Bouncing back after a failed IVF cycle

When an IVF cycle fails, patients want an answer.

It’s natural to feel disappointed, sad and angry, because you are now back to square one – even after spending all that time, money and energy ! And what happened to all the reassurances which the doctor offered, saying your embryos were perfect and that you were “definitely going to get pregnant” ? Was it all just a lie ?

Please take a break and give yourself time to grieve and recover ! The truth is that many women who have had a failed IVF cycle will be successful on a second or even a third cycle. While success can never be guaranteed, some of the problems which were discovered during the IVF treatment can be corrected , to help make the next cycle more successful.

This is why you want your doctor to be able to tell you exactly what went wrong, so you can fix it and have a baby in your next attempt. Unfortunately, this is surprisingly hard to do, simply because there are so many biological variables in an IVF treatment cycle, that it's not always possible to pinpoint what the exact problem was.

Not only is every patient unique, the problem is that IVF cycles in the same patient will also vary from one month to another. This is why it’s very difficult to extrapolate based on the results of just one cycle.  However, patients don't understand that biological systems are messy, that we don't have the same kind of accuracy and precision which we do when dealing with computer programs and bank accounts.

In any case, far more important than asking, "Why did the cycle fail?", a far better quality question is, "What did we learn from this cycle?" And even more importantly, "What can we do differently in the next cycle to maximize our chance of getting pregnant?"

The truth is that if you ask good questions, you're likely to get good answers ! And because IVF technology has improved so  much, even if we can’t always identify problems, we are surprisingly good at finding solutions by bypassing problems in the IVF lab  !

Need help in getting pregnant ? Please send me your medical details by filling in the form at www.drmalpani.com/free-second-opinion so that I can guide you !