Eggs not making thaw

megandchase

My sister just received a call that out of her 17 eggs that were frozen only 1 made it through the thawing process. Is this normal? The one that did make it through is not showing signs of progression after being fertilized. She is devastated, I'm just trying to see if anyone else has an experience similar that ended successfully. This is their second round and will have to wait 3 months until the next cycle. 

hopeful16

@megandchase

Again... if you read the top of the page....

Because this board is a child-free safe haven, please include “child mentioned” or “siggy warning” in your title if applicable.

jnissa

(child mentioned in final paragraph) 

Skipping over the siggy warning, because I'm sure you feel badly about that now that you know

There is no "normal" in infertility (or fertility for that matter). What you're describing isn't common, but if you spend enough time on these boards you'll find that it's not as uncommon as you think to find women how have great "quantity" of eggs but not great "quality" of eggs and end up with not much that's usable at the end. 

I'm not sure what her status is re: potentially stimming to get more eggs, but there are some supplements and protocols that have been shown to help "call down" better quality eggs. CoQ10 is an antioxidant that's shown in studies to improve the quality of eggs retrieved (not the quality of the eggs themselves, just those that respond to stims) and even RE's who aren't big on the supplement train are recommending it based on the strength of studies. Also, Menopur only protocols also tend to have better "quality" results. She should research and talk to her RE about these if that's an option (more egg retrieval). Unfortunately, there's no way to know the quality of the egg prior to a thaw or an attempted insemination. 

One other thing I might tell her though is a quote from the donor egg coordinator at our clinic. We're currently TTC a sibling for a daughter we had via IVF in November. My numbers are not encouraging at this point for IVF success, so we're doing a "hail mary" IVF round while also beginning the donor egg process. In our conversations, the coordinator said to us, "In all honesty, I've never known anybody who regretted doing donor egg. What the regretted was all of the years they spent insisting on fighting the odds on their own eggs because those were years that they could have already been parents with a donor egg and been building a family." So if her RE believes that her eggs are really likely to be so low quality, it's worth beginning to think about the other option. 

przemosbabe

Ticker warning

Do you mean eggs or embryos? If you mean eggs, unfortunately egg freezing is relatively new and is not that great as of right now. I am sorry this happened to her. She must be devastated!

Knottie4978096

Oh geez, that sucks. I'm sorry. 2 things could be the cause - poor egg quality or a lab screw up. I had gorgeous looking embryos at day 3. Then they went through PGS testing and they came back severely abnormal. All of them. I have completely normal test results for everything and am on all of those fancy supplements - plus I'm healthy, eat well, exercise and am at a good weight. The doctors say that age is the best predictor of egg quality and I'm older. If you're sister isn't, then switch clinics.