Ask Our Doctors – Archive
Our Medical Directors are outstanding physicians that you will find to be very personable and compassionate, who take care to ensure that you have the most cutting-edge fertility treatments at your disposal. This is your outlet to ask your questions to the doctors.
Hi. Vain question – but wondering if I can do botox injections 2 weeks before a transfer. (Have already had retrieval, eggs are on ice.) I know botox is a no no while pregnant. This will be my first time doing it and wasn’t sure if it was safe. Thank you!!!!
It would probably not do harm but to be on the safe side, personally I would refrain!
Geoff Sher
Hi Dr. Sher,
I just had my second FET cancelled. This cycle began with lupron because I ovulated through 8 mg of oral estrace during my last attempted FET back in February of this year. During my baseline ultrasound on Monday July 30th I had two cysts in my left ovary and an E2 level of 246. They had me continue the 10 units of lupron and come back today for another blood draw and ultrasound. Today I still had a 16 mm cyst and a 14mm cyst and my E2 was 287. My doctor canceled my transfer on Aug 24th and wants me to continue daily lupron injections of 10 units until the beginning of September and transfer sometime during the 3 week of September. My worry is that I won’t have had a period since early July and that my E2 might continue to rise. As for a little background I did a fresh IVF cycle in March 2014 of one embryo that failed, a successful FET in June of 2014 where we put in two embryos and 1 turned into my 3 year old daughter. I had a failed FET of one embryo in Feb 2017. All of these cycles were at my clinic in Utah with im injections of estrogen. We then moved our embryo to A clinic in Washington state as it was closer to us. We then had a cancelled cycle in Feb 2018 with oral estrace instead of the injections and that’s when I ovulated through. And here we are today with another cancelled cycle for this month. We only have one embryo remaining which is a day 5 blast graded as a “bc”. I have endometriosis and adenomyosis. I have a son who is 7. I was able to get pregnant with him 8 weeks after a laporoscopy and hysteroscopy to remove endo. I had that surgery a second time and again 8 weeks later got pregnant but lost that baby at 11 weeks gestation. We tried that surgery a 3rd and 4th time with no luck. We then found out my husband has very poor morphology. About 10% of his sample had normal morphology. We tried a round of IUI with femara but when that failed we were told IVF with ICSI was our next route to take. So we did that got 10 mature eggs which 9 fertilized and by day 5 had 5 viable embryos. We now are left with the one remaining. I just want to give it my very best odds since it’s the last chance we have for our 3rd biological child. I can’t go through another fresh IVF cycle as I just don’t have it in me. I also am homozygous a1298c mthfr. I am taking a baby aspirin with all my cycles for that reason. Any insight would be super appreciated!
My preference would be to allow a full resting cycle, start a BCP with the next period and then prepare for the FET.
Good luck!
Geoff Sher
Hi, I have just had ivf testing where even though I had 12 follicles I only got 1 egg at collection. This was my protocol 225 gonal f for 10 days, centrotide for 2 days (days 9 &10), 250 mg of ovitrelle on the evening of day 10 and egg collection 36 hours later. Do you think something in my protocol caused the eggs not being able to be collected.
My one egg was chg tested and was normal and was therefore transferred in a frozen FET. My transfer protocol was 3 estrofem for 23 days (transfer day) and then utrogestan 400mg At 6.3am and 400mg at 10pm from day 18. My lining at day 17 was 8.8. My clinic never told me to use utrogestan internally and therefore I was swollowing them. I got a fairly faint BFP on a home urine test day 8 after a 5 day embryo fet and then started to spot on the evening of day 9, bleeding started on the morning of day 10, although I got a slightly darker line on the Saturday morning, my my hcg levels got tested that afternoon and my hcg levels were 48, 48 hours later and they were 9. I had a chemical pregnancy. I bled for 5 days before stopping all medication and now I have my period.
Do you think that swallowing the progesterone could have caused the m/c. I took aspirin but forgot one or 2 tablets before starting again, could it have been that? I went down a slide on day 9, could it have been that? I’m driving myself crazy trying to understand what happened and would really appreciate your help. Thank you
The problem with taking the progesterone orally is that it likely would not have reached the uterus in therapeutic levels and that could have played a role in the chemical pregnancy occurring.
Geoff Sher
Thank you for your reply, I much appreciate it. It’s very frustraiting to have got so far and then failed. Do you have any thoughts on my egg collection and what you would do differently? I have a fairly low amh of 11 pmol.
hi dr Sher
After hepatitis B vaccine i developed very high antibody( HBs Ab) more than lab range. Knowing that i have develop such antibody, do you think i have tendency of developing NK cells activation when i’m pregnant later. Any correlation between those two antibodies in the body?
Thank you
No correlation whatsoever!
Geoff Sher
Hello Dr. Sher,
I have four embryos frozen and stored at two different clinics and I’d like to get pregnant. Could you please tell me which of the four embryos is best quality so I know which one to request to transfer first for a FET?
Expanded blastocyst Grade AB (frozen on day 6)
Early blastocyst Grade BC (frozen on day 6)
Grade BB (frozen on day 6)
Or Stage 2BC (frozen on day 6)
Thank you,
Michelle
The expanded blastocysts on day-6.
Good luck!
Geoff Sher