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Hello, Dr. Jacobs. I've been reading a few posts and one that you recently commented on is similar to my situation. I would love to hear your opinion.
We have been TTC for 6 years, starting out when I was 37 (now I'm 43). We pretty much immediately went to IVF back then, starting out with several IUI tries, etc. Well, now six year later and 4 IVFs under our belt, we are still with nothing. The last IVF was with a donor for donor eggs. She was 24, excellent health, etc. We retrieved 35 eggs, 22 fertilized, and 18 made it to blast with the highest possible grades. At the time everyone was high-fiving that we hit the jackpot and that we would get 3-4 children, surely, out of that bunch (which is what we would love).
Well, in the past two years, we have now transferred 12 (in pairs of two) of the 18 without success. Husband has low motility, low morph, so we went with ICSI. Also, he was tested for abnormal chromosone alignment (karyotyping) and also for DNA fragmentation. Both came up in the "normal" ranges.
Like in a recent poster's case, with each transfer, I get pregnant (each and every time) and the HcG numbers are always very, very good (250, 380, 420, 316, 262) and every 48 hours they more than double. But right between 5 and 6 weeks I always miscarry them. This has happened in 5 out of the 6 cycles, with the one-off time being the only time that the numbers didn't double like they should have.
My husband is solidly thinking that it's his sperm, but nothing that seems to be coming up in any test. I'm starting to agree. But our RE keeps insisting that ICSI would have taken care of any such issue, but yet he remains baffled. He's never had such a case as ours.
If we were your patients, would you consider that all of our embryos are not viable even though they looked excellent before and after the freeze, due to an undected sperm issue (or even some rejection issue with me??) Or would you say that in 18 excellent blasts there's probably only one good embryo and to keep plugging away them?
I think our RE wants to sugarcoat things and doesn't want to give us any bad news, but we're problem-solvers and want to do the right thing. What are we missing? What else should we be tested for?
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