# At a crossroad....would love your opinion.....



## Judeanski (Sep 10, 2012)

Hi 

I am at a bit of a crossroads and wanting to gauge opinion from you ladies who can better relate to the circumstances than my friends who luckily have never found themselves on the infertility journey .....I am 43 and have had 9 cycles of IVF in total....5 cycles of OE IVF - 3 BFN and 2 BFP both of which I miscarried on the same day as seeing the heartbeat scans 😓 and 4 DE IVF cycles all BFN - all with the same donor.  My dilemma is this, do I try again with a different donor, do I consider surrogacy or do I call it a day 

New donor - the DE cycles I went through were at a different clinic to my OE cycles. Given my past history the first 3 cycles with DE concentrated a lot on the prevention of miscarriage...intralipids, steroids etc before ET, by the time we got to the 4th cycle I asked that we mirror the protocol from the OE cycles where I had gotten pregnant before.  This time I didn't take steroids and didn't have intralipids before the transfer....these were going to be introduced after a BFP. Unfortunately although we changed the protocol I still got a BFN, my dilemma is however that we could have used the 'good' embryos in one of the 3 previous cycles and that the 4th one was never going to work even though we now had the protocol right. My consultant told me that out of the 7 embryos we had that he would have expected at least 2 pregnancies. So do we try again with another donor (I would go with a proven donor this time)? 

Surrogacy - I do have a friend who has very kindly offered to be a surrogate for us but having spoken with the consultant I'm not sure that this is the route for us. I didn't realise that most of the donors in the UK were ladies currently undergoing IVF themselves who have chosen to share their eggs and that it is a pot luck as to whether you strike it lucky and get a donor with great quality eggs or one who may not. I also don't want to have to wait too long and from what I can gather there is a waiting list in the UK for donor eggs.....initially my self imposed cut off age for IVF was 42 but already I've sneaked into 43!

Call it a day...... I think the fact that we are even considering another donor or surrogacy means that we aren't quite at the stage where we are ready to call it a day although sometimes I wonder if we just have to accept that some things just aren't meant to be....

Apologies for the long post but I would really appreciate hearing your thoughts and/or your stories when faced with the same dilemma.

Thank you

J x


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## braxma14 (May 25, 2011)

I think 7 embryos from the donor are a low number. It was not a very good donor, in my opinion. When I was doing donor cycle, we got 18 embryos before pgd, and 7 after pgd. I would say get a different donor


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## Altai (Aug 18, 2013)

I'd say the same - try a different donor. Also, if possible do  pgs on embryos, so you that you know there are no chromosomal abnormalities and the problem lies most likely with your uterine environment. 
best of luck.

A.


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## Hopefulshell (Mar 14, 2013)

Hi

I'm so very sorry to read the long and painful journey you've endured so firstly sending you a much deserved  

I'm not familiar with the donation side of things I'm afraid although the ladies' suggestion of trying another sounds sensible to me. I have immune issues myself and just wondered if you'd gone down the full immunes testing route? I'm sure after all those cycles you probably have so apologies if I'm suggesting something you've already tried. In the event that you haven't had in-depth testing I would certainly recommend doing so before contemplating another transfer. Although steroids and intralipids are standard txs they may not be enough on their own if you have more complicated issues. Also the dosages and timing are paramount so you need to know what the issue is in order for the clinic to get this right. 

In terms of calling it a day, no one would blame you for saying enough is enough. I admire your strength - I was all set to stop after four rounds. However as you say yourself you aren't at that point yet. It's so painful and frustrating trying to find the missing part of the puzzle but hopefully a new donor could be that missing piece.

Wishing you continued strength and positivity as you decide on the next steps.

X


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## Turia (Feb 2, 2013)

Hi Judeanski
I would certainly recommend looking at another donor.  When we went down the de route we went to a great clinic, had fantastic looking eggs/embryos but still no baby.  After 5 tries with that donor we were ready to call it a day but I wanted to make sure we had tried absolutely everything first and have one final shot, so a new clinic and a new (proven) donor later I now have my wonderful son.

It looks like you have already explored a lot of the immune issues but I would also suggest you look more closely at the sperm.  My OH 'passed' all the normal male tests but for our last cycle we also sperm DNA fragmentation which came back quite high.  For this round he took Wellman Conception vits for 3 months before hand, cut down on alcohol and used a cushion between his iPad and his 'bits'!  Again I wonder if there was an improvement in the sperm quality that may have affected the outcome.

I should add that in terms of egg numbers, 7 is actually ok if you have treatment in Spain (where we did).  Spanish clinics tend to be very careful in avoiding over stimulation in the donor looking at egg quality and not quantity.  They are also keen to avoid OHSS in the donor.  We got 9 with our first donor and 8 with our second although with the latter only 6 fertilised.  

Ultimately only you know how much more you can put yourself through.  With all my previous cycles I wanted to keep going as there was still hope and the alternative (stopping) was too much to bear.  This final cycle was actually the first one where I admitted to myself that I just couldn't keep doing this to myself physically and emotionally.  Thankfully it worked....

Good luck with your decision.
Turia x


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## Cookie-Monster76 (Dec 11, 2015)

I would also try a different donor, preferably a proven donor.
I am reluctant to using PGD/PGS unless there is a known genetic factor with the donor (but if there were, she wouldn't be accepted to be a donor in the first place) or the father that needs to be checked out. We learned from a professor doing audits in fertility centers that there are a lot of false positives in PGD testing, so a lot of good embryoes get thrown away because of this...


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## Claireu (Jul 15, 2016)

Hi Judeanski
I've gone through 3 transfers up to now - all DE from the same donor. We had great numbers to start with, I lost one frozen embryo in one of the thaws but had BFN from all transfers.
I've pretty much tried everything, scratch, glue, different drugs. clexane, etc and my lining has done everything it should do - unfortunately no implantation. So I wanted to know what happened to my donor (which initially they said they couldn't do) my lovely consultant marched straight up and looked at her file and she had the same result - however she did have a BFP but then early miscarriage. So he believed her eggs were not great - even though she was very young and healthy. So he has recommended an exclusive donor, who has proven fertility and then to do PGS testing to fine 'good' embryos. At least then I wouldn't go through the heartache of failed cycles over and over again, even when the embryo wasn't viable.
This will be our last go at this - so any frozen embryos from this will be our last ones.
At 43 I was only just starting this journey of tests and IVF so if you're strong enough in will (and pocket) then I'd give it another shot - but everyone is different.
Take care
Claire
x


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## Gemini40 (Feb 9, 2016)

Hi Jude, I am at the crosswords with you. I had a natural pg 2012 and since then nothing dispite multile IUI, ICSI OE and finally, which is the biggest kick of all, ICSI DE.

The donor cycle has just concluded and we got 2 embryos 6 cell day three- nothing to freeze. What chance did I have and this was an exclusive donor, no children of own!! Now I am left asking myself do I have a hostile uterus that needs further looking into or did I get a really bad deal with the donor.

I don't know what to do.


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## Claireu (Jul 15, 2016)

Hi Gemini
This is just how I felt - my donor had 19eggs in total she was very young and so they assured us there was no need to do any kind of testing - I had 10 eggs, 8 of which fertilised, we ended up with 4 blastocysts and she had at least 3 blastocysts transferred (I don't know if she has any left) - I know there were at least 7 blasts and between us we got no embryos to stick. She had one BFP but had an early MC and I had none. But my consultant is absolutely sure it isn't my uterus - he's convinced that practically all problems in the end are due to the quality of the eggs. Which is why we're doing PGS testing on an exclusive (so we can maximise our number of eggs) and she has proven fertility.
This is our last shot - so we're doing all we can this time - he doesn't think glue and scratch will help - which I've had before - he just thinks it's all down to the eggs.
So we'll see - just waiting for my protocol, I think she starts stimming in two weeks.
Take care
Claire
x


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