Experience with shipping embryos across the country?

[Anonymous]

I did a cycle with a clinic across the country and have remaining embryos there. We are considering having the embryos shipped to a local clinic to try addiitonal cycles here. Has anyone had any experiences having embryos shipped from one clinic to another? What is involved? Are there any risks we need to be aware of? Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Would love to know the answer to this. I did my first cycle here locally (GWU) and am pregnant. But we are moving next year and I will need to move my frozen embryos down there for what will hopefully be baby #2.

[Anonymous]

I also did a cycle with a clinic across the country and had remaining embryos there. When I talked to my RE there about my options, he discouraged shipping the embryo(s) here. He said it was better to do the thaw with the clinic that froze them because, and I'm seriously paraphrasing here, the technology used at various clinics differs. I ended up flying out there to do the transfer, which was really no big deal. Scheduled it for a Friday, flew out (solo) on Thursday and back on Sunday. Also, fwiw, I think SG stopped accepting frozen embryos from other clinics.

[Anonymous]

I did it. Easy -- as long as the receiving clinic will accept it. The sending clinic gathers up its lab records and sends them along, including its freezing process. The receiving clinic may have its own shippers, or you can rent shippers from a third party like Cryoport.

I think the reason that some clinics will not accept embryos from other clinics is that they don't want to be seen as responsible if you don't get pregnant from those embryos. As I understand it, the creation of the embryos is a much more important part of the process than the thaw.

Also, for embyros from donor eggs, you need to make sure you have paperwork showing the donor was tested under FDA requirements for diseases.

By the way, unless there is something wrong that I don't know about, I am now about 17 weeks pregnant from an embryo created at Shady Grove and shipped to SIRM-NY (Sher). Sher allowed me to do a natural cycle FET (which SG would not), did light immune treatment, and checked on a few other things.

[Anonymous]

Congratulations PP! Can you tell me how much it cost to ship the embryos?

[Anonymous]

SGF gave my friend a hard time about shipping her eggs (not embryos) from New York but in the end relented. The New York clinic encouraged my friend to complete the cycle there but were willing to assist in shipping. She had to sign some sort of liability agreement. She did not get pregnant but that could easily have been an egg quality issue. I don't know what the cost was for transport.

[Anonymous]

I looked into this recently as I am in the middle of having to transport my embryos. It appears like there are a couple options out there for shipping: Cryoport, which is out on the west coast based in Irvine. Then there is a company based in New York called Cryo Care Embryo Shipping. Looks like they hand deliver (www.embryoshipping.com) so that's a nice option to have.

[Anonymous]

We shipped via CryoPort from GW to a clinic out west. DD was from a successful cycle at GW, and we transferred embryos from the same batch that ultimately resulted in DS. In 2015, it cost about $500 to do this.

There were release forms we needed notarized on both ends, so make sure you factor that time into everything...otherwise it was actually much easier than I expected.

AFAICT, there was no damage to the embryos from shipping. My first transfer resulted in a chemical, but I'd had a few of previous chemicals and losses en route to DD sticking...so that was just par for the course for me.