after being in 300iu menopur. I have a low AMH of 4.5 so was told I may not respond well. I’ve been having a lot of bloating so thought I was responding okay but the scan wasn’t good. I have one follicle at 20mm, another at 10mm and another at 8.6mm and two that are much smaller apparently. They have said that they will do one more scan and if they are still not where they want them to be they will cancel the cycle. Apparently I need to have 3 decent follicles for them to go ahead with egg collection (NHS). I’m confused and devastated about this, there was no mention of doing STIMS any longer than 12 days and apparently cannot increase the dose at the clinic I’m at. Has anyone got any experience with this? Is it all over for me this cycle??

THANKS

Hi,
I'm in same boat. I’ve recently been increased from 300iu to 450iu ovaleap as my first scan at day 5 stims showed very few tiny ones. Todays scan (day 7 stims) shows 3 follicles around 9mm, one at 6 and one at 5.

it’s so disheartening isn’t it!!

Hiya I only had two follicles on day 6 of stims this time. They upped my dose to 450 and I slimmed for 13 days. Ended up getting 9 eggs at egg collection.

@CakePigeon30 that is amazing!! Here’s hoping my others catch up now I’m on higher dose

hi, low AMH here (3.3pmol) and I’ve had 5 attempts at collection, 3 successful and 2 cancelled due to poor response, so I thought I’d share my experiences.

To answer one of your questions, medically you can stim for longer than 12 days, one of mine I collected on day 18. As long as there’s growth and FSH is rising they can keep going provided the follicles are growing roughly in line. The issue with your current cycle is that you have 1 lead follicle which is ready (>16mm) and the others might not catch up in time before that one is released.

In the UK the max stims are 450ui in total, but often that might be a mix of different stims. Also different people react differently to different medications and it can vary round to round dramatically.

For example I’ve taken 225 of fostimon and 225 of meriofert with bemfola on three rounds: two successful (5 eggs each time resulting in 2 embryos) & one cancelled round. Then I took 225 of bemfola and 225 of menopur with cetrotide on two rounds: one successful (12 eggs making 5 embryos) & one cancelled round.

It’s tricky as I feel the NHS give up on patients quite quickly, my first 2 rounds were freezing privately so when my first NHS round (round 3 for me) failed due to poor response I had to really advocate to try again with different meds/protocol. I used my private rounds to show I could get eggs but maybe had a poor reaction that time so they agreed to give it another shot with new meds which then worked.

good luck!

Thanks everyone for all the info! It really is so disheartening!

my clinic apparently won’t give me more than 12 days of STIMS and won’t increase from 300iu - apparently that’s their maximum dose. They seem to have one size fits all approach and if that doesn’t work they e said they won’t help me anymore due to my low AMH. I’m really annoyed about how little they’re going to help me tbh. I can only hope that the 8.6 and 10mm catch up with the other one enough in the next 3 days ☹️

@TTC1209 when is your next scan?

@ivfjourneyandme tomorrow morning and if not grown enough it’ll be cancelled. Egg collection was scheduled for Monday. When is yours? X

@TTC1209 Monday. I think mine will be cancelled 😭 Yours are much bigger than mine. Best of luck for tomorrow x

@ivfjourneyandme thats another good few days of stims though! I’ve only had two days extra between scans. And no extra dose! Got everything crossed for you /m- definitely not feeling hopeful about mine x

@TTC1209 all the luck for tomorrow. Keep me posted xx

Just had my scan - my follicles have grew quite a bit and another has grown too so now I have 4. One is way bigger at 24mm so I’ll probably lose that one and they’ll go for the other 3. They’re measuring at 13, 15 and 16mm and have another 3 days of stims. Egg collection has been booked for Tuesday. It’s amazing how much they grew in just two days and that’s with no increase in dosage so with your increase and few more days you could get really decent growth!

Wow that is amazing. How are you feeling x

I feel much better to be given the chance but obviously not thrilled that number of follicles is still poor. But my AMH is low so I expected that tbf x

I rang the clinic today. They said Monday will be decider if cycle is cancelled or not

That’s what they said with me today was the decider. But Monday is 3 days away think of how much your follicles could grow in that time x

Here’s hoping! 3 were under just under 9 2 days ago so hopefully they’ll make it 🤞🏻

One of mine was 8.6mm on Wednesday and now is 15! So there’s definitely hope xx

I know its been a while sorry to resurrect this, would you mind sharing what were yhe outcomes?

Hi - I ended up with 4 follicles but only 1 egg was retrieved which didn’t fertilise. I did another round which was cancelled due to poor response to the stims but my AMH is really really low. I am however 21 weeks pregnant naturally after lots of supplements and acupuncture. Another clinic thought I would respond better to a different stim and protocol which we were about to try before I got pregnant x

So happy for you glad it worked out in the end x gives me hope in the case of ivf doesnt work!

@Lavendar01
I ended up getting 9 eggs at egg collection. 5 were mature, three fertilised and two made it. They were only early blasts so weren’t able to grade them so they decided to transfer both. One stuck and my lovely daughter was born in August last year 🥰

Thats amazing😍, hearing stories like this helps give me some reassurance. I remember seeing one of your posts mentioning you also didn't have much going on day6 scan and menopur was increased and stimmed for 13days. May I ask how many trigger shows you were given? Just wondering if being on higher stimms has an impact on the trigger shot. Thanks so much 😊

@Lavendar01

I triggered with zivafert think the dose was 10000 from what I remember it’s two vials and one syringe? Think that’s the normal dosage.

They did decide to leave me two hours longer between trigger and egg collection than my previous attempt (was my second ivf cycle) to make sure that eggs were mature

x