Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: What to Do When Your First IVF Treatment Fails

Can’t stop, won’t stop; it’s not for nothing that this may be one of our favorite sayings. As overplayed as it might be and as trite as it might sound, it’s pretty much how we aim to live our lives, how we chose to tackle our challenges, and how we hope to make it to the end of a marathon. We push each other, we push ourselves, and we push ahead to get to OUR end.

But life is not a race, and there is no set finish line (except for the obvious one that we won’t harp on). How you end your day, how you end your career, and how you end any struggle in many ways is up to you. You set the start line, the halftime, and the finish line. Much can also be said for how many rounds of fertility treatment you decide to do and how long you continue to try for a baby.

Knowing when to call it quits can be nearly impossible. Whether professionally or personally, it’s hard to know when enough is enough. In terms of fertility treatment, specifically IVF cycles, how much is too much? How many is too many? When do you move on to something else?

A recent study from England published in a very prominent medical journal (JAMA) recently addressed this question. It got a whole lot of press and found its way into the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and all of the morning talk shows. It basically showed that women who hung in the game were more likely to get pregnant—quitting after a couple of failed IVF cycles was not the right move. Although they didn’t find a magic cutoff number after which patients should be told to exit stage left, they did find that nearly 70% of women under the age of 40 got pregnant after six IVF cycles. While about 30% of women got pregnant on the first cycle, many took longer to cross their finish line.

The results were less promising for women older than 40; while they also got pregnant at a higher rate after more IVF cycles, the total number did not exceed 30%. Bottom line, even though this study got as much press as a Kardashian wedding, it’s important not to misanalyze the data.

This study is NOT giving the green light to endless IVF and fertility treatments. This study is NOT saying that multiple IVF cycles are always the way to go. This study is NOT saying everyone who does multiple IVF cycles will get pregnant. This study is simply saying that, if you can emotionally, physically, and financially (unfortunately, finances come into play big time) swallow the treatment AND your doctor believes you are a good candidate, it’s okay to keep on keeping on.

Knowing when to bow out is nearly impossible. Unfortunately, there is no magic number. But here’s the CliffsNotes version from girls in the know… For starters, we use age, pregnancy history, and ovarian reserve testing to decide when enough is enough; these initial parameters can shed a lot of light about what’s to come.

Additionally, we use IVF response as a gauge of how much gas you have left in the tank—are you responding to medications, are you producing follicles, is your estrogen level rising?

Last, we use embryo development and, if available, embryo genetic testing results (PGS/CCS/TE biopsy, which tests for aneuploidy) to help patients decide whether further treatment is a go. For example, if patients have done several IVF cycles without any viable or normal embryos, we are hard pressed to recommend continued fertility treatments with your own eggs. And while no, history doesn’t always repeat itself, in these cases, it comes pretty close.

We are not dictators, czars, fortune tellers, or goddesses (although we wish we were)—and we are not afraid to admit that. We can’t tell you that more will be better; it may just cost more money, cause more physical discomfort, and evoke more emotional anguish. But quitting too early can be a real shame.

Just like in sports (from two women that love to pound the pavement!), there should always be a day for rest, always a moment to breathe, and always a time to stop. Without a break, you get injured. Without a day to sleep in, you get fatigued, and without days off from work, you get frustrated. In cases where there is no definable finish line for you or your partner, you may need your doctor to help you set it. When you collectively find that line in the sand, be careful not to step over it. Things will start to sink quickly on the other side.