Egg Quality and past cigarette use

sweenbean

Hi all,

 I am going to bear it all and confess DH and I smoked for many years. Once we really took a look at our TTTC, we quit before our IVF cycles in October.

As we have gone through two IVFs with low egg quality in both I am so scared we screwed ourselves royally. Does anyone have any past history of their own that they can give me a glimmer of hope? We have one more insured IVF to go and I was thinking we should wait to see if we could reverse the egg quality issue. When you quit smoking, when does your egg quality start to improve....if at all?

Thanks!

krissyh21

I smoked as well. While smoking you add 10 years to your egg quality. So a person who is 36 is really dealing with the chances of a 46 year old in IVF success.

My RE was very open and gave me some research and studies done abroad that showed the success of people smoking during IVF would be less then 10%.

She also suggested I quit smoking for 3 months before cycling. She said normally it takes about 3 months for blood circulation to increase and that is most likely the cause of not so great eggs.

I did quit and have yet to have success. My egg quality as a whole is not horrible, although my ovarian reserve is low. I have had 4 "wonderful" eggs transfers and 1 make it to freeze (my past clinic did not grade eggs with any type of system).

We decided to take one more shot at IVF (it will be a year of being smoke free) and really look at our eggs at a different clinic that grades. We will grow them all out for a 5 day transfer and the RE there said that will be more telling if we do have an egg issue.  I am 38, so age is a big factor as well.

futuremom2b

DH and I are also ex-smokers.  We quite a few months before ttc, and have been cig-free for over 2 years now.  I have high fsh and so it appears I have bad egg quality due to 2 m/cs I've had (thru natural conception).  I also worry that I totally screwed myself with that.   BUT... I also know many women who were smokers who have perfectly healthy children and had no issues ttc.  I think it's a crapshoot quite honestly.  But, knowing what I know now, I wish I never smoked.