Hi all
DH and I are supposed to be doing our 3rd IVF/ICSI attempt in Oct and this cycle they are trying antagonist cycle, only I havent heard from the nurse or anything about the pill etc.
So my question for those who've done a antagonist cycle is - Do I start with the pill the month prior so should I be starting the pill September for our cycle in Oct?
Also wondering how many out there have had success with an antagonist cycle? And was it after failed down reg cycles and did you get more eggs collected at EPU?
Any advice would be appreciated!
Wishing everyone all the best on their TTC journeys!
I did 5 (or 6) antagonist cycles - never used the pill. You start with day 1 of your natural period and work from there with the drugs. You only take the gonal F (or equivalent) until you are further on and then they prescribe "antagonist" shots to stop you from ovulating ... you aren't taking anything like syranyl to suppress thus you need the antagonist shots as your follicles get further along. I think the idea is to work more "with" your body than the other methods that manipulate your hormones even more. good luck.
Buliej's experience with antogonist is the same as mine. No pill, gonal F until follicles have grown to a good size and then shots to stop ovulation (these shots were very expensive and an additional cost to the cycle- i think I paid about $90 a shot and needed a shot every day for several days). I did antogonist on my second IVF attempt. The reasoning by my FS was to get less eggs of a supposedly better quality. We were hoping for between 4 & 8 (my first IVF cycle was was 18). We got 21 eggs on the antogonist cycle of which 8 fertilised, all grown to blast, 1 transferred (which resulted in a chemical pregnancy) and 7 frozen. So the theory of less eggs went out the window for me. In saying that we got the same amount of fertilised and subsequently frozen embryos on each cycle.
What I did find was the antagonist cycle was much much easier on me - both on my body and on my emotions. It's much shorter, less monitoring and less drugs.
No success yet for me, but we still have 6 frozen embies from that antogonist cycle to transfer when I get up the courage to go back and try again.
Best of luck Loops, I hope your upcoming antogonist cycle brings you your baby.
I have done 2 antagonist cycles they are so easy i had no hormonal outbursts i felt normal except for crampy ovaries from follicle growth there is no pill you just start from day 1 of your period you have a BT and if all your hormones are good you can start my 1st cycle didnt get to start as my E2 was to high a sign of ovarian cyst.
My 2nd cycle was good i had 20+ follicles and out of those we got 8 eggs and 8 fertilised we did not get to TF as we did PGD and our embie was affected with our disorder.
Moving forward more than a year we did another antagonist cycle just to speed up the process of getting pregnant my E2 was again to high and i had a cyst but the FS decided to go ahead as i had heaps of follicles again but because of the cyst most of the follicles just did not get big enough so we got 6 eggs and had 1 A grade day 3 embie TF which i am now almost 10 weeks pregnant.
Antagonist cycles are suposed to produce less eggs but better quality if i had done a different cycle all of my 20+ follicles might have grown and seeing as my E2 is always high it would have effected the quality of my eggs and the pain after from ohss from high E2 is something i dont want to risk my FS said it is rare to get ohss on an antagonist cycle.
Anyway i have rambled enough good luck i hope it all works out for you.
If i have to do another cycle i would do antagonist again
I am currently in the TWW of my second antagonist cycle. My first cycle I started with the pill, as I had no period, but with the second one, I went straight in with injections on day 2 - as I got my period from a failure the cycle before.
I don't feel like it's been a dreadfully hard road with up's and down's of emotion. Reading other's stories, I imagined the worse, but now know many of these horror stories were from down reg cycles.
Although I was happy with how they went, I'm seriously hoping this embie sticks and I don't have to do another one for a while
Antagonist IVF cycle???
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