Medicated vs. unmedicated FET

[juneau]

Hi, I did IVF five years ago, failed the fresh transfer and also had a dud FET. Shortly thereafter I gave up trying to get pregnant with intervention when I turned 40. I thought that meant never being pregnant at all.

Surprise, six months later I was pregnant with my now three-year-old dd. I have been pregnant three times since, with three losses, two of which were life-threatening. I lost my right tube in August.

Now I am facing the reduced fertility of age (I'm 44 now) plus now that's cut in half with only one tube. BUT I have three frozen embryos from my cycle five years ago. They weren't the best quality but the RE said they haven't degraded further with the long freeze.

So, I'm thinking about doing an FET. Problem is, I don't want to do a medicated cycle. I am still nursing my dd (and obviously it hasn't prevented me from getting pregnant). I am still cycling normally. And I just hate the suppression and progesterone shots.

Anyone here do a successful non-medicated FET? Know the risks/advantages of either medicated or not?

Thank you!

[YummyYarnAddict]

I would talk to your RE to see what they have in mind for a protocol for you. At age 44, they may not want to suppress you with Lupron as they tend to move away from suppression once a woman is over 40. That's "in general" but not always. However, I would defintely be inclined to use the progesterone support, but I'm a big believer in progesterone too. Progesterone isn't just the PIO shots. You can get the Crinone suppositories or insert Prometrium pills and I believe there's another form too. I'm an old fogie and stick with the gold standard PIO shots for myself but I know a lot of folks don't like them. Your natural progesterone levels drop dramatically (in many cases) after the age of 40, so without the progesterone support during an FET, you may conceive, but might have a higher risk of miscarriage (and you're statistically at a higher risk of miscarriage because of your age) and your docs might not be willing to forego the p4 support.

I've done 3 FETs and they're easy peasy compared to fresh cycles (I've done 4 of those). The Lupron can be difficult, but, really, I'd see if they want you to use it since there's a risk of over-suppression. Regular cycles aren't an overall indication of your e2, fsh, etc. etc. so they'd want to check your cd3 labs to get a better idea of what's going on.

[juneau]

Thanks YummyYarn. Love your username, by the way! I'm still waiting for the doc to pull my chart out of deep storage so we can have a real conversation about the possibilities. I'd definitely be willing to use progesterone in whatever form if my labs show that it's low. Today is CD3 for this cycle but I plan to wait another cycle before doing the FET so there will be time for whatever labs and monitoring they want to do on the next cycle. Avoiding lupron would be great!