Natural vs medicated cycle transfer? Pros and Cons?

[Anonymous]

We just did a retrieval and got two day 1 embryos which are now cryopreserved. My doc is recommending one cooling off month and then either a natural cycle FET or medicated FET - said they have equal success but the natural doesn't require estrogen/progesterone shots (just vaginal progesterone) while the medicated allows us to time the FET. I am leaning toward natural but my husband wants to know what are any other pros and cons. I couldn't find anything in the archives. Thank you in advance for sharing your thoughts/experience.

[Anonymous]

Obviously anecdotal but I always have much more luck with natural. For some reason my body just doesn't respond well to synthetic estrogen. However, the timing can be a pain, especially for me since I was out of state so had to drop everything and train/drive up to my clinic at a day's notice.

[Anonymous]

We may be in the same clinic. My doctor said the same things and I chose medicated option only because I need to travel a few days next month and it was not possible to time the transfer with natural cycle. Otherwise I would have chosen natural option to save money on medication since I ran out of pharmacy benefit for the year. The success rate, according to my doctor, is almost the same either way.

[Anonymous]

I am doing medicated - natural is tough because you don’t know exactly when you would ovulate. Hard to get precise timing right

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am doing medicated - natural is tough because you don’t know exactly when you would ovulate. Hard to get precise timing right

You get regular daily bloodwork done so yeah you do know.

[Anonymous]

My wife had success with a natural FET (also embryos frozen day 1) with our second son. She’s now pregnant again - also from natural FET, same batch of embryos. Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My wife had success with a natural FET (also embryos frozen day 1) with our second son. She’s now pregnant again - also from natural FET, same batch of embryos. Good luck!

OP here, thanks. What factor made you decide to do natural FET vs medicated?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My wife had success with a natural FET (also embryos frozen day 1) with our second son. She’s now pregnant again - also from natural FET, same batch of embryos. Good luck!

OP here, thanks. What factor made you decide to do natural FET vs medicated?

She has always done better with fewer meds - and we had success with the same protocol. Cornell has their doctors do the monitoring so we weren’t concerned about missing the window or anything.