Would you tell your IVF child that you discarded the extra embryos?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you test the embryos, not that many are normal. Of 6 tested so far, 2 are normal for me. If I didn’t test, I would think that there was way more potential than there actually is.

It depends on your age. People that do IVF younger without underlying infertility issues typically have 67-80% genetically normal embryos.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you test the embryos, not that many are normal. Of 6 tested so far, 2 are normal for me. If I didn’t test, I would think that there was way more potential than there actually is.

It depends on your age. People that do IVF younger without underlying infertility issues typically have 67-80% genetically normal embryos.

Why are younger people without IF doing IVF?

[Anonymous]

^^^ Agree. Who would suffer through this if they didn’t have to?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you test the embryos, not that many are normal. Of 6 tested so far, 2 are normal for me. If I didn’t test, I would think that there was way more potential than there actually is.

It depends on your age. People that do IVF younger without underlying infertility issues typically have 67-80% genetically normal embryos.

Why are younger people without IF doing IVF?

Donor eggs

Lesbians who want to have one parent genetically related and one carry

Surrogates

People with genetic disorders they need to screen for

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you test the embryos, not that many are normal. Of 6 tested so far, 2 are normal for me. If I didn’t test, I would think that there was way more potential than there actually is.

It depends on your age. People that do IVF younger without underlying infertility issues typically have 67-80% genetically normal embryos.

Why are younger people without IF doing IVF?

Donor eggs

Lesbians who want to have one parent genetically related and one carry

Surrogates

People with genetic disorders they need to screen for

Yes, many couples need it to screen for genetic disorders or to reduce disease risk. It’s common for people to do this to screen for the BRACA gene (breast cancer risk gene) and some do it for APOE4 (Alzheimer’s risk gene).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you test the embryos, not that many are normal. Of 6 tested so far, 2 are normal for me. If I didn’t test, I would think that there was way more potential than there actually is.

It depends on your age. People that do IVF younger without underlying infertility issues typically have 67-80% genetically normal embryos.

Why are younger people without IF doing IVF?

Donor eggs

Lesbians who want to have one parent genetically related and one carry

Surrogates

People with genetic disorders they need to screen for

Yes, many couples need it to screen for genetic disorders or to reduce disease risk. It’s common for people to do this to screen for the BRACA gene (breast cancer risk gene) and some do it for APOE4 (Alzheimer’s risk gene).

Misspelled the gene it’s actually BRCA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why do you even need to tell your child they were an IVF baby? I barely remember it myself, two years later. We mostly did it to select gender (wanted one of each)

DP.
In my case, the source of infertility (PCOS) is likely hereditary. I want my 2 DDs to know that they may also experience infertility, as well as other medical conditions (possible links between PCOS and heart disease, type II diabetes, endometrial cancer, etc). So, yes, I plan to discuss my infertility diagnosis and our experience with IVF once they are old enough to understand.
My mother dealt with infertility, multiple miscarriages, and other health effects of what was likely undiagnosed PCOS, but none of that info was shared with me until I was a year into infertility treatments myself. Having that info earlier would have been very helpful ( I would have prioritized pregnancy earlier in our marriage and not waited until I was 33 to start trying, had I known it would take several years).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly I’d just wait and see what happens. We got a lot of embryos (6), but only 1 resulted in a live birth (so very thankful). And then if you have extra, you can revisit the conversation. IVF was supposed to be easy for us, young, healthy, great stats and it was harder than expected and can be for a lot of women. I hope it’s easier for you.

Isn’t ending up with a lot of extra embryos the norm? What are the chances that we would only end up with one?

My close relative ended up with just 1–her miracle daughter. Early menopause — low ovarian reserve at 35

Exactly. There's a misconception that IVF = leftover embryos.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly I’d just wait and see what happens. We got a lot of embryos (6), but only 1 resulted in a live birth (so very thankful). And then if you have extra, you can revisit the conversation. IVF was supposed to be easy for us, young, healthy, great stats and it was harder than expected and can be for a lot of women. I hope it’s easier for you.

Leftover embryos are only common for people that do IVF in their 20’s


Isn’t ending up with a lot of extra embryos the norm? What are the chances that we would only end up with one?

My close relative ended up with just 1–her miracle daughter. Early menopause — low ovarian reserve at 35

Exactly. There's a misconception that IVF = leftover embryos.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DH and I have been trying to conceive for around 10 months and are starting to consider what our next step will be, and obviously IVF could very well be part of our future. Something that keeps entering my mind is a hypothetical conversation with our future child regarding having used IVF to conceive them. If we end up with additional embryos which is quite likely and choose to discard them, I don’t know how I would feel about sharing that with my child.
I have never heard this discussed before and I’m wondering what most parents do. I get the impression that most parents eventually tell their children about their origins, but do they share that info? Not with a young child obviously, but I could see a teen who is familiar with the process asking if there were additional embryos and what then? Is this something that most parents reveal?

Why would you tell your child that you conceived via IVF? If done the “traditional” manner, would you be considering whether to tell them it was missionary vs doggy?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I agree with previous poster that it sounds like the discomfort is coming from you and you should explore that.

But I also disagree with others that your kids would not care. That actually baffles me. I guess it depends on the circumstances. If you had 7 leftover, it's obvious you can't have them all and that might not be so personal. But if you had one leftover and was on the fence about an additional child and ultimately decided no, I could see that meaning something to your future children (and be very hard on yourself!). It also depends on the child and your family dynamics. Sensitive kids might absolutely care. My grandmother and my uncle's wife had abortions and I can assure you those decisions has had huge impacts on the rest of the family, even now. People want to make it seem like something like that should only affect the mother but that is simply a naive take and not how human psychology works. If you are ever in this scenario of extra embryos, maybe consider just not telling your kids. It is your burden to carry and make peace with that. The only time I would consider revealing that info would be if one of your kids undergoes IVF in the future and they are at a place of being able to better understand it.

It’s just such a reach to think a child would care about an embryo, a hypothetical sibling. My mother had an abortion before I was born and after I was born. I don’t see how that has anything to do with me.

Everyone is different clearly. If I were in your shoes, that info would affect me greatly. I think it rather odd people don't care or wonder what life would have been like with another sibling around, more cousins for my kids etc. Would I treat my mom differently? Probably not. But would I care? Definitely.

Right but that's something you can wonder about with or without the IVF/embryos angle. If your parent said "we decided to stop after X kids" that were conceived naturally, how is that any different? Many families could have been a different size depending on the decisions adults made and some amount of random chance.

I think this goes back to what another poster said, that embryos are not nothing. I know ladies here have been through a lot and perhaps that leads to a certain skewed view in embryos but I do not believe they are nothing. There is some gray there and the fact that there was a distinct genetic possible sibling created but never given a chance is not the same as my parents deciding not to conceive anymore children. Like it or not that genetic link was created and willfully discarded.

Neither are periods or male masturbation. Should these events involving discarding genetic material be documented and disclosed to future offspring? What about miscarriages? Suspected miscarriages? What about all the potential children left to just drip down the leg? You folks have lost all sense of reality and are hyperventilating about potentials that didn’t happen. Hopefully your future children will have better sense than you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you test the embryos, not that many are normal. Of 6 tested so far, 2 are normal for me. If I didn’t test, I would think that there was way more potential than there actually is.

It depends on your age. People that do IVF younger without underlying infertility issues typically have 67-80% genetically normal embryos.

Why are younger people without IF doing IVF?

We were fertile but older and simply didn’t want to deal with the roller coaster of trying naturally, timing intercourse, counting days etc. my work covers IVF completely so we just went for it.

We also ended up with three extra PG tested embryos. We buried them in the garden. I don’t see myself ever having a discussion about it with my children.

[Anonymous]

Old thread, but just because it resonated with me:
Did multiple cycles in my early 40s to get 3 PGS normal embryos, which supposedly would give me a very, very slim chance at one live birth. afaik I had never been pregnant or suffered a loss before. Did 4 full cycles, plenty of eggs but no more than one genetically normal embryo per cycle.
We decided to just transfer them one at a time in the order they were created, and hope for the best.
The first FET resulted in an uncomplicated pregnancy and birth, and a healthy child.
The second FET resulted in an uncomplicated pregnancy and birth, and a healthy child.
I’m now in my late 40s - and even though I hadn’t ever envisioned more than two kids, the way the first two experiences were just so simple - transfer, zero issues, easy birth and awesome kid 40 weeks later - has us tortured about the last one in storage. It’s not at all a religious thing for us…and I try to rationalize it with: well, we got so lucky twice, we don’t want to tempt fate…but it feels so concrete and real, in a way that I don’t think eggs alone or an untested embryo, or even multiple normal embryos, would. We know the gender. We remember the day we got the news about it. Once there were three embryos - now two of them are napping in the next room, and one is…not. If I had known it would work out this way, I wouldn’t have done that last cycle. But we were honestly advised that last cycle was my only way to have a shot at even a small chance of one. So we feel stuck paying hundreds of dollars a year until…I guess until I hit menopause, and can hopefully feel at peace with letting this go.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Old thread, but just because it resonated with me:
Did multiple cycles in my early 40s to get 3 PGS normal embryos, which supposedly would give me a very, very slim chance at one live birth. afaik I had never been pregnant or suffered a loss before. Did 4 full cycles, plenty of eggs but no more than one genetically normal embryo per cycle.
We decided to just transfer them one at a time in the order they were created, and hope for the best.
The first FET resulted in an uncomplicated pregnancy and birth, and a healthy child.
The second FET resulted in an uncomplicated pregnancy and birth, and a healthy child.
I’m now in my late 40s - and even though I hadn’t ever envisioned more than two kids, the way the first two experiences were just so simple - transfer, zero issues, easy birth and awesome kid 40 weeks later - has us tortured about the last one in storage. It’s not at all a religious thing for us…and I try to rationalize it with: well, we got so lucky twice, we don’t want to tempt fate…but it feels so concrete and real, in a way that I don’t think eggs alone or an untested embryo, or even multiple normal embryos, would. We know the gender. We remember the day we got the news about it. Once there were three embryos - now two of them are napping in the next room, and one is…not. If I had known it would work out this way, I wouldn’t have done that last cycle. But we were honestly advised that last cycle was my only way to have a shot at even a small chance of one. So we feel stuck paying hundreds of dollars a year until…I guess until I hit menopause, and can hopefully feel at peace with letting this go.

A friend did the same, transferred the 3rd embryo at 45. It stuck. Got to 22 weeks before massive, bad preE hit. Killed the baby and almost killed her. Lost the uterus but kept her life.

[Anonymous]

My kids both know they were conceived via IVF. We've been very open about it. And every year when they have the "Family Life" lessons in school the topic comes up (conception) - we tell them about how they were conceived. When Roe v Wade was over turned, we destroyed the remaining embryos for fear that we would not be allowed to do so in the future if laws changed. We explained our decision to our then teen children. They totally got it and agreed that was wise.

I am very happy that we've been fully open with our kids about IVF and the decisions we've made along the way.