IVF success prediction? Chance would be a fine thing

By Liz, Womb For Improvement

A few months ago I found a website that calculated your chance of success with each IVF cycle. Just nine questions and you got a percentage rating indicating how likely it was to work...

The questions were pretty limited, they asked:

Your age
How long you’ve been trying for
Whether you are using your own or donor eggs
The cause of your infertility
How many times you’ve had IVF
Your pregnancy history
(Broadly) what type of medication your are on
Whether the embryologist plans to use ICSI (when sperm is injected directly into the egg rather than put in close proximity in the hope it will find its own way in).

None of these are anything that I have any power to change.

My chance was determined to be around 20 per cent.

This really annoyed me. How could the algorithm calculate my chances with so little information about me, and my lifestyle? It didn’t even ask whether I smoked (I don’t).

So I did what any desperate, hormonally-unbalanced woman would do. I emailed the scientists who’d come up with the formula and challenged them. Were they really saying that there was nothing that I could do to give me that edge? What about acupuncture, fresh vegetables, lucky socks?

The response was short but unequivocal: 'Unfortunately there is little above that of a normal healthy lifestyle which has been shown to consistently improve implantation in medical trials.'

In the past when I have had IVF I’ve tried numerous different things to help boost my chances.

For my first round of IVF I went all out. I went to the gym regularly, stopping during the resting/implantation phase. I gave up all alcohol for the six weeks leading up to it (and, of course, its duration). I stopped drinking caffeinated drinks. I had acupuncture. And a four-leafed clover stuck on my fridge. In other words I was insufferable, but determined to make it work.

It didn’t.