Are you wasting your time and money with another IVF cycle?

Are you wasting your time and money with another IVF cycle?

Are you wasting your time and money with another IVF cycle?

Transcription :

This topic of should I do IVF or shouldn’t I? Am I wasting my time or not? Should I move forward with donor egg is a conversation that I have on a weekly basis, if not a daily basis and it’s an important conversation and that’s why I’m diving deeper into it in this week’s episode.

Before I do that, I do want to give a quick shout out to this week’s sponsor of this video, which is the Fertile Mind app. They are an amazing app, which you need to check out, and for only my viewers right here with my code, you get a 30 day free trial. The code is The Fertility Expert, all one word, all capitals, and all that information and the link are in the description below. Check it out.

Hi, my name is Dr. Marc Sklar, also known as the fertility expert, and I’ve been working with couples for over 19 years through my online coaching programs and at my clinics here in San Diego. Okay, so let’s get into it. The first thing that I want to address, so the first part of that question that I want to address is, am I wasting my time and money by moving forward with IVF?

Well, it’s not such a straightforward question or answer for that matter, but if you are not spending your time preparing and nurturing your body and believing in yourself and your abilities and getting to the root issue and addressing those things, then the short answer to that question is yes, you’re wasting your time and your money because one of the most important and valuable things that I want you all to learn about any way you choose to get pregnant, but certainly if you’re going to be spending the money moving forward with IVF, is that IVF in and of itself is not going to fix your egg quality. IVF in and of itself is not going to address the root issues. IVF is going to help you get pregnant based on where your body is at this moment in time.

So you need to prepare and get yourself ready so that you can provide the best quality eggs and embryos to make that process worthwhile, and that is a huge variable and one of the bigger issues that I see gets ignored or forgotten because we think that just moving forward with IVF is going to fix all of our issues. If we keep moving forward in the same direction, doing the same thing we’ve always done and expect a different result, it’s not going to happen because we haven’t changed what we’re doing. We haven’t changed our approach, and that’s why taking time, at least three months, but it could easily take longer for some. That’s why taking time is so important to prepare your body, support your ovaries, and your eggs and address most importantly the root issues so that you can have the outcome that you’re looking for when you move forward with it.

To prove my point just a little bit more, I want to share a real testimonial from a woman that’s in my program. Okay. She posted this back in February and what she said was, “Hi, Dr. Marc and Lonika, After an agonizing wait, I finally have my retrieval results. I had 14 eggs retrieved higher than expected! 10 fertilized, and I have four embryos that made it to blast that are now frozen. I was ecstatic to get 14 eggs and have 10 fertilized. I was honestly expecting a couple more embryos from this, so was feeling initially disappointed, but my clinic seems quite happy with the results and really felt this to be an above average result for a 44 year old,” which I’m not reading now, which 100% is for a 44 year old woman to have four eggs retrieved and 10 fertilized is amazing to get on an IVF cycle.

“The embryos have been graded and two are quite good quality. I’m definitely nervous for the next step in just praying one of those embryos has what it takes. Thank you again.” Just as comparison, just doubles and triples my result from my first retrieval before we started working together. Okay, so in July 2021, she had seven eggs retrieved. Now, she had 14. She had three fertilized before. Now, she has 10 fertilized and she had two embryos before and now she has four.

This is what it’s like to address the root issue and to give it time to take hold so that you could see the fruits of your labor and get the results that you deserve. I think that is so important when we’re answering this question of should I move forward with IVF? Is it a waste of my time and money? That all depends on how you choose to approach it.

I know many of you are asking yourselves, well, what can I do to prepare and plan for IVF to make it successful? Well, a few weeks ago I did a video just exactly on this topic, and I’m going to share that link below so that when you’re done with this video, you can check that one out and learn a little bit more.

The second question that we want to answer today is, should I move on to donor egg? This is really not so straightforward of an answer because a lot of that really depends one, on your personal beliefs and where you’re at in the process, and if you’re ready for donor egg. I have many couples who say to me, that’s never something that we want to do. And after trying and trying, they do end up moving towards donor egg. I have other couples who say that we’re open to it, we’re just not ready for it now.

There’s so many variables to answering this question. The first thing that I will say when it comes to this is you and your partner need to be on the same page. My recommendation is, first you have a conversation about this topic well before you ever get to it. Doesn’t mean you can’t change your mind, but have a conversation, feel each other out, and understand where you both are at because you both might be in different places.

Making the decision to move forward with a donor egg or donor sperm for that matter is not an easy one and is challenging for us on many levels. So I would encourage you as a couple to sit down and have a conversation and ask each other how you feel about this. Is having a donor of some sort, even something that you’re open to, and if so, what does that look like for each of you?

But moving forward with donor I think is something that we do need to consider in a different light. And what do I mean by that? Well, I think all too often we move forward in that direction a little too quickly, and I’m not saying it’s not a bad option. I’m saying have you really exhausted all your options and do you really feel like you’ve gotten to the bottom of the issues, that you’ve addressed all the issues and you’ve given it all you’ve got before you move towards donor? That answer may be yes, and if so, fantastic, move forward with donor. But if it’s not, then I encourage you one, to get a second opinion from someone who has a different perspective, and two, make sure that you are getting to the root issues that are addressing your issues and causing you to move forward or considered using donor before you move forward in that direction.

One thing that I think all of us need to consider is that the donor option is theoretically always there for you because the success rate of a donor cycle is going to change very little depending on your age, as long as your uterine health is good, so that is not something we need to rush into. I want you both to sit down and be sure that that’s a direction that you want to go to when you make that decision.

When we’re speaking about donor, I also want to make sure that you’ve taken into account just the time factor. Maybe it is the right time for you because you’ve looked at how much time you’ve given into the process, you know how much time you want to give more to it, and you’re ready to move into that next phase of things. That answer is going to depend completely on you guys, but what I can tell you first is that I see couples move in that direction too quickly all too often because the clinic that they’re working with has exhausted all their options and the only option they have left as a doctor or clinic is to offer you donor, but that doesn’t mean that your only option is donor. It means that their only option for you is donor. I think that’s an important concept that you need to understand.

And then again, look for the support that you need that’s going to get you the results that you’re looking for and is really going to support you in the way that you deserve. Often that means looking for a different person to work with and getting to the root issue of why you’ve ended up in this situation to begin with.

To talk about this point just a little bit more, a few weeks ago I shared a testimonial of a woman who was told that she could never have her own biological children and that she should move forward with donor. And sure enough, with the right plan, she was able to get pregnant. I’m sure you all remember that testimonial, that story of hope where she inspired all of us with her story and her determination to get pregnant.

They called me and told me that I would never have biological children because I can remember my world falling down around me when they told me I’d never have biological children. When you told me that’s not true, that was huge for me, for us. We did a frozen embryo transfer. Here we are.

And you’re almost how many?

Biological baby.

That is what is possible when we address the root issues and we support the body in the way that it needs. When it comes to answering this question, that answer is going to be different for all of us because we all have different needs, different timelines, and we’re all willing to put in something a little bit different. But I want to urge you to put in a little bit more, to dig deeper, and to get the right support so that just maybe you can get pregnant with your own eggs and if not, donor is always going to be there as an option for you as well.

If you’ve been trying longer than you would like, if you’re tired of doing this alone, I want to let you know that you don’t have to do it alone, that we can be here to support you through the process and help you make those tough decisions to get the results that you deserve. If you want to join my Hope Fertility Coaching program and hopefully get the results that you really need, then you can do so by using the link in the description below to apply.

Now, tell me what you liked about this video. Comment below and let me know. I want to hear from you, what did you learn from this video? What was new for you? And more importantly, what questions do you have about your fertility that I can answer for you? Comment below and let me know. If you liked this video, give me a thumbs up. If you’re not already a subscriber to my YouTube channel, please subscribe. Just hit that bell to subscribe and get notified when I put out a new video for all of you. And until the next video, stay fertile.