Experience with mild IVF?

Hi all, I posted last week about the total failed fertilisation we experienced during our most recent cycle in February. We have our review meeting with our consultant today to discuss next steps and trying to work out what questions I should be asking at this stage. One thing I have been thinking about since last weeks terrible news about the fertilisation is what things might help to boost my egg quality and I have done a little bit of reading around mild IVF cycles? Does anyone on here have any experience with this? How did you find it and what was the outcome? For reference, I'm 37 and have completed 4 fresh cycles, and 1 FET. I have had BFPs twice but both unfortunately ended in miscarriage. My AMH at age 34.5 was 12.3, but most recent AMH, taken at age 36.5 was 7.9. First 3 fresh cycles in 2022 and 2023 all resulted in 7 eggs being collected, with two eggs fertilising and one making it to blast. This was despite my consultant increasing the does of stims each time (150, 225, 450). In my latest fresh round (Feb 2025) my stims does was high - 375 - (although not as high as the previous fresh cycle) and we only ended up with 4 eggs, 3 mature and 0 fertilised. I can't help but think that we need to focus on quality of the eggs, rather than quantity, especially since higher doses don't seem to have yielded any improvement in numbers in the past? I'm also so conscious that in the break between my fresh cycles my AMH seems to have dropped quite a bit so anything we can do to ensure quality will be important. Would love to hear from anyone in a similar position? What did your consultant recommend? Was mild IVF an option?

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We went through mild IVF with ICSI last year, 11 eggs collected & 8 fertilised with only one making it to a blast and this ended in a chemical. When we had our follow up with the consultant they informed us that we would need to increase meds to try and improve outcomes by getting more eggs so in our case following the outcome we was advised against mild IVF again x

I would recommend you look at sperm fragmentation for him, look at NHP nutrition for both of you and potentially Chicago bloods for the environment (Unqlife can do this very reasonably). We were with Waterstone for IVF and Unqlife for bloods and now have a beautiful boy (8th pregnancy)

I found the book 'it starts with the egg' by Rebecca fett very informative for egg quality. She has a website too

Did you have down regulation with these cycles you’ve already had?

@RD the first one was a long protocol with down regulation, but all the others were short protocol

Long cycle helped for me - I only had 3 eggs fertilise from the cycle but 2 made it to day 5, so initially we were in panic mode but it worked out that 2 were strong/good quality and we had a fresh transfer and am currently 7 weeks pregnant 🥰 We focussed a lot on egg and sperm quality to accompany this cycle too - I took coq10 and reduced sugar, ate lots of protein, drank lots of water! (For ref my first cycle was short and got 5 fertilised eggs but only 1 to day 5 and the transfer didn’t stick). Good luck with your next steps x

On my third cycle I used a much lower dose of stims as it is thought our problem is egg quality. I still got a similar number of eggs, 17. Only one made it to day 5 and he is due in June

From what I have heard, fertilization stem from sperm issues. Three months of good sperm practices can improve the sperm.

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