Fresh vs frozen donor eggs - how did you decide?

[Olddog7]

I've weighed up the pros and cons of both but am still undecided and wonder what was the deciding factor for you? Price/availability/time is a definite plus for frozen but success rates for fresh are better. Any experiences would be great to hear! Thanks

For us it was the convenience. We are a mixed race couple and you have to wait ages for donors who will donate in realtime aka fresh. So we went for frozen. We were guaranteed 6 or if you pay more 10 mature eggs and the recent vitrification techniques mean there the rates of success with fresh and frozen are similar

We used fresh through an egg share but my son was born from the FET.

I wanted to help another family become complete as they were helping us so this was the deciding factor rather than success rates

@Eggcellent29 that is actually a wonderful way of approaching it. Hmm didn't even think of that as an option. Our clinic said that for black or Asian donors would have to wait a while unless one went through an egg bank.

Thank you both for your input. Definitely hadn't thought of egg share in terms of helping someone else make a family before, so thank you for that!

Hello,

I have a son through egg donation. We used frozen eggs and from the embryos that resulted, for a transfer at a later date, so they were frozen too. . Our specialists view was that an egg that survives a thaw and then rethaws as an embryo is probably a hardy one! We conceived on first FET, after 3 failed IVF's ( never got to transfer) with my own eggs and several IUI's, in which I conceived first time but then had a missed miscarriage. Hope that helps!

First two attempts I used fresh, from egg share donors. I liked that I was helping someone else, and the stats were also somewhat better with fresh eggs (although not for me, as it turned out). By my third go, my clinic advised that a) the egg share waiting list was over a year at that point and b) their success rate with frozen eggs was now close to that of fresh. So, I went with frozen, and was successful (and have frozen embryos, too!)

Thanks @Angliski and @Persipan. Can I ask how many frozen eggs you got? It seems 6 is pretty standard for a lot of places but obviously want the best possible chance of a take home baby and worry that 6 doesn't seem very many!

I think five frozen eggs. They all fertilised and the embryos were frozen. Thus giving us five healthy chances. It was enough and four remain.

I had a package of six, but in practice what they did, because they had some additional eggs from that donor but not enough to make another full six for someone else, was to just give me the extra ones. So, I expected six but actually got eight! I forget the exact fertilisation rates but I ended up with one embryo transferred and four frozen.

You both got great results from your frozen eggs, it definitely makes frozen cycles more appealing if the chances of success are not much different to fresh cycles. Thanks for telling me about your experiences!

Good luck @Olddog7