In-vitro fertilization offers you and your partner a chance at parenthood if you struggle to get pregnant naturally. While many IVF cases can be successful on the first try, some individuals have to try multiple times to get pregnant. IVF failure can happen regardless of how well you adhere to fertility treatments, and it is devastating for the couple and family. After a failed IVF, you may experience changes in your body, including:
Emotional Flareups
Dealing with a failed IVF can affect your emotions; you will likely feel stressed and frustrated. Some patients experience mental health issues like depression. A strong social support system can help you navigate these symptoms. You can also try stress-relieving activities like meditation and yoga to relieve anxiety.
The extra hormones within the body from IVF can result in mood irregularities. Such emotions often last throughout the fertility treatments, but they can also linger after it fails. Emotions from IVF hormones within the body will reduce once you go off treatment and the body self-regulates.
Exhaustion
During fertility treatments, you must stick to a strict schedule to make conditions favorable for egg production, harvesting, and implantation. This routine can be exhausting, especially if you’re already working around a busy schedule. Fertility medication can also make you feel fatigued as your body tries to deal with hormonal changes. After a failed IVF, the exhaustion worsens, but it decreases with time as you recuperate.
Weight Gain
Many women report that IVF treatments increased their appetite. Increased levels of hunger and irregular hormone levels can affect your base weight, leading to weight gain over time. While you can experience more weight gain during fertility treatments and pregnancy, the effects can linger after a failed IVF.
Weight gain is often accompanied by the feeling of a bloated stomach that subsides with time. Once your body’s hormones start regulating, you will notice that the weight gain slows down.
What To Do After a Failed IVF
If your IVF treatment failed and you still want to get pregnant, you’ll need to prepare for another round of treatments. Despite the changes to your body, knowing what to expect can help you mitigate the frustration and stress. Here’s what to do after a failed IVF.
Avoid Blame Game for the IVF Failure
Anger is common for couples experiencing failed IVF, but it can be destructive. While feeling hurt and frustrated, some patients may want to blame fertility experts, clinics, spouses, or even themselves. Avoiding the unfair blame game for any party involved, including yourself, can help people cope better with a failed IVF.
Adhere to Your Follow-Up Appointments
Following your failed IVF cycle, you might feel exhausted, so it will be hard to think of trying another cycle. Take all the time you need to grieve and/or heal; it’s okay to give yourself time to process events. When you’re ready, follow up with your physician.
Follow-up appointments help you review your cycle and understand what might have gone wrong. Many people find these appointments as an opportunity for closure. Your physician can also help evaluate your physical and mental well-being and help you on the journey to recovery.
Understand Causes of the Failure
IVF cycles fail due to several reasons, including:
- Poor egg quality
- Poor sperm quality
- Lifestyle factors
- Implantation issues (i.e. endometriosis or chromosomal abnormality)
- Age
Understanding why the failure occurred will help you develop a plan to better your future chances of success. Your fertility specialist will perform hormonal and blood tests to determine the condition of your body and reproductive system. Getting to the root cause of your failed IVF will help create better protocols for subsequent cycles.
Try Again
Many couples feel that a failed IVF takes you back to square one, but trying again will increase your chances of success. With a new plan, your fertility specialist can help you avoid any mistakes that can result in failed implantation.
Subsequent IVF cycles might not be as hard if you have frozen embryos left since you won’t need extraction. Your fertility specialist will get you on IVF treatments to prepare your body for pregnancy once more.
Note: Trying again is a decision you must make in your best mind. Experts might recommend waiting for several months before a second cycle.
Find the Right Answers for IVF Failure
Failed IVF cycles can affect your body and mind, so you need adequate time to heal before trying again. Fertility experts use special clinical tools to find the cause of IVF failure before subsequent IVF cycles. Knowing what caused the failure helps them develop better plans to increase the chances of a successful pregnancy.
