Anonymous wrote:Has anyone here used PGS and then stopped because of articles like this? I've done PGS on 3 batches of blasts and ended up with one normal male each time - all 3 are still in the freezer. I'm on day 6 of stims of the last freeze-all cycle I will ever do and I am debated skipping the testing and just freezing any blasts (if we are lucky enough to get them). I'll be 44 in 6 weeks so this is my final attempt. (If this sounds familiar, I'm the OP of the fairly recent thread on AFC doubling.)
Our son, our only child, has ASD, and while I've love another son the risk of having a 2nd child with ASD is significantly less with a girl (though still a risk). But of the 9 blasts that we know of, 8 were males, of which 3 (plus my son) were normal chromosomally. My most recent cycle was the first time we ever had a female blast, though it was abnormal. I'm been trying to accept that we will likely only have male embryos to transfer, yet I fear I will be so much more anxious during a male pregnancy than a female one. So I am trying to weigh the risks on both sides here. If we do PGS we may not get any normals this cycle (or, if the pattern holds, get 1 normal male), and we could possibly be throwing away a female embryo with the potential to self-correct. On the other hand, if we skip PGS we could end up transferring an embryo with a trisomy and/or that requires a TFMR. There are risks with either choice and assuming that I make it to a live birth the odds are at least 80-90% that the baby would be chromosomally normal (and not have ASD), so I keep telling myself that I will roll the dice, but I have to admit that the thought of a 2nd special needs child of any kind terrifies me. I am leaning towards skipping the PGS testing but I need to talk with my husband and make a decision by Friday. I wish we could just test them and then make our own decision about whether to transfer an abnormal one, but my impression is that Shady Grove won't transfer any abnormals except mosaics, so my choices are either test or don't test. We had 4 blasts make it to freezing last time, and who knows what I'll get this time, but given my age it's not like I'm going to get 10 blasts that it will take 5 FETs to get through. Even if we get lucky I doubt it would take more than 2 FETs to use up all the blasts from this cycle.
The problem with this thinking is that when girls do have ASD, it is typically more severe. And ASD is thought to be genetic. Your chance of having another child with ASD is much higher than parents with one neurotypical ch ild. If you really don't want to have two kids with ASD, one potentially severe case since you would be deliberately transferring a female embryo, I wouldn't roll the dice again.