Objective To investigate the effect of the number of previous spontaneous abortions on the first in vitro fertilization or intracytoplasmic sperm injection (IVF/ICSI) cycle. Methods A retrospective case?control study was conducted to analyze the clinical data of 1 279 patients who received IVF/ICSI treatment for the first time from July 2014 to July 2018 in Tianjin Central Hospital of Gynecology Obstetrics;they were divided into 0 time group (group A, n=924), 1 time group (group B, n=267) and 2 times group (group C, n=88) for comparison, according to the previous frequency of spontaneous abortions. Results There were no statistically significant differences in age, basal testosterone, estradiol, progesterone, prolactin and embryo quality in group A, B and C (all P>0.05). The biochemical pregnancy rate of group C (9.1%) was higher than those of the other two groups (4.1% and 4.1%; all P>0.05). The clinical pregnancy rate of group A (42.5%) [>group B (40.4%) and>group C (35.2%)] was not statistically significant(P>0.05).Early abortion rate in group A (8.9%) was<group B (15.7%), also<group C (38.7%), there were significant differences (all P<0.05).The live birth rate of group C (21.6%) was significantly lower than that of group A (35.5%; P<0.05), but the difference between group C and group B (30.7%) was not statistically significant (P>0.05). Conclusions Women with a history of one? or two?time spontaneous abortion have no obvious effect on embryo quality, and have a negative impact of clinical pregnancy rate, early abortion rate, live birth rate in the first IVF/ICSI cycle; especially for patients with a history of two times spontaneous abortion, early abortion rate has a significant increase, live birth rate decreases significantly, suggesting that patients with a history of two times of spontaneous abortion should find the causes of miscarriage according to the process of recurrent spontaneous miscarriage and receive treatment if necessary before subsequent pregnancy.