Poor Responder After a Cancelled IVF Cycle: 3 Questions to Ask Before You Go Again (Low AMH, Failed IVF, Diminished Ovarian Reserve)

Failed IVF? Low AMH? High FSH? Told donor eggs? Book a free Functional Fertility Second Opinion before your next fertility decision → fabfertile.com

Your cycle was cancelled on day eight or day nine. Someone called and said there were not enough follicles and it was not worth going ahead. At the follow up, you heard the words poor responder.

What do you actually do with that? Change the protocol. Go again next month. Take three months off and work on your health. Get another opinion. Or accept that this is what your ovaries are capable of and stop looking for an explanation.

This is where I see women get stuck, because if you are listening to this, you have already done a lot. Clean eating, the supplements, CoQ10, a methylfolate prenatal, vitamin D, no alcohol, no plastics, acupuncture twice a week, reading It Starts With The Egg. Almost nobody walks into IVF blindly.

None of that answers the question in front of you now. What should I actually do before another retrieval?

In this episode, I walk through the three questions I would want answered. None of them are more supplements, and none of them are another checklist.

A cancelled cycle tells you how your ovaries responded to medication. It was never designed to tell you about the environment those eggs were developing in during the ninety days before the injections started.

What I cover: what the cycle actually established and what it was never built to answer. What happened in those ninety days, including the full thyroid panel with antibodies rather than TSH alone, ferritin where we look at 80 to 100, high sensitivity CRP where we like it below one, and absorption. Your partner's side, including DNA fragmentation, sperm antibodies and the seminal microbiome across his seventy-four days. And the question to ask your fertility team before you agree to another retrieval: what exactly are we changing, and why?

I am not telling you which protocol to be on. That is a conversation with your fertility team. I am also not saying any one of these markers explains a cancelled cycle. That is not the claim I am making. It is about whether the investigation was finished before the next decision.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Your cycle was cancelled and you heard poor responder
01:00 Question one, what did the cycle actually tell us
02:00 Everything you had already done before the cycle
03:00 Question two, what happened in the ninety days before stimulation
04:00 Full thyroid panel, ferritin, high sensitivity CRP and absorption
05:00 His side, DNA fragmentation, and why this is personal for me
06:00 What Your Clinic Missed, and what we actually look at
07:00 Question three, if you go again, what will be different
08:00 The Functional Fertility Second Opinion
09:00 Closing

WHAT YOUR CLINIC MISSED

A list of markers worth reviewing before another IVF cycle or a donor egg decision. It also gives you a sense of what we look at with clients, beyond bloodwork. Email hello@fabfertile.ca, subject line MISSED, and we will send you the guide.

FUNCTIONAL FERTILITY SECOND OPINION

A free 45-minute call where I review your bloodwork, your history, and your partner's results with you. Bring your partner and load your labs before the call. Email hello@fabfertile.ca, subject line FERTILE, or book here.

ABOUT THE HOST

I'm Sarah Clark, founder of Fab Fertile and host of Get Pregnant Naturally, a podcast with over one million downloads. My functional fertility team works with couples navigating low AMH and failed IVF, reviewing functional lab results, gut microbiome, food sensitivity, vaginal microbiome, nutrigenomics, HTMA, DUTCH, toxin testing, and bloodwork alongside nervous system work, to help identify patterns that may not have been considered. We work alongside your medical team, not instead of them.

Sarah Clark, founder of Fab Fertile, host of Get Pregnant Naturally (1M+ downloads), and author of Fabulously Fertile.

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