Embryo freezing with CRGH - Batching

[Ricki6]

Hi All,

Hoping for some help.

My wife and I are doing embryo freezing for fertility preservation while we wait on NHS funding to reset in April next year for IVF with PGT-SR (also with CRGH) - my wife has a balanced translocation and we have 2 miss carriages in the past 12 months, both around 5/6 weeks stage. I'm 41, healthy and wife is 35, healthy other then balanced translocation and low amh (egg reserve). Been together for 5 years.

So far CRGH has been great, we finished 1 round of stims last week and had 7 follicles, 4 egge retried on Sunday and 2 fertilised, other 2 were not if injecting quality. We were advised to do 3 round of egg collection given stats around PGT-SR.

However, today they have rung us and asked us if we would like to freeze on day 3 (tomorrow) and then batch the 3 cycles and then develop to blastocyst all together in one go as this will be cheaper for us. That's all well and good but we don't understand if there are any disadvantages of doing this I.e. freezing and thawing twice rather then just once each. We are speaking to the consultant tomorrow but we have to also make the decision tomorrow. The cost is the cost and if we have to we will pay it but we don't quite understand if there are any draw back and therefor just freeze all 3 cycles individually at blast stage.

We are paying privately for these 3 rounds for future use while we wait on funding to be reset in April.

Any advise would be really useful.

Hi,

I've batched with CRGH.
It's their "policy " to freeze on day 3 then once you've batched 3 collections, you thaw all fertilised eggs and allow them to reach day 5, PGT-A test then freeze again.
I went against their policy and said I wanted all to go to day 5 before freezing as doing in on day 3 gives false numbers. For example, in our situation if I had frozen on day 3 after 3 rounds I would have frozen 9 eggs. (I too have a low AMH). Out of those 9 eggs only 2 made it to blastocyst at day 5!!!
I ended up doing 6 collections back to back and banked 6 blastocysts. For us, I'd rather know exactly where I was at by day 5, not have false hope.

Thank you sheep, we have decided to spend the extra and progress to blastocyst rather than going with day 3 freezing and batching, it came as a surprise and has thrown us a bit, freezing twice and thawing twice just seems counter productive but I'm not basing that on any science, just gut feeling. CRGH have said there is no risk. Waiting for a call back from the embryologist to finalise.

If anyone else has any experience to share, please do.

Hi there, first of all I am sorry you have suffered losses and are going through ivf. I’ve just completed three rounds of back to back embryo banking with PTGA testing at CRGH due to recurrent miscarriages from natural conception over the last 12months.

A bit of context - I have low AMH and now 37 years old trying for our first. In our first cycle we had 3 eggs collected, second cycle 4 eggs and 3rd cycle 5 eggs. Cycle 1 and 2 were frozen at day 3. All eggs collected were mature, all 100% fertilisation rate and all survived to day 3. On the third cycle 100% fertilisation rate and all embryo progressed to day 3. Once our third cycle embryos reached day 3 - cycle one and two embryos were thawed and then all cycles grown to blasto stage. So the third cycle isn’t frozen on day 3 it progresses directly to blasto stage. Out of a low number of eggs (12) we had x6 day 5 embryos and x3 day 6’s. 9 embryos in total which were then all PTGA tested in one go.

I haven’t done a transfer yet (so our 6 embryos haven’t been re- unfrozen again) so can’t say on the outcome I can only say from our experience but I was really pleased with how things progressed. I too was nervous about the thawing and refreezing process but I 100% trust the clinic and lab to do the right things and advise the best process for us. They are the experts and it is what we are paying a lot of money for. The lab did an amazing job on the low numbers we had and I’m really grateful for that. I believe it is one of the best labs and that is so important particularly if you are not producing lots of eggs / embryos. obviously it is so different depending on each person and despite the low numbers we were thankfully on the better side of the statistics, which I am of course praying continues as we move to the next side of our journey.

I hope that helps but you should go with your gut and whatever you feel is the best thing for you guys and your situation.

All the best x

how did things go?
I'm considering going with CRGH after an unsuccessful experience at Lister (13 eggs retrieved, only 8 mature, all 8 fertilised, only 3 made it to day 5/6 and none were euploid) and have a Mini Consultation scheduled with CRGH in the next few weeks.
My main issue is, I was given a certain drug protocol at Lister which didn't work great and if I ask CRGH what they'd change, the problem is I don't know what I'm looking for in their answer? Ie if the consultant says "we'd give you more of drug X and less of drug Y because it would cause more eggs to mature" I'd have no clue whether that's the correct answer!!! What kind of "homework" can I do?