Infertility Treatments: IUI and protocol question!

HawaiianSunset09

Hi everyone! I am not expecting yet, but we are about to start a relatively aggressive IUI cycle as I was dx with DOR last week at the age of 26. I was curious if anyone here had a similar protocol and ended up pregnant with twins. 
I will be starting letrozole on day 2, and take 2.5mg for 5 days. On day 3 they are adding in 150iu of bravelle, and then we will do IUI after I trigger. We are obviously trying to prepare ourselves mentally for any pregnancy, but especially for the possibility of twins. I am trying to find more info on multiples rates, but havent been able to find much. Thanks in advance! 

Aurora1181

I don't know about "rates" per se, but It is always a possibility if you have multiple mature follicles on an IUI. You'll have a better idea of how many mature follicles you have once you have the final ultrasound before trigger. One time I did a similar iui cycle with letrozole and menopur.. I think I had 2 mature follicles, but unfortunately it did not work for us (we didn't know at the time that I had egg quality issues). Good luck!!

HawaiianSunset09

Aurora1181 said:

I don't know about "rates" per se, but It is always a possibility if you have multiple mature follicles on an IUI. You'll have a better idea of how many mature follicles you have once you have the final ultrasound before trigger. One time I did a similar iui cycle with letrozole and menopur.. I think I had 2 mature follicles, but unfortunately it did not work for us (we didn't know at the time that I had egg quality issues). Good luck!!

Thanks for replying! That is so true, we had 4 follicles with the follistim IUI cycle that gave us our son, but my e2 was less than 300 so likely only 1 had a good mature egg. After finding out about the DOR I wont lie, I would be SO happy with twins. Obviously we would want to avoid high order multiples for safety reasons. 

rcnavywife

I agree with pp. Just remember even then it can be difficult to gauge by mature follicles. I had three mature follicles during a clomid cycle and that gave us DS1. This time we thought there were two mature follicles, and the third looked like it was lagging behind. And we wound up with triplets.

Best of luck to you!

HawaiianSunset09

rcnavywife said:

I agree with pp. Just remember even then it can be difficult to gauge by mature follicles. I had three mature follicles during a clomid cycle and that gave us DS1. This time we thought there were two mature follicles, and the third looked like it was lagging behind. And we wound up with triplets. Best of luck to you!

Oh wow. Congratulations!!
I have been out the game for so long I have forgotten the reality of treatment (pregnancy probability as well as multiples risk)... 

I appreciate the responses I have gotten! Thanks! 

absolutelymaybe

We did not have success with our IUI cycles (different diagnosis than you though), but I have to say the stats that I read seemed like it was kind of all over the place depending on a number of factors.

I would just prepare myself for the chance of multiples, but not expect them.

xMissLissx

I didn't have an IUI, but took femara 2.5 mg and had 1 follicle at trigger- I'm 25 weeks pregnant with didi twins.

MissEm15

I'm an over-responder, but here was our magic potion

We skipped the Letrozole bc I over-responded previously. So I only took 100 iu of Follistim for 6 days. I had three mature follies w/ one close. We are MFI though, low count & morph. We only had 4.2 mil motile sperm washed at IUI (36 hours after trigger). I had my BFP on 12 pdiui and found out last week, we are having twins!

JenyB6

I had IUI with injectables with both of my sons. First time I had 2 mature follicles and 2 more that could catch up. Only one took. My second pregnancy resulted in a hetrotopic pregnancy (meaning I had one implant in the uterus and the other in my follopian tube) had 2 mature again and 2 more that could catch up. I had to have my fallopian tube removed and wait 2 wks to see if the baby in my uterus would survive. A 1 in 30,000 chance they gave me up he did and is 3.5yrs. This time we did IVF to reduce the risk of another hetrotopic pregnancy and transfered 2 we got twins this time.

dragontears507

We conceived our twins thanks to IUI. At the time of trigger, I only had one follicle that was a 16 and three between 13-14. I was convinced that we barely had a shot at one, since every other cycle I was told to trigger when my lead follicle was 18+. Sure enough, twins! So, it's really about the follicles, but don't write any of them off, even if they're not quite full size.

Brummy14

We were told roughly a 20% chance of multiples via injectables+IUI via our RE. Not sure if that was based on results within their practice or more broadly, but that was the rule of thumb they gave us as we assessed options.

I honestly do not know exactly how many mature follicles I had at that point -- it was our 8th round of IF treatments, 3rd round of injectables, and it had all become a blur!

The cocktail that worked for me was Bravelle + Menopur -- it took a round or two to get to that (the first cycle lasted FOREVER to get to that point -- 7 u/s!)