Questions about IVF

ah80

We are planning to do an IVF cycle in October. This is overwhelming and I'm having trouble even formulating questions to ask.  If you have been through or are going through IVF, what do you wish you knew before starting? 

rachelbeth130

We did 3 rounds of ivf and 7 frozen transfers over 2 years -I’m now 23 weeks pregnant. During my fresh rounds I developed OHSS, and each round they retrieved between 45 and 55 eggs. Unfortunately this prevented us from ever doing a fresh transfer and made recovery long, but we were able to bank a lot of embryos. After our 5th failed transfer my doctor suggested a d&c to ‘clean’ up my uterus. During the d&c she found polyps and a septum, which was probably preventing embryos from implanting. I had 3 hysteroscopies previously, so not sure why the septum was never discovered. For my 6th and 7th transfer we did a natural FET (which I didn’t even know was an option!) and incorporated lovenox. We also did 2 ERAs in between to determine the best time for implantation (we did 4 ERAs overall while doing IVF- I would definitely recommend). 

I guess after all of this I wish I had known from the beginning that IVF doesn’t always work the first time for everyone. I had a lot of friends that had gone through IVF and were very fortunate to only go through one cycle- so I just assumed the same would be for us. My doctor was always very positive and reminded us that there are a lot of factors that go into having a baby, we just needed to find the right mix to work for us. I’m sure a lot of other doctors would have given up on us much earlier, so we were very lucky to have the determined doctor we did. Don’t get discouraged if it doesn’t work right away, be willing to try new things and do your own research. Best of luck with everything!

embryoman

@ah80 I'll just remark on the embryology side of things but I would ask about how you're contacted with updates on your embryos. I know how difficult it can be to have your embryos sitting in a lab and not know much about what's going on. Do they call or send messages? Can you get reports? Find out how they grade the embryos and make sense of it so there's no surprises. Don't be too worried about grading as it doesn't mean an awful lot. Good luck!