Hi there - Firstly I am so incredibly sorry that you suffered such a horrid loss recently. thoughts and prayers are with you and your partner.
I really hope that this blurb can offer you hope and advise! We are the very lucky and proud parents of our son who is 13 months old following our 6th round of IVF.....
Our first 5 cycles were all undertaken at St Helliers with embryo transfer at Kings on three occasions and the bridge for one (the remaining cycle we had no embryos to put back). Firstly We couldn't fault St Helliers, we had been going to the assisted conception unit to try various other things for about a year and a half before our first cycle which we self funded. We were very fortunate to get two funded cycles and when they failed we paid for the other two attempts at St Hellier.
The team there are incredible, given how in demand they are and what little funding they have you really do feel like an individual and they actually care about the outcome.
Kings we have little to comment on really as it was soely the transfer of the two funded cycles that took place there and they were very friendly although did manage to mess up the freezing process of our embryos on one cycle
but hey humans are exactly that and mistakes happen its important to remember that.
When our 5th cycle failed the guys at St hellier sat us down at the follow up consult and were nothing but honest and said we can try here again and we are happy to do so but we feel there is something we are missing and we are not equipped to tell you what that is. You need more treatment than we are able to offer and we would rather you tried somewhere with more specialised techniques and they gave us their recommendations for other clinics.
We ended up taking their advice and moving to ARGC, a decision we didn't take likely at all we did hours of research and this is where we thought our chances were best. As you know this whole journey is such an emotional rollercoaster and really takes its toll physically and mentally so we decided this was our very last roll of the dice, apart from anything else financially we were totally limited.
ARGC is well like no where else i have ever been its bonkers. It seems like there is no order, nothing in its right place etc but the work they do there for the number of patients they have is madness! You have to be prepared to wait for ages when you are there and potentially go back twice in a day if needs be so you are basically at their beckandcall.
We are the lucky ones it worked for us, with huge amounts of help from the guys at ARGC including hormone profiling, natural killer cell tests, intralipid drips, the works!
I guess what i am trying to say is there is no right or wrong, you need to give yourselves the best chance you possibly can to succeed. One thing i would say we were trying for almost 7 years and our son was born when i was 35 and time as you know does make a difference so if you can bear that in mind when making decisions If you ever want to grab a coffee and chat further i am more than willing to do so. This is a very long babble and i know what a lonely thing IVF can be!
Take great care and stay strong