@sashahakmanmd: 1. You can’t control the number of follicles available for stimulation: a woman’s ovarian reserve is combination of genetic and environmental/external factors including age. This doesn’t predict your future or current fertility but can influence success in an IVF cycle- your body puts out a certain # of follicles each cycle but we can’t make more follicles unfortunately 2. You aren’t taking away from “future eggs” but rescuing the ones that’ll inevitably disappear this cycle: every month we lose that entire group of follicles. The IVF meds help to grow them and actually rescues them from programmed cell death which is why an IVF or egg freeze cycle doesn’t affect future fertility 3. Even with optimal medication protocols, not all retrieved eggs may be mature- maturation is the division of chromosome pairs to be able to be fertilized with sperm DNA. Meds are an important signal for this but they don’t always mature despite a perfect protocol and being in a “mature size range” 4. We don’t know when your eggs will be ready for retrieval until a few days prior- meaning your schedule during those two weeks should be flexible- follicle size and hormone levels help determine readiness for maturation prior to retrieval but it’s often a last minute thing! 5. The same exact protocol in two different cycles can yield very different results in the same patient: not all cycles behave the same and doing the same protocol is often beneficial not harmful
