[J*e*n*_78]

Hi ladies!

I was wondering if anyone else out there was told by their RE that egg donor was their only option and you went on and had a baby with your own eggs?

I got a BFP on only my second iui cycle ( first BFP ever) and am now waiting to miscarry. RE says prob. due to "bad eggs" and it would prob just happen again and tried to mention egg donor/ivf.
My fsh has always been 9/10 area... once was 14 but at an outside lab and on CD4?? She keeps bringing that one up which maybe i am in denial about it (i am).

I am just having a hard time believing if my eggs are so bad how did iui (which is a 5-10% chance of working each time) work on only the second time?

Anyone else give their RE the boot or go on anyway with treatments and have a successful pregnancy?

Thanks for sharing - i have come across a couple ppl already but wanted to see how many more were out there!
Jen

[azariah08]

You might have more responses on the IVF part of the board under infertility treatments.

I think it depends upon whether its an egg quantity or an egg quality issue. The former means its harder to get pregnant, but the eggs that make it through are likely to result in a sustainable pregnancy. That was my issue. The quality is a bit tricker as it means some of the eggs may not be strong enough to let the pregnancy be viable. FSH is an indicator of quantity, not quality. Quality they can usually only tell after they've done a retrieval or if you've had a lot of miscarriages. Quality and age are strongly correlated.

For example, I only had 4 eggs retrieved for IVF which is VERY low. But 3 of them fertilized and lived to transfer day which means they were all good quality.

On the other hand my good friend had 20 eggs retrieved which is really high but not a single one survived to the third day. She had a lot of problems with her first pregnancy (almost miscarrying) and miscarried her second kid. That's more of an issue of quality. However, she does have a kid through IVF.

[natalie28]

Hi Jenn,
I understand how you feel. Like azariah said, it depends if it is a quality or quantity problem. If you are uncomfortable with your RE, you should find a new one.
I had a higher FSH level than you, but I did get pregnant all on my own without even an IUI (IUI wouldn't work with FSH as high as mine). The pregnancy ended in m/c and after a D&C and lab work, it was determined that there was a heart problem and we (along with our RE) felt like it was a qualit issue too.
Our RE always told us that it could happen and everything could be okay. He gave us a 3% chance of that happening. We decided to do donor and I am so glad we did. We are now pregnant (13 weeks and 2 days)!!!
It was a difficult decision and a very personal one. I know it isn't for everyone. Good luck in you future pregnancy (it will happen for you) and I hope everything works out for you!

[renni1010]

Get a new RE, after 2 IUI's no doctor pushes a 30YO woman to IVF unless they have some sort of ulterior motive. AND There is no way at your age your eggs are 'just bad' with no scientific backing. Having one miscarriage is so very common that millions of women have them everyday and don't even know they are having them! That is no reason to go to IVF at this juncture.

Keep doing IUI's. Focus on getting yourself in perfect health by eating right, sleeping good, taking your folic, prenates, etc. and after you have given this at least 6 months to a year, then think about IVF.

I wish you the very best and please get a new RE...

[yamensleh]

Originally Posted by J*e*n*_78

Hi ladies!

I was wondering if anyone else out there was told by their RE that egg donor was their only option and you went on and had a baby with your own eggs?

I got a BFP on only my second iui cycle ( first BFP ever) and am now waiting to miscarry. RE says prob. due to "bad eggs" and it would prob just happen again and tried to mention egg donor/ivf.
My fsh has always been 9/10 area... once was 14 but at an outside lab and on CD4?? She keeps bringing that one up which maybe i am in denial about it (i am).

I am just having a hard time believing if my eggs are so bad how did iui (which is a 5-10% chance of working each time) work on only the second time?

Anyone else give their RE the boot or go on anyway with treatments and have a successful pregnancy?

Thanks for sharing - i have come across a couple ppl already but wanted to see how many more were out there!
Jen

Yes I was told that. My FSH was elevated 11.4 which I did not think was so high. I used max amout of stims and had 2 IVF cycles canc. I finally got 4 eggs and 3 fertilized. It is a hard to decide what to do. I was thinking about some donor embroyos but my DH said we should try everything else first. Good luck in your journey.

[ccandcc]

Ladies,

I also have DOR and my RE really wanted us to keep going with IUI's due to age. She thinks that although my egg quantity is not great - the quality she thinks is fine!

Having said that we have decided after 3 failed IUI's to move on to IVF. We felt like with this condition things would not improve the longer we waited, so we wanted to try IVF while we still had some - hopefully - good quality eggs!?!! My RE seems really confident and has not mentioned donor eggs to me at all! Although when I read online about DOR that is ALL I see!

Jen, I would say look for a new RE - you need someone who is positive!!!

Oh well, glad I saw this thread! Infertility is so difficult and at times you can feel so alone! Nice to hear from people going through the same things!

Good luck to everyone!!!

[chickycran]

Hi Jen,

I'm with my third RE and finally got a confirmed diagnosis of DOR. My highest day 3 FSH was 24.3 and a day 10 of 36 during the CCT. Did you RE test your AMH? After testing my AMH (which was 0.1 and in the "undetectable" range) my RE gave us a 1% chance of ever conceiving with my own eggs even with fertility treatments. He strongly advised us to go with donor eggs but he said he would keep doing IUIs with us if it is important to us. He doesn't think my quality is bad, just quantity, but he said the only way to know if the quality is bad would be if they retrieved some as per an IVF protocol.

I'm with my third RE for a reason. The first one was TERRIBLE and didn't even tell me I had high FSH or that there was anything besides endo wrong with me. He put the cause on my DH's sperm. We had a gut feeling that he wasn't telling us the whole truth and boy were we right. Our second RE was very kind and told us that the first RE was not giving us the complete story. DOR is not only an infertility issue but you are begininng to enter menopause and it can impact your health too (need to watch out of osteoporisis, heart disease, etc.). We moved to another state and ended up with our third RE who is one of the best in the country. He agreed with our second RE and ordered more tests.

My advice would be to listen to your gut. If you think that your RE isn't right than he/she probably isn't. We put so much pressure on ourselves with this IF journey and sometimes we don't want to deal with the extra time it will take to switch RE's, retest, etc. that we keep with the old doc our gut is telling us to leave.

Donor eggs is a very personal decision. We first reacted very negatively and I couldn't imagine using a DE. After letting all this sink in we have come to realize it is a great option and we are lucky to live in a time where it is available to us. We still don't know what we are going to do but we are open to it all.

We are now exploring infant domestic adoption, DE, and I'm having one more IUI with very high gonal F doses.

Best of luck to you!

[J*e*n*_78]

thank you so much for your replies!

chickycran- good luck with your next iui-I hope this is THE one for you

ccandcc- good luck with your ivf cycle!

yamensleh- goodluck with whatever you decide to do next.

renni- thanks for the advice and encouragement. I think we will seek a second opinion after all. Hopefully it will go well!

natalie- I am so sorry about your m/c. Congratulations on your pregnancy now!

azariah- thank you for the advice on quality vs quantity. I hadnt really thought about it that way. RE has made no mention about that-so frustrating!!

[Kabybaby]

If you do a yahoo search on dimished ovarian reserve, you will find quite a few docs are of the mindset that the quantity is reduced, not the quality!

I'm in the same boat, and am coming to the conclusion that I might have to go through some more cancelled cycles to get the batch I need! To me that's better than going to retrieval without enough to give me a good chance.

[ernie]

I'm following this thread with personal interest: I am 35, FSH 5.8, but diminished ovarian reserve; on aggressive stimulation (450 Follistim + 150 Menopur), I only managed to get two, maybe three mature follicles. I have two questions:
1) Has anyone else been told that with fewer than 4 follicles it's not worth doing IVF? It seems to me that since the success rates of IVF are higher than IUI, it would be worth going through retrieval/transfer for that, but my dr. says they don't do that.
2) Any sense of how many ART cycles it would take for us to legitimately have given it our all? I know this is a personal decision, but we've done 2 IUI cycles, and I know people do much more than that, but I don't want to be either overly optimistic or prematurely pessimistic.
Thank you!

[tmf001]

Jen,

To answer your question "I was wondering if anyone else out there was told by their RE that egg donor was their only option and you went on and had a baby with your own eggs?"..... YES!

As I wrote in another blog, I was 28 and my highest FSH was 14.5 (I go by the highest # b/c the studies show that is the most accurate reflection of your true ovarian function) and my AFC's was 3 (right ovary) and 6 (left). I did clomid x 2 mos, then follistim with IUI x 1 month, then IVF (with ICSI and had ~10 follicles, 4 mature eggs, 2 embryos transferred), then 3 mos of follistim with IUI's, then IVF (13 follicles, 8 mature eggs, ICSI, 2 embryos), then another IUI... didn't get pregnant.

I then had a phone consultation with a RE at CCRM (Colorado Center of Reprod Medicine, the #1 IVF center in the country) and he said that I only had a 10-15% chance of having a baby with IVF and that he'd recommend I go to egg donor... 3 weeks after that conversation I got pregnant on my own, out of the blue (at the age of 30)! The only fertility med I was taking was DHEA 25mcg twice daily. I now have a gorgeous 6 month old son. So it CAN happen!

Now I'm just hoping it'll happen again. This blog gives me hope. Despite my RE's discouragement, I think I'm going to go back to trying IVF... even though it didn't work the first 2 times, I'd rather do that then keep trying on my own (which hasn't worked the past 6 months). Stay positive- it really CAN happen!

[2ndteacher]

Hi everyone! I am glad to have found you. I am 30 and in the 2WW of IUI #9. My husband and I are considering doing IVF this summer, and I was wondering, do any of you know if IUI and injectibles is a better option than IVF for those with DOR? We are very unsure of what to do next.

We don't have money for treatments over and over again, so we need to move on to something more aggressive with better success rates, but we also don't want to sink so much money into IVF if IUI's are going to be just as good an option.

Also, how can you determine if it is a quality or quantity issue? I have never had a miscarriage. My last AFC was 18, but only 2 (barely) were mature at IUI.

Thanks everyone!

[wallace1]

I was able to conceive with my own eggs and I had DOR. It took several months of Chinese herbs, acupuncture and meditation.