IVF can give hope to childless couple to become parents: Doctor

Bengaluru: A well-known city obstetrician and gynaecologist says that many couples get disheartened, after the initial failure of IVF. However, there are many cases where childlesscouple have been successful in becoming parents in consecutive attempts.

Speaking to the media, obstetricianand gynaecologist Dr Ashwini said, "Recently, I came across a 34-year-old woman who has been married for eight years. She had not conceived due to very low ovarian reserve (egg reserve).

In fact, she had tried IVF four years back elsewhere. She did not get a single egg even after the injection.

So, this time, we tried IVF with a donor egg available with us. Though she conceived a baby, it had to be terminated at 12 weeks due to a lethal anomaly."

"These kinds of cases can disturb any family, especially those who have been trying hard to conceive for a long time. However, we thought it was time to give it one more try.

Hence, we tried another frozen embryo transfer for her in which she failed to conceive. We tried to do a second frozen embryo transfer for her.

However, her uterine lining/ endometrium were not growing optimally with the hormones being given externally.

Now, we decided to stimulate her ovary with minimal medication and allow the endometrium lining to grow naturally as the egg grows and matures.

When we stimulated, we could see three eggs growing in the ovary and also the endometrium was good to go ahead with the frozen embryo transfer. At this stage, I offered her to go ahead with retrieval of the eggs. To our surprise, we got two eggs and one good embryo of her own which were transferred.

Thankfully, she conceived with her own egg. However, there were still many challenges.

Now, she was presented with cervical incompetence at 19 weeks of pregnancy for which emergency cervical stitches were applied.

The pregnancy was pulled with due care up to 34 weeks when she delivered a healthy boy weighing 2.1 kgs", she said.

Dr Ashwini said, "I would never like to discourage anybody even with the poorest ovarian reserves. If the couple is willing to take a chance, we should always encourage."

In another case, a 26-year old woman who has been married for five years and suffered from PCOD and irregular menstrual cycles with multiple ovulation inductions and IUL.

Yet, she had failed to conceive. She also underwent laparoscopic ovarian drilling which did not help her much.

"Finally, she decided to go for IVF. After two failed IVFs, we decided to help her conceive naturally.

She was mentally disturbed at that time and didn't want to come for a scan and take injections as it was done previously for ovulation inductions. Since she had PCOD and irregular cycles, she was not on ovulation induction but the follicles did not grow.

She was given an extended letrozole protocol for 10 days for which responded and also simultaneously she lost weight and did regular exercise.

She conceived naturally with an extended letrozole protocol for resistant PCOD without any injection just two months after her second IVF had failed.

The logical reasoning and better application of knowledge of science can help couples achieve what they normally think is impossible", Dr Ashwini said.