IVF/ICSI February 2025 🌟 ❤️

[ivfjourneyandme]

Hi ladies,

Starting early with this thread in hope some are on a similar time frame!

36yo, been trying to conceive for 2yrs. Severe MFI as well as AFC of 3 and AMH of 1.9pmol/l

First IVF cycle with ICSI ended with a total failed fertilisation - 4 eggs collected, all mature but no fertilisation.

We have now switched to long cycle and added in DHEA, COQ10, melatonin, vitamin D, omega 3 alongside our fertility vitamins.

I should start my period end of Jan; and then start down-regulating February with transfer hopefully late February if I’ve worked it out right!

Anyone else on this mental torture of a ride?

@Baggott1990 I had my EC Friday and can confirm I feel back to normal today.
Did they indicate prior to EC as to egg numbers they expected to retrieve?
I had a conservative estimate prior to EC, however, they retrieve a few more but not huge numbers.
It may be they need to up your medication but hopefully your 1 egg will turn into 1 great embryo and baby - it does happen x

Sorry @CanuckinLondon I read this wrong and thought you were saying they'd all arrested! Good luck to your 2 little beans

No reasons yet. But the nurse who phoned me said she would note the question down and ask the doctor to call me and explain a bit further

Glad you're feeling normal now. I have tomorrow off work, and then work from home rest of the week, which I reckon I can do from bed if I need to
They didn't tell me an actual number just 'everything looks good, and lots of follicles to take from'. I feel a bit silly for not asking that now, but as my AMH was average I was expecting 8-10
If this only doesn't fertilise and mature with ICSI, I hope they'll change my drugs up to give my eggs more juice to stimulate and grow. It would seem strange to do the same and expect different results

Thank you! @Sell123 hope the journey is going well for you!

Just had my (hopefully) penultimate scan. Nurse thinks I’m on track to trigger weds and have EC on Friday. Fingers crossed. On Friday I had 4 follicles growing together and the rest still tiny. Today I had 5 growing together and getting close to the line and 2 more not far behind so I’m happy with progress over the weekend.

good luck to all those waiting on results. I’m definitely starting to feel anxious now, and I thought stims would be the worst bit!

Well done, great news about the embryos @spttc Iv done one frozen embryo transfer and yes transfer was at roughly ovulation, around day 14-21 in the cycle (I'm sorry I don't remember exactly) but yes they try to mimic your natural cycle but with drugs.

@LuckyFlash @Twittwoo2020 good luck with your egg collections this week. Hoping this will be a great cycle for all of us!
@Baggott1990 I'm so sorry to hear about the low egg collection amount sometimes that just happens, a bit of bad luck? I had two egg collection with low amount of eggs collected and no fertilization at all and I have a good AMH and was in my 20s at the time! So these things happen. It's so hard though, still get upset the think about it but my point is your not alone and it does happen. Hopefully this 1 embryo will do really well and get to a lovely day 5 blastocyte!
With me they absolutely never have just done the same thing again! They have always increased doses every egg collection and changed triggers and hormone brand or type around until we got some sucsess. Your right to think that would not make sense to keep it the same next time. Wishing you all the best 💜
@RitaDsZ how are you doing did you get a day 5 update today?

@Cherryblossom90 when did you have your period after egg retrieval? I'm seeing online 7-10 days post? Anyone else have input of experience on previous cycles?

@Baggott1990 so sorry to read 😔 I have no advice this is my first round so I don't have much knowledge but hopefully that one develops well and is all you need 🙏🤞

@Cherryblossom90 this was really stressful, as usually the embriologysts call in the morning, and Saturday we had 6+ good embryos (6 in the monitored incubator and a few in a different one).
And today lunch time they just sent a message that they managed to freeze one! And they keep an eye on a few more.
Around 4 pm they messaged again, they froze two more, so now we have 3 frozen, and a few more potential tomorrow. Now I see this is not too bad, but last time we had 4 (not very good ones though).

Also my period started on day 11 after egg collection last time, and in general my cycle is 24-26 days.

@RitaDsZ sounds good! Very exciting if I was you I'd want to know grading of the frozen embryos. I remember you mentioning the clinic you are at id not to great with giving you detials so maybe its worth asking for your own peice of mind what grade embryos they have frozen as you may (hopefully!) have some really good ones there!

@spttc
My cycle was literally as normal the times we didnt do a fresh transfer, so my period came on day 28 like it always does.

@Baggott1990 - I’m sorry to hear your EC wasn’t as you had hoped. Might be worth asking about the Stims dose and trigger? Sending you a big hug

got the Day 6 call today. Confirmed one blastocyst. The Embryologist said the grading was 4CB (BC?) and that that’s considered quite good… but when I googled, it said it was considered poor… in any case, it’s getting sent off for PGT-A testing and I think I’ll just focus on whether it comes back normal …

@Cherryblossom90 - how is your process going?

Hope everyone is hanging in there

@CanuckinLondon I've had a really long chat with the embryologist yesterday after EC, basically she said that the grades are a bit of a beauty contest, where an euploid totally viable embryo often gets a "poor" grade.

She basically said not to worry about the grades we'll see on the report, as long as the clinic judged that embryo can be biopsied and frozen that means it's good enough!

@Cherryblossom90 how do you feel after your trigger? Not long now!

We've had our day 1 update:
10 collected
10 mature
8 fertilised
Keeping everything crossed for them 🤞🤞🤞

Next update will be a message on Thursday, if there are any in the race we'll then make a plan for fresh transfer on Saturday.

@Happibara - thank you. Definitely helps to know that. And those are great numbers!! All the fingers and toes crossed for you

@Happibara oh I'm so pleased to hear! Great news, that's so good! 😍Hopefully you'll have a great blastocyte to transfer. If you have multiple blastocyte are you planning to freeze the rest and potentially use them in the future or transfer 2 embryos now?
Yes triggered 10pm last night now I'm just waiting for EC tomorrow! Did anyone else take zivafert injection as the trigger with buserelin? What a faff right!
@CanuckinLondon sending you my warmest wishes for sucsess with your embryo! 💜

@Cherryblossom90 - yes, I did the same double trigger (I’m at Lister in London). It was to help boost the number of mature eggs for collection (at least for me that was the plan)

Waiting 2 weeks for PGT-A results is not going to be fun 😑

@Cherryblossom90 wow, I looked up your trigger and it sounds complicated 😂 But all done now, best of luck for tomorrow morning!!!

We intend to transfer 1 blastocyst on Saturday, and if there are any more, we'll have the clinic biopsy them for PGT-A, and freeze, to use in later FETs if viable.

The rationale for this is that our treatment and funding plan includes 2 EC / IVF cycles, but we have to use all embryos from round 1 before cycle 2.
Because of our age we can't afford to spend much time transferring potentially aneuploid embryos (as then we may end up with even worse eggs in the second EC), we would rather know if they're abnormal, and just move on to cycle 2 if needed.

I understand we'll be very lucky to even have spares on day 5, so trying not to get too attached to this plan 😅

@Happibara that makes alot of sense! Hoping for a really positive outcome for you!
@CanuckinLondon I'm at the lister in london too! Expecting similar numbers to you actually with 6-8 follicles they can see on my Monday scan. We are being treated for male factor infertility but nobody has mentioned zymot to me..... Did you ask for it specifically? I'm wondering if I should, or maybe/probably I have left it to late for this cycle lol.

@Cherryblossom90 - oh we may have been in the waiting area the same time :). Yes - our consultant, Dr. Bracewell-Milne, recommended it to give us every chance possible (Zymot + ICSI), even though everything was completely fine on my husband’s end. I have a feeling he was worried about the quality of my eggs, so wanted every remove as many obstacles as possible. The first EC, I had 9 eggs, 5/6? Mature, 5 fertilized, no blasts. 2nd time I had 7 eggs, 6 mature, 4 fertilized (of which 1 was partial), and now 1 blast

Thanks for that reply@CanuckinLondon we have a different consultant - Dr Thum - which may be why we were recommended different things.

I can't remember my numbers offhand but last cycle I know I started with 17 egg and ended with 2 blastocyte so I'm not sure how well my 6/8 follicles bode....ah well time will tell!

That's interesting about the grades.
So I received update on day 6, no more embryos, we have 3 in total. After a request they also sent over the grades from this and previous cycle and it's handwritten, we can't understand a word XD
Oh well, now just waiting for the clinic to arrange the frozen transfer, I guess.