Another egg collection before FET

[Lalla525]

Hi all,

Need an advice. I have 2 embryos in the freezer. They were frozen on day 6 and graded 4BB and 5BB.

I'm looking at transferring in a few months time, but was wondering if it would make sense to do another egg retrieval first.

Reason is 2-fold

1. I am 35 and not getting any younger
2. if both fail, I will be in a horrible state of mind, and at that point doing a whole egg retrieval again might be too much.
3. I would go into my FETs with less anxiety if I know I do not have only 2 shots.

On the contrary, these 2 might work and i would get myself into a whole new stimulation for nothing.

Any experciences/advice?

I've done both ways but I did find embryo banking (multi cycle of egg collections before a transfer a lot less stressful), but we were nearing the end of our journey and I just wanted to be free of egg collections and work through what ever we managed to get frozen before calling it a day

@ivfgottwins thanks for your experience. How many embryos did you manage to have in the freezer and have they worked so far?

My mind is in overdrive. Like if I go for another egg collection and get nothing? Or if I then have too many embryos (wishful thinking) what would I do with leftovers? Such difficult decisions to optimise...

On the 3 cycle package of natural modified IVF that I did as my final IVF(after 2 previous failed cycles and 3 transfers) I banked 4 blastocysts - (my aim was 6 - don't know why! Just felt like a good number to have?) i transferred the lowest 2 quality ones - a day 6 4bb and a day 5 5BA and had twins in January

It does leave me in a difficult position regarding the 2 I have left frozen and now I'm glad I don't have loads more (someone else on this board has 9 left frozen) - both AA grade. I would really like to transfer them in the future (I'm 38 now so ideally when I'm 40) but I don't know if DH will agree (although not like he's had much to do with raising the twins as I've done it all! 🤣) . I'd even be happy transferring them and getting a BFN (but obviously that's because I have twins so my outlook is a bit different?).

I just can't leave them there or being myself to destroy them though - I lost 7 babies including both my tubes to ectopics so these are the last embryos I'll ever make and they are a part of me (DH doesn't see it that way but I don't think men really do?).

Part of me thinks I could have saved money by doing less egg collections and gambled but I'd already had 2 collections and 3 failed transfers before doing embryo banking and my egg quality wasn't great so for me the outlook was poor and I knew I potentially needed a lot of embryos to get lucky

If I was in your position and not actually done a transfer yet I'd do the transfer and see what happens? If they don't stick then you can then try embryo banking - the good thing is that age is in your side? Unless you have endo or POF?

Are you private or NHS? That also makes a difference? I was private so no waiting lists so could go straight from failed transfer into another egg collection? And in fact I did all 5 of my collections and 4 transfers in 18 months - would have been 15 months of the clinics hadn't shut for covid

Wow congratulations on your twins and so good that it worked for you, it's amazing.

I always wanted 3 children, I have one from the fresh transfer off the back of the cycle which gave me the 2 frosties I have, but that was a 5AB and now almost 1 year old. I had a fairly complicated pregnancy and delivery, so would never want to transfer 2 and risk twins.. that would not have ended well for me. However, wanting 3 means that either both my frosties work, or I'll have to do another collection anyway and for that, clearly the younger the better!

What is natural modified ivf? Feels something I could give a try to!

Yeah, my husband does not really feel the same attachment to the potential leftover embryos for sure!!
My thing is that if one works, and the last doesn't, then I will be 38 when I can do another egg collection and that might reduce quality compared to now...

Hey @Lalla525. I got 7 blasts with my first cycle, have 1 of them left now after 2 MMC, 2 CP (1 of those from a double transfer) and 1 BFN. Since then have done three more rounds given my age, to collect embryos and (for the later two) also test them. The next round I got three (have two of them left), 2 from the following and 7 from the final round. So I have plenty in the freezer now, 6 which I know are genetically ok and the others are still unknown. (I lost a couple along the way as genetically bad.)

I did it because I was panicking, and also I wanted more info - they kept saying failure was likely egg quality due to age, but the testing suggests otherwise. So I’m very glad I did it.

And also glad to know I won’t do more collections.

Natural modified is very low dose stims abs tamoxifen tablets - only really offered by Create but meant I could cycle back to back with no breaks and it increased my egg quality hugely. I also have an older DD and it meant side effects were minimal and all done in less than 2 weeks so didn't impact her too much

If you are trying.for 2 more then I'd maybe try and bank 6?

Just using search and ending up reading some old threads, wondering what you ended up deciding OP?

(For me also 35 and similar situation (2 frozen) I ended up trying one transfer of the lower quality, getting a biochemical loss, and then going straight into another EC. But my 2 frozen both had 'C' in their grading so a bit different as less chances of working, a 5CB and a 3AC. )