r/IVF•
biwei

Should I change clinics?

Advice Needed!

I'm trying to weigh the pros and cons of moving clinics. 37F, AMH 1.2. AFC of 10+ mm before retrieval was 15. My numbers are not terrible. 1 ER: 12 eggs retrieved, 9 mature, 6 fertilized, 1 aneuploid blast. We were told my partner's sperm was amazing, until this round - it had morphology problems and clearly functional problems too. My eggs were noted as having "poor egg quality."

Our clinic is attached to a major university and uses a top lab in the city. The team and the communications are good. I am in month 2 of 6 months of a much lighter work schedule - I wanted to do all my ERs to bank embryos during this time because my job is people-facing and intense.

Our doctor is ok. She doesn't seem completely uncaring. But she made it clear from the beginning that she does not think it is worthwhile to identify the underlying causes of infertility - IVF by itself is the solution to many of those problems, she says, so don't waste time and money on expensive and time consuming diagnostics. Because I have autoantibodies and have already met my out of pocket on my insurance, I have been working with various doctors to get more info on underlying health issues anyway. I was able to rule out major autoimmune issues and other genetic, and rheumatological issues that might prevent pregnancy. I had subclinical hypothyroidism, which I didn't know about, and my RE helped me get my TSH into an optimum zone. At the same time, she did tests on various vitamins and hormones and never flagged that my vitamin D was in the "insufficient" range - it still appeared in the green zone on my chart so I didn't even think to supplement until I reviewed it much later and realized it was insufficient. She told me to start taking DHEA but never checked my DHEA levels first. I like to have lots of information - I have a PhD and I understand the limitations of studies and how to interpret evidence - and this doctor doesn't seem to think it's important to consider underlying causes or give us full information (I had to beg her to share our embryology report with us so we could know when things arrested).

Maybe worst of all, in our follow up meeting 2 weeks after the failed cycle, it seemed like she was looking up the results of our cycle for the first time. She initially just said "there is so much out of our control" which is of course, not wrong, but I wanted to hear about her interpretation of what went wrong (she really offered very little in this regard, perhaps because she was seeing our results for the first time) and suggestions for changes we could make next time. I had to push her every step of the way to get any of this, and even then, her recommendations were "well you could try XYZ" and then I had to repeatedly prompt her to explain why those could be a good fit for us. I want to trust my doctor to guide us through this process and help us to make choices based on the information available, but I feel like we have to do all the work to get the expertise out of her. I can keep doing this; it seems like the plan we came up with makes sense when I looked into it more after the fact. But ultimately I just don't feel confident in this doctor, and I am hurt by the fact that she didn't even bother to review our case after a failed cycle.

We could leave and try somewhere else. But, if we stay with this clinic, we can get 3-4 retrievals done in my 6 month window. If we switch, we will lose several months and I am not getting any younger. I don't know how to think about this and I wonder if anyone more experienced can weigh in. Are these red flags or is this kind of RE relationship par for the course? Perhaps it's good that we are in control of the process? I had just hoped that we would have expert guidance and someone who seemed invested in actually helping us, not just going through the motions. Any perspective would be helpful!

Posted May 7, 2025, 2:35 PM UTC

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