question about freezing embryos

[Anonymous]

I'm on my first IVF cycle, and thinking about what to do if I'm lucky enough to have a more than 2 decent embryos fertilized. Does pretty much everyone freeze the extras? This might be a dumb question, but if the rates of FET are a little lower, wouldn't it be better for me to just do another stim cycle next time if we don't have success? How did you all decide whether to preserve the extra embryos?

[Anonymous]

You know, I feel like it's a very personal choice. I have frozen embryos, and have frozen them in the past and used them in an unsuccessful transfer. Personally for me, when I signed up for the shared risk program, we decided we'd freeze if we had extras, and we did. But I remember thinking if the fresh cycle didn't work out I wished that I could just go straight into another fresh cycle b/c I felt like I had better chances. But I do not know the stats, those were just my thoughts. We ended up getting lucky with that fresh cycle, and now have some embryos on ice. I'm glad we have them frozen, but also probably would feel OK if we had decided not to freeze.

But it's a personal choice, it may also depend on when you believe life begins...

Good luck either way.

[Anonymous]

We chose to freeze embryos. Partly b/c of age and wanting to space out children over time.

[Anonymous]

I froze my extras. I had one left over from my first IVF (BFN) and two left over from my second IVF (BFP). After my first fresh IVF I decided to do another fresh cycle instead of trying an FET. My doctor (at SGF) said that their stats for frozen transfers went way up in 2009 because they changed their freezing protocol and that the numbers were close to those for fresh cycles. That was last fall and I haven't checked their website to see if they have posted the 2009 numbers yet. I figured that a fresh cycle was more manageable before kids and that - this was optimistic - I'd save the frozens for our attempts for #2. It's weird though, because if we have success with the frozens someday down the road, it'll mean that #2 was conceived before or at the same time as #1. Good luck with your cycle and your decision.

[Anonymous]

I agree that this is a very personal choice and, for us, not freezing the embryos was not an option from a moral standpoint. But we did have an unsuccessful FET. We now have more from a second fresh cycle (successful) and will try with FET again.

Cycle complications and cost were also considerations for us. We had to surgically harvest sperm for ICSI, so want to make the most of everything we got from that procedure and from subsequent cycles. The physical side effects of the FET cycle are also easier on my body and easier to manage than the full effects of a full stim cycle. Finally, we had to pay 100% for our cycles, so the much cheaper FET cycle gave us a second shot without the price tag for full IVF.