For those with diminished ovarian reserve who have had a successful pregnancy, I am just curious what ended up working for you. I'm 35 with a DOR (AMH of 0.79 and FSH of 12) and have been trying for 11 months (had one early miscarriage after conceiving during month 5). My RE has indicated that I have a 1-3% chance of getting pregnant naturally with no interventions and a 4-5% chance of getting pregnant with an injectible / IUI cycle. He estimated that I have a 40% shot with IVF. My insurance won't pay for anything until I switch plans on January 1st so I either have to sit around idly (still trying obviously but the chances of success seem poor) or pay out of pocket. I guess I thought there would be other less expensive options to try first (like clomid or other medications) and if that didn't work then injectibles and then onward to other plans. For others with DOR who have sought fertility treatment, what ended up working for you? Did you find it worthwhile to try other treatment options before IVF?
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I have DOR but because we also have male factor, we went right to IVF. Our first round was not successful, I was too suppressed. But after that we had success. I gave a 2 year old and I'm 29 weeks pregnant with our second. If you do IVF, there are several tests that gave to be done first, so maybe you could get started on that?
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I have PCOS and DOR and IVF ended up working for us. I had 3 failed IUIs at one clinic with an unknown diagnosis. Then I switched clinics and was put in Metformin for the PCOS and dexamethasone for the DOR. I tried another 3 IUIs but they all failed. We went for IVF and I finally got my first BFP. I'm now at home with b/g 7 week old twins. Early in my IF journey, I was hoping IUIs would work because adoption and IVF looked impossible because of the cost. (We are paying out of picket.) We were lucky that we reevaluated our finances and found a way to pay for more fertility treatments.
Best of luck to you.
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@Shantuck: I have DOR along with endo and MF so what ultimately ended up working for us was IVF. Looking back I wish we had gone on to IVF sooner...we did 4 IUIs first
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@Shantuck: I was borderline DOR (can't remember my numbers now, sorry). IUI worked for us!
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No first hand experience, but my friend was on her fourth round of clomid when she found out her amh was 0.26. They planned to jump straight to ivf, but the 4 th round with times intercourse worked for them (currently pregnant now)
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I have DOR. My FSH was about 11 and my AMH was .70 (can't remeber the exact number). I got pregnant a couple times on my own but ended up miscarrying both. What ended up working was clomid, trigger, and progesterone and timed intercourse. Our IUI the cycle before didnt work. I was one cycle from starting IVF when this one finally worked. Good luck!
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@mrswin: May I ask how many IVF's it took you? And what protocol(s) you used/were successful with? I have severe endo, DH has azoospermia and I just found out that I have an AMH of 0.3 (yay! what next? lol). We're starting IVF/ICSI with a mTESE soon and I'm trying to get as much information as I can to up our minuscule odds of success.
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@Aqualov: Hi, we were very fortunate that our DD is the result of our first fresh cycle and we have two embies frozen. I was on an antagonist flare protocol; BCP for 3 weeks, then Gonal F for stimming, HCG trigger. We used ICSI on all the eggs that were retrieved. My AFC was 10 at my suppression check. We had 17 retrieved, 16 fertilized, 11 at day 3 only 1 blast at day 5 and two more blasts frozen on day 6.
Do you know what your AFC and FSH is? How old are you?
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@mrswin: Wow, that's great! Super happy for you. I'm 33. They only found one ovary at my AFC, which the doctor said happens sometimes and wasn't concerned about until my AMH came back. I had 6 antral follicles on the visible ovary, so they just doubled the count for my AFC. I requested another AFC to see if they can find the other ovary and get an accurate AFC. I haven't had an FSH yet as I'm on continuous BC for my severe endo until we start the IVF. I had it done about a year ago and it and my estradiol were normal. As of now my protocol will be 300 Menopur to start, then adding in Follitism 225 and Ganrilex 250 when indicated by US.
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@Aqualov: Thanks! I was 29/30 when I went through my cycle last year. My RE said they would estimate my ovarian reserves as comparable to someone who was 37+ so we were very concerned about how I would respond.
Have they been able to find your ovary previously and that's why they weren't concerned? That's great that your FSH was normal. What I wasn't prepared for was how many embryos we lost between day 3 and 5
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@mrswin: No, this was my first ultrasound with my RE. I know it was there during my last laproscopy though lol! They said that sometimes it can be hidden by the bowel or intestines, which is why they weren't concerned. My AMH is that of approximately a 45 year old, which is freaking me out. My RE lowered our odds of success by 10% when she got my AMH results.
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@Shantuck: I had/have DOR with numbers worse than yours (AMH .3 and FSH 20.3!) and got pregnant with injections plus IUI on our first attempt. The results of that cycle are my 2.5 year old twins. I did this in conjunction with acupuncture.
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Thanks all. I booked a second opinion appointment with another RE for December who seems to specialize in DOR. Maybe its worth trying a single IUI cycle before doing the IVF. Is there any issue with doing IVF the cycle immediately following an injectible IUI cycle? I'm just anxious about wasting time.
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@Shantuck: my sis was diagnosed with this. They got pregnant on their 3rd IVF, and have four frozen embryos (their LO is 2) and surprise! She is pregnant again with no fertility intervention which is awesome. They also had male issues with low count/morphology
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@hellobeeboston: Thanks for sharing! I love these stories.
@Shantuck: I don't know how quickly you can go from IUI to IVF, but monitoring for the IUI might give your RE a better idea of how you respond, making it easier to determine an IVF protocol.
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@AmeliaBedilia: That's a really good thought. Since we plan to use our insurance, we only get a few tries until it is completely on our dime. I will have to consider whether there are separate insurance maximums for IUI and IVF or whether they come out of the same bucket.
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We jumped pretty quick into treatments.
We started out with an IUI which I felt was a great idea! It gave us the opportunity to get familiar with treatments and it gave my RE the opportunity to see how and if I would respond to meds. That IUI got cancelled due to overstimulation and we jumped right into IVF. We got lucky on our first try. 6 mature eggs, transfered 1 on day 5, 1 blast frozen.
I also did acupuncture and TCM leading up and during our IVF.
I'm glad we moved on quickly but I'm also glad we started with an IUI to test the waters.
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