Poor egg quality?

toridear

Hi all,

My RE has a "gut feeling" that my egg quality may be poor.  Strange thing is that all my bloodwork, AMH, FSH, LH, everything, is perfect.  I've been a poor responder on Femera (one egg each of two cycles), Clomid thinned my lining bad, and she'd like to move us on to injectables.  We've been trying a year now, but been with RE for two cycles.  Hubby's sperm is crazy good. 

I trust my RE, and her feeling is that if we do an injectable cycle, it will give her more information (like that we may need to move on to IVF), or might just be the boost we need to get pregnant.

Has anyone come up against issues like this?  I'm turning 36 in Oct, never had a pregnancy.   Thanks!

Mrs.McIrish

Unfortunately you can't confirm whether your egg quality is bad unless you do IVF and they can look at the egg in the dish.  I most certainly am a poor responder (never had more than 2 follies even with injectibles) and am moving on to IVF next week.  As for egg quality, we won't know until we see what the egg does with the sperm and/or fertilization in the petri dish.    I would move on to injectibles and see what happens!

Banana44

Egg quality is probably my issue also.  Prior to seeing your eggs (and even then they cannot always tell) the diagnosis of poor egg quality usually comes as a default.

All my tests come back great also - I have been pregnant 3 times since September, but lose early each time.  

I have been taking prescription pre-natal, DHEA (50 mg) Folic Acid (800 mcg) and Royal Jelly every day and this is my first round with Clomid.  I responded with 2 follicles.  I believe I am 6 DPO (maybe 7) so, I will know in a week if I got pregnant, but I wouldn't have any confidence in a pregnancy until I hit 12 weeks.

 All I can do now is wait and see what happens.  I don't know what we will do when it comes to injectibles - maybe 1 round, we just don't have the money and I probably will not do IVF.  I am currently 37 (38 in September) and I had a successful pregnancy in 2009.

 I think it is hard when you cannot get concrete answers - and that is kind of where you are.  Are injectibles covered for you - is it a possibility?  It might just give you the answers (or pregnancy) you are looking for!

toridear

We have zero infertility coverage, and it's all out of pocket.  We are fortunate though that we can afford it (at least at this stage, IVF is a different animal). 

I guess I'm kind of leaning towards the injectables.  I sometimes wonder if we're forcing it too much (I'm sure we all do that - I read it's a common emotional issue that people with fertility struggles deal with). 

happywifemomofone

To the Doctors, seems everything comes down to poor egg quality.  We had IVF recently-perfect 8 cell embro with no fragmentation to transfer on Day 3.  DH asked why IVF didn't work and RE said "probably poor egg quality"  Everything is blamed on the age of your eggs.  We had a different RE suggest donor eggs after only one partial IVF that he cancelled after 7 or 8 days of stims (needless to say we were offended and decided to go to a different RE)  It does not take one-know that I'll never respond like a 20 year old....but I know that there are still some good quality eggs left.  DHEA is supposed to improve egg quality, you might talk to you doctor about taking supplements.  Being over 35 makes a convenient excuse about why things works, after a while sometimes I think I get use to hearing it.  Good Luck!

deansles

I am now 41 years old and believe poor egg quality was my issue as well. We had success with our very first round of IUI but I miscarried at 7 weeks. We went on to IVF where I again got pregnant with the first try but miscarried at just 5 weeks. We decided that my body was doing everything it was supposed to (my body always reacted as expected to the hormones, put out a good number of eggs, they fertilized, etc) but my old timer eggs just weren't viable. We finally chose to use donor eggs. We had 5 embryos go to 5-day blasocyst stage and they implanted 2. I am now 11 weeks pregnant with twins! I would highly recommend this option for older moms! We did the frozen egg donor option as it was much less expensive and easier to coordinate than a fresh donor cycle. You may want to check your local fertility clinic to see if they have a program like this. The success rate is around 65% (regardless of your age).