Hi lovely people, I'm new here. I'm 35 and DH is 37. We tried for 1 year before going to a fertility clinic. We went through extensive tests and it looks like we are unexplained. Our RE recommends IUI or IVF. She left it up to us to decide. I was hoping to find a software app or a site that can do personalized success rate prediction for both IVF and IUI for a given scenario (age, history, diagnosis, ...)? Does any one have found such a tool? I'd really appreciate your help. How did you choose to go with IVF or IUI in your case? What kind of things I should pay attention to? By the way, we don't have insurance for any fertility treatment except for meds.
Re: IUI and IVF fertility app
For IVF, Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART) has an IVF success calculator on its site:
https://www.sartcorsonline.com/Predictor/Patient/
SART is an organization that collects and reports IVF outcomes data from its member clinics.
Unexplained infertility/AMA, polycystic ovaries, insulin resistance
FET#1(July 2017): eSET of first of 4 PGS-normal embryos, DS born 3/30/2018
FET#2(Oct/Nov 2019): eSET
My RE recommended 3 IUI's first before moving onto IVF -- as was said, most people who are successful with IUI are successful within the first 3 cycles. I wanted to do IVF right off the bat because I'm a person who is 'all in' or 'all out' but my RE did not since there was no reason IUI wouldn't work and it was not invasive and cheap compared to IVF. Our IUI's were not successful but while we were waiting to start IVF, I became pregnant naturally (which my RE says its not uncommon and attributes it to the medicines for IUI 'resetting' the body). Unfortunately, I had an early miscarriage likely due to chromosomal abnormality. At that point, my RE was very confident that our best option was IVF since he felt, after my miscarriage, that the problem was embryo quality and that could only be seen/managed via IVF. We have been very fortunate that both of our IVF cycles thus far have been successful (one 3 year old girl from the first and I'm currently exactly 9 weeks pregnant with a second girl from our most recent cycle).
You can calculate out probability of success -- I did during my first IVF cycle and it was pretty average (about 50 percent for success with 1 cycle and up to 80 percent success after 3 cycles). The thing is -- no matter how dismal that number might seem (or how great it might be) doesn't really ultimately matter to you much as a patient (at least it didn't to me). It doesn't matter how low your success rate might be -- if you're successful, you are successful and that's all that matters. And if you have a failed transfer, it doesn't matter how high your success rate could be... a failure is a failure and devastating whether you had an 80 percent chance of success or a 20 percent chance. The important thing, I think, is to have a doctor you trust and a clinic that you are comfortable with. I go to a small clinic that doesn't do as many cycles or have as much success as some of the large ones, but I loved my doctor and my team at the clinic. I trusted their judgement.
The CDC has a success rate calculator that is based on success rate data submitted by clinics so it's probably fairly accurate.
https://www.cdc.gov/art/ivf-success-estimator/index.html
Summer 2015 - no BFP yet, labs normal, referred to RE
Fall 2015 - Summer 2016 - Further testing all normal. 3 IUI's -- BFN. Recommended move to IVF. Planned cycle for fall 2016.
September 2016 - Surprise natural BFP. MMC @ 8 weeks. RE expressed confidence that we just needed the 'right' embryo.
Fall 2016 - Spring 2017 -- Break from TTC
June 2017 - Started IVF; egg retrieval for freeze all cycle. 9 mature eggs retrieved, 5 fertilized. 2 4BB embies on ice.
August 2017 - FET transfer both embies. BFP. Twin pregnancy confirmed by ultrasound. EDD 4/28/18
September 2017 - Twin B stopped developing; Twin A doing perfectly! Graduated from RE @ 10 weeks
March 2018 - Baby Girl born via C/S due to pre-eclampsia -- strong and healthy!
TTC #2
January/Feb 2021 - Freeze-all IVF cycle
March 2021 - FET of 1 PGS normal female embryo. BFP! Beta #1 156, #2 472, #3 1241, #4 5268 EDD 12/5/21 - Christmas baby!
"When all is lost then all is found."
You are right. 3 IUIs seems to be the rule of thump. Probably that's what we are going to do. I'm worried about losing time in the meanwhile. But, I don't feel ready to jump into IVF immediately.
Thank you for sharing the links to the CDC and SART tools. I'll check them out.