IVF/ICSI May 2025

[GamerGirl09]

Hey everyone!

Thought I’d start a thread for those of us starting everything next month :)

Personally, I’m from the UK and will be starting ICSI in Ireland. Just over the BMI limit for the NHS in the UK and have been trying for c.6 years for our first. Had final tests yesterday and consult. Going with ICSI as my husband’s sperm analysis came back teratozoospermic. Other than that, nobody can find any reason we couldn’t conceive naturally, it’s just not happened!

Currently phoning up pharmacies in the UK for medication quotes (struggling to source Bemfola at the moment though). I’ll be on the short protocol and they reckon it’s likely I’ll be a freeze all as AMH and AFC came back decent. If I get get the meds in time, looking like I’ll start at the very end of this month, with egg collection next month 🤞🏼

Would love to connect with others starting around the same time ♥️ Good luck to everyone ✨

@camelinastorm fingers and toes crossed for you 🤞🏼

@camelinastorm i hope its just a haematoma that is bleeding and not bcos of losing baby. I have everything xd for you that this works out.

@camelinastorm thinking of you. I know how worrying it is. I really hope everything is OK. Have you had any bleeding since?
Hopefully the epu can offer you some reassurance. Did your bleeding continue or stop with your last loss?
I had a loss at 5 weeks too but the bleeding continued non stop for 2 weeks for me.
When i did get pregnant again i dreaded that 5 week mark . I had some bleeding around 6 but apparently very common In early pregnancy. Hopefully thats what's happening you. I bled again around the 23 week mark and had to go hospital and they couldn't give an explanation as to what it was coming from other than saying it sometimes happens for no known reason so there's still hope even with bleeding.
Did you transfer just the one embryo?

@VioIetMoon Hiya it's stopped and there is no pains, but I don't know if it's the progesterone stopping the bleeding, I had 2 transfered hopefully one is still snuggled in, the epu are seeing me for a scan on Friday they won't see me as no pain and now no bleeding

@camelinastorm
If it's concerning you I would ring them back tell them your extremely stressed out and see if they can fit you in sooner. I rang them several times and made them see me sooner.
I had two transferred aswell and I do think that's what caused my bleeding as only one embryo took.
When was your transfer

@VioIetMoon my transfer was on the 9th so 18 days past 5 day, it's just so annoying getting positives so early and then bleeding it's just so disheartening

Does anyone have any experience with IDAscores?

We’ve had 1 more embryo frozen today so we have a day 5 3Ba and a day 6 5Bb. They each have IDAscores - the first is 3.80 and the second is 2.70 and from what I’ve read those are really low scores so I’m really upset about it and desperately trying to find some low IDAscore success stories :(

@WildForTheNight I don’t think you can get it through bupa unless it via a corporate policy, I basically get a lifetime benefit of £12k and when it’s gone it’s gone. But I could be wrong so definitely worth looking into! It has been very straightforward. The clinic just give me the codes and you call bupa and they authorise them.

@camelinastorm stay positive! We are all routing for you. Surely positive that it has stopped! 💕

How is everyone getting on?
My always regular as clockwork period was 3 days late so had the bank holiday anxiously awaiting and taking negative pregnancy tests hoping that a miracle had happened. Period arrived yesterday so started overleap this morning. Didn’t expect to feel so strange. The injection itself was fine though, hope I get used to it!

@KittyVB ah bummer. You always hear of people getting pregnant right before ivf and you just wish you were one of them. Hopefully this round of ivf will give you the positive news you've been hoping for.

Well I'm still sitting here with my pills to take before I can commence treatment and still no clue what's going on. I've no idea when I'm supposed to be taking them. I'm currently cd16 and I feel like im about to ovulate as my ovulation pains get so strong. I contacted the clinic today to get my partners semen results and the nurse emailed me back saying the Dr will ring and tell us in due course. I don't know what the hell that's supposed to mean . They constantly won't tell us our test results and constantly make mistakes. If we haven't heard back by Friday we're switching to tfp but we need our results before we can see them anyway as we don't want to be paying for tests again . It's horrible feeling like the clinics only care about money and not the stress they are causing their patient

@VioIetMoonI know! I thought wouldn’t it be typical… but anyway at least I know what’s going on and have to hope for the best. Feel like time is already going ten times slower!

So have the clinic instructed you to commence the meds? Or just given them to you with no guidance. So ridiculous! You definitely need to get those results from them. TBH we also had to chase the semen results and it was frustrating because you want to push them but also you want them to help you have a baby so we were always scared of going too hard 😆. Is it worth telling them if you don’t get an update you’re considering moving to another clinic? Really sorry you’re having to go through this at what’s already a very stressful and emotional time.

My EC was yesterday, we got 29 eggs and got the call this morning that 20 are mature and 11 have fertilised so we’re really happy that we’ve got some to develop! I’m hoping around half of them make it to blastocyst stage and we have some good quality ones to freeze. 🥳

Feeling good today, I was expecting to be out of it all day yesterday but the painkillers did their job! Just taking it easy for now, I’m on blood thinner injections every evening which I found quite sore! I saw somewhere that if you inject it with a drop on the tip of the needle it’s more painful though so I’ll maybe try and avoid that tonight (any tips anyone?).

Just waiting now and hoping to get good news on Fri & Mon on how many babies we’ve got.

best of luck to everyone starting their stims or waiting for news, praying for the best results for you all 💕

Spent all of yesterday crying but ok now and back to being positive 🤣

So I’m 32 and my husband is 33, we’re down as unexplained infertility because both the NHS and our IVF clinic have found nothing wrong with me and although my husband has slightly worse morphology than normal, they’ve said it still shouldn’t be the reason we’ve not got pregnant in the 5 years we’ve been trying. The clinic said based on all our info we’re really good candidates for IVF and they said they hoped for 10-17 eggs retrieved, hoped for 2-5 embryos and said our chances for live birth are 40-50%. So when we got 17 eggs out we were super happy, 12 mature and 11 fertilised - literally all going as the clinic had hoped and we felt super grateful and positive. Day 1 and 2 all 11 embryos were developing as expected - amazing. Then the weekend with no update, then Monday - one frozen that’s a 3Ab, there’s 4 at morula stage and a couple with the cavity starting to form. We were like oh shit it’s not going so hunky dory now 🤣 yesterday’s update - one more viable embryo frozen grade 5Bb…. Even knowing it could go absolutely any which way, it’s still a massive shock isn’t it. I did my research and have seen soooooo many success stories from embryos that aren’t 5Aa and also from those who only get one or two embryos! So I’m okay about that, really grateful for 2 and really positive about the gradings 🤞🏼

I’m just really concerned about this IDAscore thing. So it’s an AI score based on the system having analysed hundreds of thousands of embryos, a ‘deep learning tool’ which monitors the embryos from day 0 to 6. And it predicts the chances of getting a live birth, giving each embryo a score between 1 and 10, 10 being the best. I’ve seen studies of how accurate the IDA scores are in predicting live birth and the studies show it’s pretty accurate. I can barely find anything whatsoever on forums about this so my search for success stories to make me feel better has turned up nothing. The studies group anything with a score below 7.2 together, giving a success chance of 9% and I’ve seen that scores below 4 are considered pretty low. My 3Ab is scored 3.80 and my 5Bb is scored 2.70. So I’m super concerned. The clinic says their gradings override the IDAscore, they’re strict with what they freeze, and they believe these two embryos have a really good chance. So I’m just trying to be positive and hopeful and forget about the IDAscore, and I do feel a lot more positive today - I think I just needed a day to cry and research and come to terms with it and get over the shock I guess 🤣 Struggling to communicate all this irl so typing all my thoughts out here 🤣

Just looking for some good wishes and positive juju please girlies 🤣♥️

Well done to anyone still going through stims or had recent egg collections, and good luck to everyone ✨

@GamerGirl09 your grades seem good tbh I've never heard of the IDA scores for embryos and am on my 4th round of IVF under 2 different clinics so unfortunately have no guidance on these, my embryos are watched under the embryoscope and given grades on how they developed, what does the IDA use

@GamerGirl09 stay positive. Hopefully your next fet will be successful.

When I did the double I transferred a 5bc and 3cc so please don't stress too much about grades. Both were basically in the red meaning low chance

@camelinastorm Yeah, my clinic uses embryoscope too. The embryologists grade the embryos using the garner method (5Aa, 3Bc for example), but they use the embryoscopes in conjunction with the IDAscore software (so the embryoscope machine has this IDAscore software built in) and this software also gives the embryos a score as well, based on how they look and how they’ve developed across days 0-6. The score is used in conjunction with the normal/human grading system so it’s easy to prioritise which embryos to try first, as they can be ranked. Our clinic doesn’t actually like tell you the IDAscore as standard, but they gave me an embryologist report which shows all of the eggs extracted and how they’ve fared since retrieval - and it’s on this report that I saw each embryo has an IDAscore and looked into what that meant. All of my eggs that weren’t mature or didn’t fertilise and all of the embryos that didn’t make it to viable blast by day 6 had an IDAscore of 1.0-1.2. My day 6 5Bb has a score of 2.70 and my day 5 3Ab has a score of 3.80. Apparently an IDAscore range of 7.0-9.9 has high implantation potential and is a very promising embryo, 4.0-6.9 has moderate implantation potential and is ‘viable, worth considering’, and 1.0 - 3.9 has low implantation potential and has has ‘lower likelihood but possible’. Xx

@VioIetMoon Although we were hoping for more embryos and a range of grades (based on consultations, result of egg retrieval etc), we’re very happy and grateful for our 2 and also happy with their grades ♥️ I saw your story about being successful with your grades and I’ve looked into it more and seen sooooo many other similar stories so very positive and very happy with the grades. It’s literally just this IDAscore thing that doesn’t correlate with the very decent grades we’ve got! Our 3Ab and 5Bb aren’t ‘perfect’ but they’re grades that have got a really good potential ♥️ just this IDAscore thing says otherwise and I’m like why doesn’t the computer think they’re going to be successful 😩😩😩 and I’m thinking the computer has seen tons of embryos that have looked/developed the same as ours and it knows whether those led to live births and it’s given ours this score based on that so that’s the reason I’ve been really upset about it xx

@KittyVB well I did finally get talking with the Dr and got some clarity when I'm supposed to starting medication. He wants me to start of day 1 of my period with the pill so that all the women are synced up. I've just ovulated so it'll be 2 weeks from now. Apparently the other option of not taking the pill I'm too late for now 🙄 he's telling me the earliest now I'll start treatment is end of July if I start the pill In 2 weeks. Gosh it's alot longer than what I anticipated. With the other option I started the tablet to bring on bleed just 2 weeks before stims started. Really sucks to have to go on the contraceptive pill for 2 months. Seems a bit counterproductive doesn't it .
Hope your keeping well

@VioIetMoon aww no it crazy they want to sync you up with other ladies.
I did go on the pill for my transfer just so we could just have the dates more specific,

@VioIetMoon so sorry to hear of all the trouble you’ve been having. Really hope you get a really great outcome and can put all this behind you x

Oh I am so sorry to hear that is such a wait for you! In one way at least you know now when it is going to happen. Really frustrating that this is the way they operate. I joined another thread for June and there seems to be a few on there also on these meds it might be worth joining that too?

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/infertility/5321694-ivf-icsi-june-2025

Stay positive!! Let us know how you get on

@camelinastorm all the luck for your scan today 🤞🏼♥️

@DuskyMaisie hope you get good news today 🤞🏼

@lemonwrighty hope your EC went okay on weds ♥️