Dominique Sachse Shares Her One Embryo IVF Success Story

Picture being told your last embryo has a 1% chance of becoming a baby, and choosing to transfer it rather than start the whole grueling process over. That’s exactly where Dominique Sachse found herself in 2004. 

In a candid, unplanned solo episode of her podcast Over 50 and Flourishing, the longtime news anchor traces her full hormone story, and at the center of it is the one embryo IVF success story that gave her her son. She tells it plainly, in her own words, with the emotional weight of a woman who genuinely didn’t think it would work.

What makes Dominique’s version worth hearing is the honesty, not any promise that it’ll go the same way for anyone else. But for those going through the same thing, it’s a hopeful perspective that you didn’t even realize you needed.

Dominique Sachse’s One Embryo IVF Success Story

If you follow Dominique, you already know her as the Houston news anchor turned YouTube and podcast host who built a second act around midlife, hormones, and telling women the truth about what their bodies are doing. She’s an interviewer by nature, which is exactly why this episode is different. 

While Dominique is usually the one bringing in the thought leaders, she’s the subject here. And in the episode, she says that sitting alone and talking about her own feelings is surprisingly “awkward.” She does it anyway because the thread running through her whole story is hormones, and because she believes no one should suffer in silence the way she did. 

Below, we walk through how she got to in vitro fertilization, the choice to transfer her only embryo, what the research actually says about single embryo transfers, and how it all turned out.

Dominique’s Fertility Journey

Dominique describes herself as someone who felt “genetically blessed” early on. Easy periods, mild cramps, nothing that made life stop. Her mother had an easy pregnancy with her, so she assumed the same smooth path was coming when it was her time to try.

Then life took a different shape. She married at 33, and she and her husband spent five years enjoying being a couple before they started trying for a family in her late 30s. When conceiving didn’t happen naturally, they turned to fertility treatment.

One of the most important points she makes is that fertility is a couple’s issue, not a woman’s problem to shoulder alone. She’s direct that the assumption is always that something’s “wrong with her,” when the source can just as easily be male. Either way? The protocol often treats both partners. 

In her case, both she and her husband were injected with hormones to increase egg count and sperm count, because IVF was the only option they had.

The injections were brutal. She ran through the standard list of side effects, and checked off nearly every one: bloating as the ovaries swell, injection-site irritation, breast tenderness, mood swings, headaches, and exhaustion. (All while anchoring three newscasts at the time, mind you.) 

When her body didn’t respond and she wasn’t producing enough eggs, her doctors doubled her injections, one in each hip, morning and night, given by her husband. She says she has a high pain threshold, and these still leveled her.

Why She Transferred Her Only Embryo

This is where Dominique’s path to one embryo really begins. She was told that women on her protocol typically produce somewhere between 12 and 24 eggs in a full cycle. She produced eight.

Of those eight, four began dividing. An embryo has to reach eight cells to be considered viable for transfer, and of her four, only one made it. Her doctors encouraged her to freeze that single embryo and go through another full round of IVF to build up more.

She couldn’t do it. She was spent, physically and emotionally, and the thought of repeating the entire process was more than she could face. So she asked her doctor the blunt question: “What were the odds this one embryo would implant, stick, and become a child?” The answer was a 1% chance of conceiving with her one embryo.

She and her husband talked it over and decided not to freeze it. They transferred it. The transfer itself was uncomfortable, and afterward, she had to lie inverted with her head down for about an hour, using gravity to help the odds. 

She remembers lying there, desperate for a bathroom, and starting to laugh. It was also, she says, the beginning of her faith journey… The first time she felt an urge to pray.

Is One Embryo Enough for IVF?

This is the part everyone quietly Googles, so let’s zoom out from Dominique’s story and look at what the research says. The short version: modern medicine has moved firmly toward transferring fewer embryos, not more.

When Dominique went through IVF in 2004, transferring multiple embryos, often three to five, was common practice to boost the odds. That approach has changed. 

Because of the risks, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine updated its guidelines in 2021 and now recommends transferring just one embryo in most cases. In addition, the ASRM advises that all women under the age of 38 receive single embryo transfers, largely to reduce the risk of multiple pregnancies and the complications that come with them.

The logic is about safety without sacrificing results. 

Studies have found that transferring only one embryo has similar success rates as a multiple embryo transfer, while transferring multiple embryos greatly raises the risk for twins and health problems. That’s why looking at IVF success rates means considering more than pregnancy alone; birth rates and the safety of both mother and baby matter, too.

Quality is the quiet variable here. When it comes to embryo transfer, quality matters more than quantity. The amount of embryos transferred does not mean a higher rate of implantation and pregnancy, and in fact, transferring more than one could reduce pregnancy by 27%.

That’s why a single high quality embryo, sometimes as a fresh transfer and sometimes as a frozen embryo transfer, can carry real odds. Your chances of success still depend on the number of embryos, embryo quality, and age. All of which makes Dominique’s outcome exactly what she calls it: her story, not a typical or guaranteed result. A 1% chance is a 1% chance. Hers just happened to land.

Dominique’s Happy Ending

A few days after the transfer, Dominique found out she was pregnant. She calls her son, Styles, her “miracle baby” and her “one hit wonder.” And given how adamant she was about never doing another round, both nicknames fit!

The pregnancy itself was the easy part she’d always expected. She loved being pregnant, loved her growing belly, gained 42 pounds, and didn’t care. A few days before her due date, an ultrasound showed her amniotic fluid was dangerously low, so she was induced, and after a long labor, she met the baby she’d rolled the dice for.

She’s honest that the story didn’t turn into a fairy tale overnight. Styles struggled to latch, had colic and a milk protein allergy, and she later recognized she’d gone through postpartum depression without naming it at the time. That thread, hormones affecting mental health, is the real spine of the episode. But the through-the-fire beginning of it all is this: one embryo, a 1% chance, and a son.

Listen to Dominique Sachse’s Full Story

The transfer is only the opening chapter. In the full episode, Dominique connects her IVF experience to postpartum depression, a thyroid diagnosis, and eventually perimenopause. However, each topic shares one thing in common: Learn to advocate for your own hormonal health. Watch Dominique Sachse’s full IVF and hormone story on Over 50 and Flourishing, and drop your own story in the comments about how your IVF journey went (or is going!).

If fertility stories are what brought you here, we’ve got more from across the network. Hear Lo Bosworth on IVF and get the real talk on fertility and IVF options from someone who’s lived it.