FET success after previous success?

[greysalm]

I previously have done 1 ivf cycle, which resulted in 1 fresh transfer and 1 frostie. Fresh transfer was successful and I'm just wondering what are the chances of success with the frozen?

Also how soon are you allowed to do a fet after giving birth? Can't really find any info for the uk but usa seems quite a range- I've read dif clinics saying 6 months and others saying 2 years.

It very much depends on the clinic and whether you had a c section - mine said 18 months initially if I had a c section or 12 if I had a doctor confirm c section incision was healed ok
I know other ladies on these boards for whom it was around 6-9 months if they had a normal birth

My clinic said there was no specific wait time (not sure if it would've been different if I had a c section). I called about 6 months PP and they would have gone ahead. I decided to wait until my ds was 16 months because they wanted me to stop breastfeeding. (After researching I continued breastfeeding anyway and just pretended I'd stopped.) I'm currently pregnant from a FET from the same batch of embryos that gave me my ds.

Yes, we had two embryos - one fresh transfer which was successful, and one FET, which I am currently pregnant with (and keeping my fingers crossed). We left a longer gap due to our circumstances, and covid. We feel very lucky.

@SerendipitySunshine congratulations on your second ivf pregnancy. Can I ask how long did you leave between first and second FET cycle?

[quote SantoPalo]@SerendipitySunshine congratulations on your second ivf pregnancy. Can I ask how long did you leave between first and second FET cycle?[/quote]
It was four years all in all, longer than we'd planned, partly due to not wanting to stop breastfeeding and then covid delays. But now it feels like a good gap as our DC is more independent now and very excited about a sibling.

@SerendipitySunshine thank you, I am hoping to successfully use my remaining embryos when my little one is a bit older.

@greysalm sounds like we are in a similar position. We had one round of IVF and fortunate enough to have fresh transfer work. We have one Frostie and currently doing FET cycle. DD is 15 months now.

@SerendipitySunshine can I ask, was your frozen embryo lower graded? Our Frostie is and I just think we've been so lucky having DD..

Hi @ivfmumto1 I'm not quite sure how it works, but DD was a 5BB and our FET was a 6BB which had already hatched, so we were told the chances were lower as the embryo was more fragile.

I think it depends how old you are. No one can tell you how likely it is your frostie will work, not even really based on grade. It largely depends if it's euploid or not, if you were younger when you made it perhaps it's more likely. If you only made 2 blasts in your last round and the last one worked then purely based on statistics it's likely the next won't (about half tend to work). If you're 33 and having ivf for eg male factor or tubal issues (we had both but other than that I was ok), then you have time to wait, try your frostie at your leisure and then do another round after that. If you're 40 with low amh etc you'd be better to assume your frostie won't work and do another collection ASAP before you run out of time. I was in between, I was 38 with 2 Frosties left out of 4 embryos from first round. First transfer failed, second gave me dc, then embryos 3 and 4 also both failed. I did another collection at 38.5 and eventually am now pregnant from that. Had a c section with dc1 and earliest my gynae would do a fet was 9/10 months after, which we did. If money was no object and I'd been more worried about age and the egg side of things, I'd have done another round when dc was 6 months after stopping breastfeeding.

You basically need an economics degree to weigh up the cost vs benefit of your choices at each point, it's very tricky. And you can't quantify the huge dollop of luck you need at each stage. I would say though that statistically speaking it's unlikely that 100% of anyone's embryos go on to live birth. Some people no doubt are incredibly lucky and do manage this.

I talked to our consultant about statistics, as I that if our fiest had worked there was no way we could be that lucky again, but he said that if it's like rolling a dice, the dice has no memory of whether it came up as a one or a six the first time, so the second throw is independent. Our odds were low, about 1/6 so it was a good analogy. The two throws we had were both sixes.

I think that's almost certainly right @SerendipitySunshine and yet it's still the case that it's unlikely that any particular couple will roll 2 6s given all the other potential outcomes. Well done you for managing it!

Because it's so expensive to do another round, it's also worth rolling that dice before paying to play again. Unless you know it really is loaded against you (eg due to age) and you'd be making your chances much worse by wasting time. Hence why people do embryo banking when they decide they don't have time to spare, rather than transferring what they have and crossing fingers.

@SerendipitySunshine yes that is a good analogy
@whatcangowrong I feel that the type of fertility issue is also an important factor to consider when looking at success rates