DISCLAIMER: The following post is not intended to act as medical advice. As always, please consult your doctor with any questions about your fertility journey.
When it comes to growing your family, we know how difficult it can be when you struggle with infertility or fertility issues. It can often feel like you’re the only one who hasn’t had a baby or gotten pregnant yet. And it can really cause moms-to-be to evaluate every aspect of their life–and their body.
If you’re struggling to conceive, you may be undergoing fertility treatment or even just starting the fertility process and simply wanting to know more about what to expect. If your doctor has mentioned stimulating your ovaries, then you’re going to want to keep reading!
Our friends from Michigan Center for Fertility and Women’s Health are here to support you on your fertility journey. You might have caught their Fertility Friday series on our IG page–quick videos to answer common fertility questions. Below, they’re sharing about what happens when your ovaries are stimulated.
What happens when the ovaries are stimulated in order to produce more eggs in a given cycle?
Based on our treatment plan, medications may be indicated with an attempt to produce more than one mature follicle, or multiple follicles. This is most typically done during an IVF cycle and subcutaneous injectable medications are used most. A common question we see from patients when we stimulate more mature follicles to grow is, do we lose our eggs more quickly or deplete our ovarian reserve faster?
And the short answer is, no!
When the ovaries are stimulated to produce more mature follicles, we are not depleting our egg supply more quickly.
Each month, there is a cohort of small follicles called antral follicles. If normal ovulation occurs, typically our natural hormones would induce one of these antral follicles to predominantly grow. It would hopefully contain a mature egg which would then release when we ovulate and allow for potential pregnancy to occur. The rest of the antral follicles in that month’s cohort are then gone forever. They do not remain in the cohort for the next cycle.
When we do treatment (especially when using IVF medications), we are attempting to stimulate more follicles to grow.
When doing IVF we often use medications that induce the growth of more follicles, hopefully allowing for more eggs to be retrieved at the time of the egg retrieval. We hope to utilize more of those small antral follicles in that month’s cohort and try to grow them to maturity with the hopes of having a good/mature egg in them.
This process does not make our egg supply or ovarian reserve decline any faster.
Here’s an example:
When individuals donate their eggs, they do not accelerate their own fertility decline by donating–even after multiple times. We have some wonderful egg donors who have donated four or five times. They do not deplete their egg supply faster or lower their fertility potential compared to those who have never donated.
In summary: no, we don’t deplete our egg supply faster when we stimulate the ovaries to produce more follicles. We simply attempt to utilize more of what’s available in that month’s cohort that would then be depleted regardless in the following cycle.
