Add ons

[hopefulvibes]

Talk to me about Embryo glue and time lapse imaging add ons. My clinic has spoken to me about them both, I've been looking on the hfea website and they are both classed as amber, but I've heard some experts talking about them recently. What are everyone's thoughts?

We had the time lapse imaging. My reasons were: I have pco (not pcos) and was likely to get a large number of eggs. I liked the idea that they could see which embryos were dividing as normal during the whole process, and not just when removed from incubation to check.

We had 13 eggs fertilise, but only 12 could be time-lapsed. We had 4 left at day 5.

The other thing I like was that the embryo didn't need to be removed from incubation to be observed.

After collection, time lapse was never mentioned again and I don't really know how useful it was...

I figured it was my one nhs cycle, so we didn't mind spending some money 'to do everything we could to make it work'. I also dropped nearly a grand for acupuncture (which I felt empowered by and would probably do again if we transfer one of our three frozen...

My clinic Create are really honest about add one and whether they believe they make a difference which is why they don't really offer many as they are pretty sceptical about most of them

They do offer the embryoscope though and I've had that on all my cycles. It really came into its own on my transfer last month - I was doing a 3 cycle package and banking embryos from each cycle to transfer after the 3rd collection. I had a grade 1 day 3, a day 6 4bb, a 4aa and a 3BB frozen.

Initially we were going to transfer the day 3 (which became a 5BA) with the 3BB but after viewing all the time lapse the embryologist said actually the day 6 is a better "fit" and looked better at the same point on day 5 as the 3BB. So we went with his advice and I'm now 7 weeks with twins!

A tricky question!

I had the scratch (I forgot it’s official name, I want to say PIP?) and embryo glue.

I fell pregnant on both cycles. But would hat have happened anyway? Impossible to say!

For me, the relatively cheap cost of the add ons (compared to the total cost, please don’t think £200+ is not a lot of money to me 😂) was worth it to feel like I’d given my best shot.

Thanks for all your views.
I'm very very fortunate to have three funded cycles, my initial thoughts were to try the first cycle without anything. But now I'm thinking if I should just try to give myself the best opportunity on this first cycle. I'm likely to get a lot of eggs due to my AMH so think the time lapse would help choose the best embryos (here's presuming some get to 5 day!)