IVF / ICSI June 2025

[GLizzie88]

Hi All!

I might be early to it here, but thought I'd start a threat for anyone who knows they'll be going through it in June this year!

I'm based near Sheffield, and will be going through the treatment in sheffield. I'm 36, will turn 37 during the treatment. We've been through one failed round last August, so we've spent the time since getting further private checks done, and now we're ready for the next round. We came back as 'normal' on the nhs tests, but we found other things with these private tests! We've had all of our follow ups, catch up consultation appointments. Next appointment is our nurse appointment on the 5th May, then after that it's waiting for my next cycle to start at the very end of May / beginning of June.

From the further tests we've had done, I'm now on thyroid medication to bring my thyroid down to fertility recommended levels, my partner had DNA Frag & Oxidative Stress tests done and we've made improvements based on the results of these. I've also been having some acupuncture, which I've also feel has helped my sanity!

Please share your stories and hopefully we can all support each other during this. I'm much more nervous this time, even though I know we're better set up than we were last time.

@CloudyIvy55 oh bless you. How are you feeling now any easier? 8 is still a brilliant number & hopefully one of those will be the one. Keep smiling wishing you so much luck.
How are you feeling physically are you in pain or do you feel ok?

@Rayofsunshine22 good luck, let me know how you get on ✨✨

@CloudyIvy55 8 is a great number but I totally understand expecting more and the disappointment that brings. I have a low follicle count, last time I had 6 follicles and only got 1 egg and I was heartbroken! I have 6 follicles again this time and I’m praying with everything I have that I get at least 1 again 🤞🏻🤞🏻

@YellowTack so sorry your results were disappointing for you, sending you hugs.

Good luck @Rayofsunshine22 and @KayEmmSquared - let us know how you get on!

Physically I feel fine, some minor cramping but nothing paracetamol can't handle. Now I'm just waiting for the embryologist call to see how many fertilised. This is my first cycle and I knew it would be brutal but wow! So impressed by the women on here who have done this several times 👏

I'm done ! & Back home on the sofa! How are you doing @KayEmmSquared ?
They got 7 eggs ..... The fluid on uterus has gone so glad about that. I'm feeling ok just very sleepy!! Not much pain currently hope it stays this way.
Said I will hear Fri about how they are getting on & possibly Monday for embryo transfer or before if they feel it's needed.
Thanks for all the good luck messages ✨

Well done@Rayofsunshine22are you pleased with that result? Glad your feeling OK and enjoying your well earned sofa day.

Ive just had the call from the clinic.... 7 out of 8 fertilised so I'm very happy with that ☺️

@CloudyIvy55 thank you. I feel a little deflated with 7. I had 20 follicles so would have hoped for a few more. Just pray I get some decent embryos 🙏🏻 everyone keeps saying - you only need 1 which I know is obviously true but it's nice to have a few in the running isn't it.
Oh wow 7 out of 8 fertilized that's amazing!! You must be so pleased. They've said I won't hear from them now until Friday morning so it will be a longggg wait!
When will they update you again?

How are you doing @K8113 ??

Received some really helpful advice last week. So thank you everyone!
Hopefully will have a HSG setup this month and we have asked the GP for some baseline bloodtests.

Considering our ages (36) and having been told we are not eligible for funded IVF and need to go private (or wait another 2 years). We are still debating what to do

So far our tests have all come back fine/good (fingers crossed the above ones do too). So we are thinking there is a good chance of natural conception, but don't want to spend considerably time trying, to then fail and potentially our tests to have deteriated and the IVF chance to have also reduced.

Would doing a cycle (or two) of egg freezing + sperm freezing mitigate the risk substantially giving us a bit of buffer room?

@Jayknow I have heard that eggs don’t survive freezing as well as embryos.
You could always do a round of IVF and freeze all the embryos and transfer them later if you want to continue trying naturally in the meantime.

Have you had your AMH tested?

With your ages id def consider private

Im.38

And by this age - getting pgta normal embryos is harder

Thanks Yellow that looks like a good option. How does it work? if we do one round of IVF. Dependant on the number of eggs retrieved and the quality. We can then get the option of fertilising the eggs, and freeze the resulting embryo? making the next IVF cycle much quicker?

My AMH came back very good 33 pmol/l.

Thanks worldwidetravel2017.

We are definitely looking into it. I.e. do we just jump straight into IVF and give up on trying naturally. Or whether we can do something to mitigate the risk (freezing Eggs/Embryo/sperm) to give us an opportunity.

Difficult choice!

Freezing embryos is often better than freezing eggs / sperm

Tbh - i regret not jumping into private IVF @ 36

@Jayknow I second that .... I'm 38 now. Secondary infertility. Took me a long time to naturally conceive 1st but I presumed it would happen a second time even if it meant waiting a while. But 4 years later I'm here doing IVF and wish I'd done it at 36 instead of hanging onto hope it would happen again naturally. Obviously everyone is different & you'll know what feels right for you.

Yeah I can relate to feeling deflated, have you done an egg collection before? I knew we would most likely get less eggs than follicles but assumed I would still be in the 20s (I went from 29 follicles to 8 eggs) and felt like a failure - I had no idea so many could be empty!

Still 7 is a great number and there's a good chance you've got some good embryos on the way from that!! X

@Rayofsunshine22 7 is a great number, so happy for you, quality over quantity! And the fluid is gone, a great day all round. I got 3 eggs, which I was shocked at, I totally went in there thinking they wouldn’t even get 1 this time so I’m chuffed with that. Fingers crossed they fertilise, I’ll get a call tomorrow morning to let me know one way or the other 😫 so scared right now. I’m also relaxing on the sofa, watching tv.

@CloudyIvy55 7 out of 8 fertilised is amazing! I hope that soothes some of the upset from yesterday.

@Jayknow i wish I hadn’t waited the extra 2 years (38 now) to get started with IVF, the process is so long and there can be so many bumps along the way, if you can afford it, I’d say even get one round under your belt and hopefully a couple of embryos in the freezer. Good luck.

Aw thank you! Yes I agree I'm just praying they are quality. So happy for you too well done 🙌🏻 ooh a call tomorrow that's nice. Waiting until Friday will kill me!
I'm still so tired I've slept on & off all day & not really had any pain until now but I have awful stomach ache that's come on :(
Hope you're feeling ok enjoy the rest of your sofa day

No this is my first time so I have nothing to compare to. They told me 8-10 is average so I didn't like that :(
Same here with a lot of follicles so you presume a lot of eggs.
Thank you lovely I'm really hoping so 🙏🏻 you must be so chuffed 🤍 congrats again ✨

@CloudyIvy55 if you had to do it again (hopefully not!) you could ask about a different trigger shot. I had buserelin for one of my cycles and some of the smaller eggs were stuck in the follicles, whereas the two cycles I had with ovitrelle they were able to retrieve everything. But hopefully you will have success with this round and never have to think about it.

@Rayofsunshine22 congratulations for making it through your egg collection! Fingers crossed for a transfer for you soon.

@RainbowFluffthank you! That's helpful to know

@RainbowFluff thank you so much lovely 🤍🙌🏻

IVF involves fertilisation, so I think you're looking at the difference between: egg freezing; IVF (IVF means fertilisation outside the body); ICSI* with frozen eggs; and frozen embryo transfer. These are all different procedures, although there is some overlap.

I'm not sure you can test the actual eggs on their own – I think you can only tell once they're fertilised. The PGTA that people have mentioned is a test on the developed embryos.

The younger you are, the likelier you are to have better quality eggs (and therefore embryos), so starting earlier can be better in terms of statistics. You can absolutely keep some embryos on ice while you TTC naturally if that's what you'd like to do. You could also keep some eggs on ice if that's what you'd like to do.

If you have embryos on ice, the frozen transfer is much less involved because you don't need to do the egg growing and collection part.

*ICSI is a type of fertilisation where a single sperm is injected directly into the egg – rather than the egg and sperm being mixed together for the sperm to swim in on its own. It's my understanding that frozen eggs can be fertilised only in this way.

The DNA fragmentation results came back for my partner and it’s 51%. So that’s pretty bad, as far as I can tell. Looks like we might not be going ahead with a cycle after all. Interesting that our previous clinic were very confident it was an egg quality issue and were suggesting we switch to donor eggs, when in fact it is a sperm quality issue.

@RainbowFluffsorry to hear this but I think with infertility you have more chance when you know the problem. Has your partner taken anything like Impryl before? I guess with sperm, there can be an opportunity to improve in three month windows x