Her journey included 10 retrievals, 17 transfers, and 6 heartbreaking losses. The embryo that finally worked? Her worst-graded, untested one.
⚠️ These stories are personal experiences, not medical advice or scientific evidence. Success stories are more likely to be shared than unsuccessful ones, so they should not be interpreted as proof that a treatment works. Always discuss treatment decisions with your doctor.
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📊 Story Snapshot
👩 Age: 38📆 Years trying: 4
🧬 Embryo: Worst-graded, untested (frozen)
🧪 Retrievals: 10
🐣 Transfers: 17
💊 Diagnosis: Tubal factor, Male factor infertility, Immune-related issues
📈 Outcome: Live birth
We started this journey when I was 34. I am now 41. We had our son when I was 38 turning 39.
We started this journey only because I had no tubes since they were damaged due to a surgery I had as a child, so IVF was the best way forward. I had great AMH and good numbers across the board. So off we went feeling full of hope…long story short, this was only the start of a long, heart breaking, soul changing journey to our beautiful miracle.
We did not just have tubal issues, we also had unknown male factor DNA fragmentation issues, unknown blood clotting factors, high NK cells…you name it, we had it. Our first cycle ended before it even had a chance, with 0 of my eggs becoming embryos. They wouldn’t fertilize by standard IVF, even though our sperm looked great (we were told it was picture perfect), and if we did not have tubal issues than we would have just had a baby with out any help. Umm, wrong.
Fast forward to round 2, we got 15 eggs, 12 were mature, 10 fertilized normally via ICSI. Yay! Not one of those turned into a take home baby. We had an early loss at 5 weeks, and the other 2 that made it to freeze failed to do anything, no implantation at all.
We would always get a lot of good eggs, and they all would do great until day 3/day 4 when they all started to arrest or slow down. And whatever blasts we did get would either end in an early loss or no implantation at all.
It took along time to get a DNA fragmentation sperm test. The test came back at 67% fragmented. We did 90 days of a sperm health diet change using supplements and got it down to 22%. From here, we made blasts that passed PGS testing. Yay again! But even these embryos were ending in loses or flat out BFN cycles.
In the end we had one little fighter left in the freezer: our worst graded untested embryo. How could this work if all the PGS healthy blasts either ended in a loss or didn’t implant at all? We did things a bit differently this time. We did blood thinners, steroids, vitamin infusions, loads of progesterone 5 x 400mg daily plus 3mg PIO every 2nd day. And intralipids. And you know what! That little fighter embryo, the one they couldn’t even test, the one that just sat there in the freezer waiting for me to be brave enough to transfer it, stuck around. And today he is now a very busy, very clever, 2 and a half year old little boy.
We are forever grateful we never gave up. 10 egg collections and 17 transfers. 6 loses (one of which was twins), 10 flat out failures, 2 lap surgeries of endo and infection. All for one little cutie pie worth all the pain.
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Want to learn more about how the immune system impacts fertility? Check out my guide on the role of the immune system in infertility and IVF.
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