Anonymous wrote:I am on my 1st IVF cycle and just had my egg retrieval done today. I am turning 40 next month and my numbers are not good (FSH 12.4, AFC 2, AMH 0.33). I guess I am DOR.
My RE and I are actually surprised that we were able to retrieve 5 eggs today because in the middle of the stimulation we thought we would have to cancel the IVF cycle and convert it to an IUI. I only had 2 follicles growing up until the 7th day of stimulation. But by the day before my trigger, I had 8 follicles.
Before we started the cycle, we had discussions with our RE and we strongly preferred to do PGS on the embryos. I had 2 chemical pregnancies in the past 2 years (1 natural, 1 IUI) so it is important to us that we test the embryos. I don't want my body to go through miscarriages again or even more difficult decision later to terminate. And secondly, I am going to turn 40. Time is not on my side.
Now my question is - If we only made 1 blast out of the 5 eggs, shall we still proceed to PGS? My doctor's recommendation is: If we have 2 embryos, it makes sense to test so we can select the better one to transfer. But if we end up with 1 embryo, we should go ahead and transfer.
I know it is not cost effective if you do PGS on only 1 embryo because you need to pay the same lab fee (I am paying OOP). But if you can afford it, it seems a no-brainer to me. The benefit overweighs the cost. I think that's one of the main advantages of IVF that we can do testing on embryos. If the lab can test it, why use your body to test? Plus, going through miscarriage would throw your body off and it will take your body longer to return to normal to cycle again. So you will face the opportunity cost of lost time, which is critical at my age. In addition, if the test to be abnormal and I end up with no transfer, wouldn't that also save me the cost of transfer procedure itself?
BTW, we want to put in one embryo at a time because we do not want to take the risk of having twins.
Does my thinking make sense? Can you offer me your thoughts please?
Thank you.
Here's what our RE told us. If you have enough blasts to freeze, go for testing it. However, statistically speaking if you retrieve 5, you probably will end up with one, and I would just put it in. I know you don't want twins, but if you have any cavitating morulas at day 5, I would transfer those as well. Your chances of twins are pretty low at age 40. Good luck!