Fresh or frozen?

[Shamoo]

Hello all! Hope you are doing ok.

Yesterday I had my second round of egg retrieval - 16 collected, 12 mature, 8 have fertilised so now waiting for more updates. I am 39 (almost 40) in same sex relationship so know sperm is good. First egg retrieval we got 7 to 5 day blastos, fresh didn’t take but 3 frozen did in next 3 attempts but all ended in miscarriage. Still have one frozen but given age have gone again. One frozen didn’t defrost properly.

We had planned a fresh transfer but the more I think about it the more I wonder whether to freeze them all. My clinic are not very helpful (I don’t like them and will change if this isn’t successful) and have just said fine to fresh, and it’s included in price whereas frozen isn’t. But the statistics do suggest wait (although run the risk of not defrosting properly).

Does anybody have a view?

Difficult one. Many clinics have the same if not better success rates for FET than fresh and I think for older women FET has the edge.

I was planning on doing a fresh transfer after the 3rd in a 3 cycle package - as it happened neither made it to blastocyst and so they thawed two frozen ones from an earlier collection and I got a BFP last week. I wasn't charged anymore because they had to use frozen instead of fresh.

If you have any signs of OHSS I would do FET no question as it cause a hostile environment for an embryo and you'd be wasting the cycle

I'm lucky in that all my blastocysts have survived thawing. I also had a mix of embryos frozen - some on day 3 and some on at 5 - the ones I currently have on aboard is a grade 1 top quality day 3 which was thawed and cultured to day 5 before putting back in with a frozen day 5. My embryologists prefer this as they know the blastocyst is definitely "active" as they've cultured and watched it for 2 days rather than the hour or so before on the day transfer

My clinic - Create - though has been amazingly supportive throughout and listened to my opinions (late night google research) and we came up with a plan together. Literally several hour long conversations with the embryologist patiently talking through the different options and scenarios.

I think perhaps what has made the difference this time (I had 3 precious failed transfers) was that doing a multi cycle package meant they could choose the best ones and they had more data on each due to time lapse. We didn't rush into transferring the fresh if we had had any. They even changed their minds a couple of times in the days leading up to transfer whilst they were reviewing footage of how the different embryos developed - I've had several miscarriages before so I'm hopeful that the ones they have put back are the strongest ones.

I'd ask your clinic if you can for their expert opinion on the quality of what you've got frozen - you won't know about the fresh until you get the next update but I'd want an honest assessment of what you've got definitely on day 3? I'd then transfer from this batch. Seems like you get good numbers for your age so you should have a few to choose from? Why go again if you get another 3 unless they are all poor/average quality?

@ivfgottostaypositive thank you so much for sharing and for your insight. Delighted for you with your BFP and wish you the very best of luck. The more I read answers like yours the more I realise we are at the wrong clinic, they couldn’t really care less and would never go into that level of detail (Eg last night I emailed my doctor to ask for advice and just got an email from her PA today to say she is out until Thursday which is day 5, I asked if I could speak to somebody else and got no reply). I will try to push them again tomorrow. Thanks again.