A Failed Frozen Embryo Transfer (FET) Attempt

After our second devastating miscarriage and a few months of recovery and testing, we finally got the go ahead to do a Frozen Embryo Transfer (FET) in January 2018. Our plan was to transfer one of our two frozen embryos that had been retrieved and created thanks to our IVF cycle in September 2018.

After our second miscarriage, we felt that so much time over the past few years had been spent waiting with very few chances to actually "try", so we wanted to move ahead as quickly as possible.

I started the typical protocol which involved taking oral estrogen pills and eventually wearing estrogen patches. My bloodwork and lining was monitored at the Ottawa Fertility Centre (OFC). They needed my uterus lining to be at least 7mm thick; however, this seemed to be a struggle and they kept having to increase my estrogen dosage to try and get my lining to thicken. Unfortunately, the levels of estrogen in my body became so high that I ended up having bad reactions and side effects. One morning, I woke up feeling impaired - I could barely walk. I called OFC and they instructed me to go to the emergency unit immediately. They feared I was having a stoke.

The Ottawa General Hospital checked me out and very fortunately, there was nothing seriously wrong. However, I did not react well to the high doses of estrogen and my cycle was cancelled. This meant that there wasn't a chance to even try to get pregnant.

More waiting.

Well this was frusterating!

We were instructed by OFC to wait to try to get into a specialist at a dizzy clinic in Ottawa. They seemed to think this was required before I could do a FET again. However I had only ever had bad side effects while on estrogen, and once off of it, I felt completely normal. In my mind, there was absolutely no need to wait to see a different specialist. I was sick of waiting and pleaded with OFC to reconsider and help me proceed.

OFC ended up booking me in and I decided to take matters into my own hands. We knew that I reacted poorly to the high doses of estrogen that were typically used to prepare for a FET, but I knew I needed to avoid that protocol. I also knew that in my prior IUI and IVF cycles where I took injections, my lining always thickened nicely. I proposed to my doctor that I follow the same protocol I did for IVF, using injections to thicken my lining. We would avoid doing another egg retrieval, but take advantage of the thickened lining to do a FET. Apparently I was the first patient at OFC to do a protocol like this, but there had been cases in other clinics where this worked, and they agreed.

So finally, in March 2018 we got the go ahead (again) to do a FET.