Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would like to keep this conversation going. We did two cycles at CCRM - we had very good maturation rates, mediocre fertilization rates (first round about 50%, second round about 65%) and then no blasts both rounds. The first round it was clear on day 3 that none were going to make it. Our second round we got closer to blasts... we had 3 that were looking better on day 5, but did not end up making it. We're trying another round at SGF right now while simultaneously looking into fragmentation and MF issues.

Okay we heard back from Shady Grove this weekend. Happy to share that we have 3 blasts. I’ll give our history, in case it helps. I’m 30 and husband is 38. He has some lower numbers, but nothing shocking so on paper we should have had a fairly straightforward case.

Spring 2019: CCRM Round 1- 11 retrieved, 10 matured, 5 fertilized, 0 blasts.
Summer 2019: husband has varicoceles repaired
Fall 2019: CCRM round 2- 18 retrieved, 17 matured, 12 fertilized, 0 blast (we had 12 fertilized here...i typed this wrong originally)

We had some concerns w the organization of CCRM with a few instances of mistakes happening (a nurse told me the wrong medicine amount and I questioned it and I was correct, for example). Our doc at CCRM also pushed for donor sperm after the first cycle which we felt was premature. We decided to try shady grove and saw Dr Widra at K St.

Winter 2020 at Shady Grove - 20 retrieved, 13 matured, 8 fertilized, 3 blasts.

Fingers crossed for normal embryos but even making a blastocyst has been the biggest motivator. Some rare good news we’ve heard in our ivf journey.

Anonymous wrote:I would like to keep this conversation going. We did two cycles at CCRM - we had very good maturation rates, mediocre fertilization rates (first round about 50%, second round about 65%) and then no blasts both rounds. The first round it was clear on day 3 that none were going to make it. Our second round we got closer to blasts... we had 3 that were looking better on day 5, but did not end up making it. We're trying another round at SGF right now while simultaneously looking into fragmentation and MF issues.

Anonymous wrote:Dr. Dean. Also, I think my situation is different than yours. All my embryos over multiple cycles at different centers arrested after day 3, which is very different than six blasts over four cycles. Also, to be fair, none of the centers I've been to, have been able to Diagnose anything other than mf, but I have a lot of failures. The advice is to just keep doing icsi. I don't know if tese will make a difference, but it's something new instead of same old failures.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:GW Fertility poo pooed DNA fragmentation, but after 3 failed cycles with them, we want to get fragmentation checked at least. Looking for recommendations for a urologist in DC that will test for DNA fragmentation. MFI is 1% morph and post-wash count ranges from 1-5 million usually, though we did ICSI for IVF.

We went around and around and around with GW about this. We ended up doing the DNA frag test on our own after 5 failed rounds of IVF (4 at GW) and the results came back showing high frag and GW still will not listen to our concerns about it being male factor. It’s incredibly frustrating. Bottom line, you’ll probably need to move to a different clinic for help with this.

Wow this is so frustrating! Can I ask what your results looked like? Low fertilization rates? Or normal fertilization rates and failed transfers? Something else? We have only one failed round at gw but they aren’t recommending further testing for my husband which I don’t understand. I think our fertilization rate with ICSI was low (60%), but they say it’s fine.

Lots of eggs, good fert rate, but most of the embryos arrested around Day 3. We managed to get 6 blasts over the 4 cycles, but all were PGS abnormal.