Pearl - When IVF Fails

00:00:00.000 women make our problems men's problems so we want to wait to have kids that's fine if you want to 1.00

00:00:04.480 risk it with ivf but the problem is the men are paying for this so on top of the student loan 0.99

00:00:09.040 debt now they have like now they have ivf bills to pay what's up guys uh welcome to my youtube

00:00:14.640 channel today i'm reacting to women finding out that ivf actually isn't a guarantee yeah so um 0.73

00:00:20.080 women we have a tendency to wait till the last minute to have kids um and we think ivf is a get

00:00:25.200 out of jail free card and to be fair um it's a higher success rate than i would think like

00:00:30.480 i actually do know a lot of people that have had it six like i was looking at the numbers and i

00:00:34.960 think half of people that do ibf get a kid after a ton of money but i'm like that's better than i

00:00:40.800 thought um but anyways there's winners and losers in the game of life and some people win some lose

00:00:47.360 and these are some of the losers so still processing everything like i'm hanging on by a

00:00:52.240 a thread today but I had to get ready and get myself out of the house. I have a friend's birthday 0.62

00:00:58.820 party today and I'm like really challenging myself to just like go for a few minutes. My husband and

00:01:04.520 I are so sad that our second transfer didn't work and we really thought like it was going to work

00:01:10.860 this time. Everything went so smoothly and it just it felt like it was our time and so

00:01:16.360 just like you hold on to all of this hope and you build up that like finally you feel like

00:01:24.260 you know all this hard work and everything that you've put into IVF and fertility treatments is

00:01:29.420 finally going to come to fruition you're going to get what you've been working so hard for and

00:01:33.000 that just like obviously wasn't the case um wasn't the right time and we're just so devastated and

00:01:40.420 it's like it leaves you with so so much like anger and frustration and like unanswered questions

00:01:47.780 i'm like why didn't it work like i i hate not having answers just so frustrating um it doesn't

00:01:53.320 look that old but it's tough the tiktok filters they make the women look younger and i'm like

00:01:59.220 forcing myself not to cry right now because i need to look good for this birthday party um but like

00:02:06.620 oh we're just like we're so bummed and so so devastated and i let's see same thing happened

00:02:17.080 to me after the second failed i did the the test and i found silent endometriosis they treated it

00:02:22.320 in the third transfer work yeah endometriosis i guess goes away when the women um get pregnant

00:02:27.480 and since we used to get pregnant while young it would go away but um now it doesn't um so it kind

00:02:34.700 just ruins their ovaries i guess i don't really know the in and out i had a perfect cycle fail

00:02:39.740 with 5a embryo everything was so smooth um okay i guess this woman's fifth cycle worked okay let's

00:02:49.100 keep going completely misled i feel lied to i feel like i was pushed into ivf because they could just

00:02:55.660 bill at a higher rate and charge more money he looks older she looks like 40s for it i just quit

00:03:01.340 ivf halfway through and i wanted to share my story do you want to preface this video saying

00:03:06.620 that i am not judging anyone that goes through the ivf process i'm really happy that some women

00:03:11.420 go through it wonderfully and end up with a beautiful family honestly i didn't see any

00:03:16.140 videos talking about the negatives a tiny bit of context i'm 41 my husband and i decided we wanted

00:03:21.500 to start having kids last year unfortunately 40 what girl where have you been he had a vasectomy

00:03:27.260 earlier in life and it could not be reversed. The doctor told us IVF was the only way, which it's

00:03:33.260 actually not, but they told us it was. I'm not squeamish with medical things. I do filler and

00:03:38.620 Botox. I've had surgeries. I inject peptides all the time. I've had broken bones. I'm not squeamish

00:03:43.660 with needles or being in pain. But for some reason, I could not deal with IVF. I ended up quitting on

00:03:51.980 day 10. It's crazy because I asked other friends who've gone through it how their experience was

00:03:57.000 And most people just say, oh, it was fine.

00:03:58.880 You know, it wasn't enjoyable, but it was fine.

00:04:01.040 I was not fine in any stretch of the imagination.

00:04:04.800 How many medications you are pumping into yourself, how many appointments you have to

00:04:09.960 go almost every 48 hours to have blood taken and vaginal ultrasounds.

00:04:14.340 I did not realize how cold the entire process is, depending on the clinic, how cold the

00:04:20.960 people are.

00:04:21.940 I felt like I was a farm animal science experiment.

00:04:24.800 Everything was abrasive. 1.00

00:04:26.220 was here's the thing women they don't understand that every medical treatment has pros and cons 1.00

00:04:33.260 and they're not guaranteed to work so everything's a calculated risk in life but 1.00

00:04:37.580 women go into ivf and think it's a sure thing and it's no it's a calculated risk and of course 0.98

00:04:42.380 they're going to be cold to you they don't care about you they want your money well i feel like 0.99

00:04:46.060 i've had better customer service at like a home depot or an olive garden the absent level of care

00:04:51.980 at my clinic is astounding but like i don't really need somebody to hold my hand it's just that

00:04:57.980 entire thing felt dark the injections are overwhelming on that day 10 i just found myself

00:05:04.300 uncontrollably crying which is super out of character for me i realize i've been pumped full

00:05:08.860 of hormones for the last 10 days but i was just crying to my husband saying like i don't know if

00:05:13.740 i can continue this every day just felt so dark i felt for me i was doing something wrong my body

00:05:21.820 soul energy was screaming at me to stop made me feel guilty I thought how could I stop I'm gonna

00:05:27.420 let down my husband I'm gonna let down my family my parents they're gonna think I'm a failure that

00:05:32.660 I'm a quitter that I'm a big baby I can't handle this but truth be told like I can't handle it

00:05:37.620 contacted my doctor and said I am stopping all medications going forward right at the 50% in

00:05:43.220 mark which at the time I felt super guilty but now I feel so much relief it was one of the hardest

00:05:50.340 things I have ever done and I just couldn't shake this feeling that this was not right for me the

00:05:57.000 point of this video is I wanted to share with other women who were thinking about going always

00:06:00.720 based on feelings and not evidence but yeah I mean whatever she doesn't want to do it for this 1.00

00:06:05.400 to let them know for some people it's how much money did she waste on this before of her husband's 0.99

00:06:11.980 money did she waste before changing her mind really hard I never saw that side of IVF everyone

00:06:17.580 was like yeah it kind of sucks but you'll be fine some people aren't fine some people it will be the

00:06:22.680 hardest thing that they ever do and i want to let you know if that's you it's okay you don't have to 0.76

00:06:27.440 feel like a failure if this is not the way that you want to have a family okay let's go to this 0.98

00:06:33.040 one need to hear from the ivf girlies who have been through multiple implantation failures with 1.00

00:06:40.380 their transfers. I am actively going through my third failed embryo transfer and I just feel

00:06:48.940 at a lot thinner of women than I thought. I feel like going into this one I did everything I

00:06:55.100 possibly could to hopefully help it work. I got myself my body in better shape. I was eating

00:07:02.140 better. I quit drinking caffeine. Like so many things I was doing to help ensure this one would

00:07:09.420 work and we're going through another failure and this time with two embryos when we were not

00:07:14.780 planning to use two my beta blood work is tomorrow so obviously i could technically still get a

00:07:20.460 positive but i tested this morning and it was negative so i've been down this road multiple

00:07:25.480 times before and i just know that the news i'm getting tomorrow is that this transfer has once

00:07:29.620 again failed and i don't know what to do next are you in there okay let's see what's here

00:07:35.600 article in the cut. This is about 11 rounds, 45 year old who went through several rounds of

00:07:41.100 failed IVF, spent over 250 K and never ended up with a baby. As a fertility doctor, I have so

00:07:47.880 many thoughts, but I want to start at the top with, this is why we need to work really hard

00:07:51.900 as a society to close the fertility knowledge gap. So many people, the vast majority of people

00:07:56.000 that I talk to don't have a true understanding of how challenging it is to try to conceive at 45.

00:07:59.940 and that is juxtaposed against this over-inflated belief in what science, what IVF and technology

00:08:06.540 can overcome. While it's true that IVF has gotten much more successful over the years,

00:08:10.840 it still depends on your biology. You still need ovaries that can respond to stimulation

00:08:14.340 and produce mature eggs at retrieval. And while ovarian reserve often declines markedly by the

00:08:19.920 time we get to our mid-40s, I've absolutely had 45-year-old patients who have better than average

00:08:24.160 or better than expected ovarian reserve, but the problem is that's not the whole story, right? You

00:08:27.860 might get to egg retrieval but the attrition from egg to embryo becomes dramatically steeper by age

00:08:32.600 45. Roughly 90% of the embryos that do make it to the stage where they can be tested will be

00:08:37.300 chromosomally genetically abnormal. One of the biggest misconceptions that I see and one of the

00:08:42.220 harms that might come out of articles like this is this idea of lumping everyone who's 40 together

00:08:46.240 but being in your early 40s and being in your mid 40s or late 40s are not the same. Every year

00:08:51.440 matters and as we enter our 40s the biology starts to change more quickly. Have I had patients that

00:08:56.640 have conceived successfully with IVF using their own eggs at age 45? Yes, but it typically will

00:09:02.400 take multiple cycles to get there and it doesn't always work. I would say the truth is IVF success

00:09:07.140 at 45 is the exception, not the rule. Whereas that is not true in your early 40s. A lot of people can

00:09:12.540 be successful at that age. It may take multiple attempts, but they can get there. It's a bit more

00:09:16.960 realistic. This is where it gets complicated. And these are some of the hardest conversations that

00:09:21.140 I have because I don't think the answer is to tell everyone based on their age written on a piece of

00:09:25.060 you're 45 you have to go straight to donor egg because some women at 45 can

00:09:28.720 make normal eggs it's just not that common I completely understand wanting

00:09:32.440 to try with your own eggs first especially if your ovarian reserve

00:09:35.260 suggests that it's reasonable to try to stimulate the ovaries for IVF we don't

00:09:39.040 want to blindly have cut-offs and take that choice away but if your clinic has

00:09:43.060 never achieved a pregnancy at 47 from someone's own eggs should they really be

00:09:47.180 offering IVF freely and openly to all patients at that age when we practice

00:09:51.240 medicine or administer treatments with a negligible almost 0% chance of

00:09:54.760 success, even a very low risk treatment becomes difficult to justify, right? The risks are going

00:09:59.020 to inevitably outweigh the little benefit. No one should be just cycling indefinitely. There should

00:10:03.380 be meaningful, critical conversations at every step. Yeah, I think after a certain age, just take

00:10:07.820 the L. By the way, did we get eggs? Did they turn into embryos? Were they genetically normal? Where

00:10:12.840 are we hitting a wall? And is there scientific reasoning and rationale to keep going? Is there

00:10:16.820 any reason to believe that the next cycle could produce meaningfully different results? And if

00:10:21.300 the answer is honestly no, then we have to have a serious conversation. And this is not about

00:10:24.660 giving up or throwing in the towel or not believing that you can do it. This is about

00:10:28.180 the fact that your time, your money, your emotional stamina and physical ability to withstand these

00:10:33.620 cycles are a real thing. Okay, let's go to the next one. My husband and I decided if we want to

00:10:39.720 destroy our embryos. And I are deciding if we want to destroy our embryos this week. Don't mind me.

00:10:45.620 i'm red-faced sweaty picked a pimple um so gross because i just did a workout class 0.93

00:10:52.820 but that's one of the reasons i'm coming on i my husband and i are deciding if we want to destroy 0.61

00:10:59.060 our embryos this week um we've had them on ice so to speak for a year a year and a half now my last

00:11:06.900 miscarriage was march of 2025 and although my husband and i are completely at peace with our

00:11:14.420 decision well not completely at peace i don't think i'm ever going to be fully at peace with

00:11:18.100 it but my husband and i have decided to go forward child free not by choice um after four years four

00:11:25.380 miscarriages blah blah blah feel free to go back um and learn more about my story wow i'm actually

00:11:30.660 surprised i thought all these women were going to be fat you're interested the thing that i just want

00:11:35.860 to kind of normalize and validate for any of my girlies or couples or people partner anybody who's 1.00

00:11:41.700 going through. I think polygamy kind of makes sense for this reason. For the women that can't 0.90

00:11:45.660 have kids, the husband should still be able to have one. This right now is even though I've had 0.52

00:11:51.120 a year, a year and a half of knowing that we're not going to go forward with any more treatment.

00:11:57.400 When I got the renewal of my embryos, I panicked. Like I don't want to destroy the only piece of

00:12:04.400 joint DNA that I have with my husband. I was feeling so bummed, so sad, cried today. You

00:12:12.900 know, we don't have to sign. I can absolutely decide to pay another $500 and spend another

00:12:20.180 year humming and hawing. But I just went to a workout class, hence why, of course, I'm

00:12:25.080 sweaty and gross and red-faced. I just wanted to say I feel so much better. If you're going

00:12:31.540 through fertility treatments and you can move your body or you can sweat it out or you can go

00:12:35.860 on a walk or you okay giving advice for the cope i wish you well let's see her got some bad news

00:12:41.480 about our ivf journey okay she's kind of fat so i felt a little bit bad for the ones that don't

00:12:48.620 look that old or fat but she's fat we just did our second egg retrieval my first retrieval we got

00:12:56.420 10 eggs. Nine of them were mature. Six of them fertilized. And we ended up with five embryos

00:13:04.260 that were all genetically abnormal. We went to a new clinic and we just completed retrieval

00:13:11.300 last week. It's only been a week, two weeks. And the numbers were better. We got

00:13:18.720 16 eggs that sounds crazy we got 16 eggs 12 were mature 11 fertilized

00:13:29.640 and we ended up with five embryos to send off for testing this morning i got the call

00:13:40.420 and she says it's not good news

00:13:42.780 turns out all five again are genetically abnormal

00:13:48.860 we're now in exactly the same place we were before this cycle before the first cycle

00:13:57.980 we are no closer to having a baby

00:14:03.400 60 or 70 thousand dollars on all this we have nothing no embryos 1.00

00:14:16.360 yeah and that's the thing again women make our problems men's problems so we want to wait to 0.99

00:14:21.320 have kids that's fine if you want to risk it with ivf but the problem is the men are paying for this 0.97

00:14:25.880 so on top of the student loan debt now they have like now they have ivf bills to pay hold on

00:14:31.400 crying on the internet i am not going to do it again it would be literally insane

00:14:39.640 to go through that again and expect different results we've done plenty of sperm testing

00:14:45.560 we did semen analysis we did a dna fragmentation test it does not seem likely that the sperm is the

00:14:51.960 problem seems to be an egg quality issue i don't know how much more of this i can take

00:14:58.040 financially can you increase your egg quality by losing weight i don't actually know yes i don't

00:15:05.320 really feel that bad because you don't have to have a double chin so i felt bad for the the in

00:15:10.360 shape little girls so there's nothing you could really do there but anyways guys let me know what

00:15:14.760 you think in the comments i love you thank you so much for watching um like the video on your

00:15:18.520 way out, subscribe to the channel and I'll see you next time.

Pearl - July 27, 2026

When IVF Fails

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