Mild IVF

Mild or Modified Natural Cycle IVF is conducted during a woman’s natural menstrual cycle, with a later addition of fertility medication to help stimulate her ovaries into producing a number of eggs ready for collection. Whilst this process aims to provide more than one egg (as with Natural Cycle IVF), you may not produce as many eggs and resulting embryos for transfer compared to a conventional IVF cycle.

Who is the Mild IVF best suited For?

It is suitable for:

• women who wish to minimise the amount of fertility medication they take during treatment
• older women who are more likely to produce less eggs during a conventional IVF cycle owing to a low ovarian reserve meaning even high doses of medication would not yield any more eggs
• those who wish to reduce the risk of OHSS, including women with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) who are more likely to develop this condition within a conventional IVF cycle

How does it work?

The process is similar to conventional IVF in that it involves the collection of eggs under sedation and the fertilisation of those eggs in the lab. It is then followed by close monitoring of your developing embryos before an embryo transfer. Any remaining embryos of suitable quality not used in treatment can be frozen and stored for future treatment.

Risks and side effects

There are fewer side-effects and risks with Mild IVF than with a conventional cycle due to the lower dose of medication. Given that we may only be able to retrieve 2 to 4 eggs for fertilization, there will be fewer embryos which may mean that you may not have any remaining embryos to freeze. There is an increased chance that no eggs can be retrieved at all.