Fertility Friends Support Forum banner

1st IVF Cycle newbie advice appreciated - Follicles not growing

4K views 4 replies 2 participants last post by  Red1981 
#1 ·
Hi ladies,

Hoping to get some advice, I'm in the middle of my first ever IVF cycle at CRGH to try for a sibling for our 3 year old. My AMH last time i checked was around 2 pmol and my fsh 10. I had managed to get my AMH up to 5.4 pmol with supplements and FSH down to 9 before starting the cycle. I turned 39 last month, previously I've fallen pregnant after surgeries to remove endometriosis, the first resulted in my son and the second resulted in a miscarriage in march this year. Despite all this the consultant at CRGH was not positive from the start and basically said out of 3 cycles he's likely to get max of 1-3 eggs. We decided to go ahead anyway and I started on Norethisterone and then Progynova and then Clomid, I then started the actual stimms on day 3 which were 150 fostimon and 75 meriofert every other day. On day 5 I had a scan and they saw 17 follicles which I was ecstatic about as I'd expected to see very few with my AMH. They upped the dosage to 225 meriofert and 225 of fostimon and on day 9 today I went in today to find only 4 of my follicles are growing, 13 of them are still under 6mm. I've heard that that's not good news and now I'm wondering if my cycle will be cancelled? I don't know how I can go from having all those follicles to only 4 of them actually responding. Is it because I'm only stimming every other day? I got a call earlier and they want me to carry on doing every other day same dosage with the egg collection potentially on Monday, depending on how the scans go on Friday and Saturday.

If anyone has any advice I'd appreciate it, I'm a total newbie at all of this and finding the whole thing a bit overwhelming.

 
See less See more
#2 ·
Hi Red
Cycling is such a rollercoaster....  The best indicator of mature eggs is the oestradiol level. Each mature egg roughly equates to 1,000 oestradiol, so a level of 3,000 should roughly signify 3 mature eggs. It might be worth asking your level closer to egg collection.  In recent cycles (we are also batching with crgh) our level has been about 3,000 just prior to egg collection, and though we’ve collected 8-11 eggs, we’ve had 3 embryos going strong on day 3.  We always hope for more but understanding the oestradiol level has helped to manage our expectations.  Best of luck to you x
 
#3 ·
Thanks for your reply Seafoam and the tip of Oestrodiol, I'll ask next time I'm in. I'm fully expecting to not even get any eggs this cycle, if only 4 of my 17 follicles are responding it doesn't look good. I'm wondering if it's just my clearly geriatric eggs or it's the protocol of stimms only every other day or a mixture of both. I've never been that bothered by my AMH as I fell pregnant with a supposedly terrible AMH (5 pmol) when i was 35, it then dropped down to 1.8 in August this year and then with ALOT of supplements and accupuncture I managed to get it back up to 5.6 pmol and FSH down to 8 before I started the cycle.

Being totally new to IVF I was pretty shocked how little time you have with the consultant, I've literally had a 5 minute call with Dr. Mavrelos which was the initial consultation and that was it, it all seems like a bit of an impersonal sausage factory. We've decided to do 2 cycles at CRGH see where we're at and then consider going to Evewell for some actual customer service, or if I can get over myself on that, carry on and do a 3 cycle package at Create or Lister to save on the cost knowing that the max I'll ever make is 1 egg per cycle, who knows on the blasts yet! I like the idea of the Evewell as you see a consultant after every scan and they are apparently more open to the american way of doing things with growth hormone etc.

I'm not sure on PGS testing because I don't think I'm going to make enough blasts to risk testing them sadly! We have said no more than 5 cycle due to cost. If it doesn't happen after then it's not meant to be. Which breaks my heart to type but I can't keep going on, its only my first cycleand Im already fed up!
 
#4 ·
Don’t lose hope yet, Red, there’s still lots of growing time until egg collection. I’ve sometimes emailed/phoned my consultant’s secretary when I’ve had queries during the cycle, and he always gets back to me (via his secretary).  Are you on Zomacton? Might be worth asking about next cycle if not.  So much information will be gleaned from this cycle, which can only be helpful for the next. Keeping my fingers crossed for you, and wishing you the best of luck over the next few days X
 
#5 ·
Hi Seafoam,

Thanks again for your reply. I am trying to remain positive. I was prescribed Zomacton for this cycle but the nurses forgot to add it to my drug protocol and as I stuck it in our other fridge I totally forgot about it until literally yesterday! So I've just been taking 225 stimms every other day which might justify why my follicles are slow to catchup, who knows. I immediately called up the nurses who apologized for it not being put on my drug protocol and said that I could keep it for the next cycle. In some ways I'm curious to see what a cycle would be like without it and one with, so there's that advantage I suppose!

I feel grateful I have our son who's now 3 but would love to give him a sibling if we can. I just didn't realise it would be this hard.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top