What would you do? Freeze eggs and / or embryos?

[batchingembryos]

I'm 30. Unexplained secondary infertility. Financially I can do either of the options and wouldn't worry too much about the cost but I do worry about the side effects of drugs or the physical and mental impact of the injections etc.

I want 2-3 more children. I've banked 8 embryos now so should be enough? That's from 3 rounds.
Should I freeze eggs? How many? I tend to get 10-15 per round.

Life is long and who knows if I'll be with my husband in 5-10-15 years (I'm cynical as my parents were very much in love and then divorced years later). For now though the relationship is good. He's kind, loving, supportive, has done all my injections so far, he's a great dad to our DC. We do disagree over some things (his family, or the fact I'd ideally have 4 kids total and he'd rather stop at 2 but will compromise to 3, maybe 4). We do have arguments and the most "separated" we've ever got after an argument is him sleeping on the sofa or saying he'll go to his parents' for the weekend as he wants time apart (but never went). We've been together for a decade.

I meant to clarify - 8 EUPLOID embryos , they have been PGTA tested

Hi, great that you have so many euploid embryos. Given this, is there a reason not to go straight for a frozen transfer? It might work first or second transfer and then you’d still have 6-7 left for child 3 which should be ample without more stimulation needed.

@Zypig I guess the logic with freezing some eggs is that I'm 30, I've got higher quality eggs now than I would in 3-5-10 years. So if anything was to happen to my current partner (even though I don't currently plan on divorcing him but divorce rate in the U.K. is around 40% and presumably none of those couples get married with the intention of divorce).
I've also been told that my egg quality isn't as good as expected at 30 so presumably my "good egg years" are shorter than average. From 30 eggs, 3 rounds of stimulation, I've got 8 euploids.
I don't want to be left divorced at 35 unable to have another child.

How much harm would the extra stimulation cause given that I've already had 3 rounds?
Am I being a little too cynical?

@batchingembryos the one thing that jumps out at me is I'm assuming the embryos are made with your husbands sperm?
I think you'll need his permission to use them if you divorce in which case you might be better off freezing eggs

Yes exactly, that's my thinking.
If we were to divorce I wouldn't be able to use the embryos because presumably he wouldn't give permission, and I may not want to if I'm no longer with him.

I really wouldn’t think one more stims round would be an issue to freeze some eggs but a few things to consider (in your own time, not necessarily for answering here).

You got 2 or 3 euploid embryos per round so would you do 1 round of egg freezing or 2? How many embryos were discarded?

Would you be telling your husband the rationale for freezing eggs only this time - that in itself might cause issues unless he is as pragmatic as you.

New sperm from a donor could be different quality to your DH’s.

If you split and decide to use a donor that child/ren would have a very different experience than your older child/ren (although this is the case everywhere when people have children with new partners).

If you were to meet a new partner, even if current husband gave permission to use the embryos I expect he wouldn’t want to.

Best case scenario is that you don’t divorce (not being sarcastic) so that said, is it worth actively nurturing your marriage. I don’t mean pandering to DH, I mean practising good communicating, looking at the bigger picture, both of you not sweating the small stuff.

Hi OP,

From what you’ve said, I think the only reason to do any more stims and freeze is to get eggs to give yourself future options which aren’t tied to your husband. I can’t see much point in freezing more embryos as you already have so many euploids with him. If you don’t feel you must have this future option then you could go for a couple of fresh transfers and still be young enough to consider more stims then if they fail. Ie you’d be 31 so still young. For context when transferring my frozen embryos they selected entirely based on grade even though that meant using the ones from when I was 34 before the ones from age 31. I queried this but they said that between 30- 35 ages made very little difference.

To reassure you on egg quality, I don’t think yours is bad at all. When I did my first freezing round at 31 I was told that for my age group (30-35 years):

• of mature eggs collected 80% expected to fertilise
• of those embryos still alive on day 3 30-50% of those are expected to make it to blast
• of those blasts 40-60% expected to be euploid (bit of variation depending on the embryo grade here)

So even with the higher % in those ranges from 30 mature eggs you’d expect 7.2 euploids, so you’re above average.

Good luck whatever you decide.

@thehangrycaterpillar
You got 2 or 3 euploid embryos per round so would you do 1 round of egg freezing or 2? How many embryos were discarded?
So overall we had 30 eggs collected, 12 sent for testing, 8 came back euploid.

Would you be telling your husband the rationale for freezing eggs only this time - that in itself might cause issues unless he is as pragmatic as you.
Yes - he realises that the only real rationale to freeze eggs rather than embryos now is for the event that i remarry if he dies (unlikely, he's in his 30s and no known health issues) or divorce (given 40% of marriages end in divorce this one is more likely I'd say). He isn't overjoyed at the idea of this but he realises it's my money (I would be funding this from personal savings) so he can't really object.

New sperm from a donor could be different quality to your DH’s.
This is true.

If you split and decide to use a donor that child/ren would have a very different experience than your older child/ren (although this is the case everywhere when people have children with new partners).
Also true

If you were to meet a new partner, even if current husband gave permission to use the embryos I expect he wouldn’t want to.
He absolutely wouldn't give permission and it would probably be a bit weird for the new partner. I would, however, consider having kids solo if I didn't meet the right person but equally my husband probably wouldn't give permission to use the embryos.

Best case scenario is that you don’t divorce (not being sarcastic) so that said, is it worth actively nurturing your marriage. I don’t mean pandering to DH, I mean practising good communicating, looking at the bigger picture, both of you not sweating the small stuff.
Yes that's true. I would obviously love to stay married forever and I think we hopefully will. He's not a bad guy and in many ways I think objectively he is a better than average husband. But you just never know with these things - people fall out of love, or fall in love with someone else unexpectedly, issues come up that you never thought would be a problem a short while back, people change.

@Zypig thank you so much!! I think what you said gives me hope in that I don't have to do more stims now, I can have another baby or 2 and still hopefully be under 35, or at least have another 3-4 years to think, see how my marriage is, decide for sure if I want a total of 4 children or if by 34 and another 2 children (so a total of 3) I'll feel differently.

Yes, given that you have the funding without struggling, I would do 2 rounds of egg freezing. Yes, you never know, better safe than sorry... You could meet a new partner/husband and use his sperm or donor if that didn't happen.

I would have the second and perhaps third child and see. Why do so many people have two children? Because many people (certainly me!) find having two children vastly harder than one. I imagine the same applies to the question of why so many more families have three rather than four children.

I suspect that after two more children with husband you will feel knackered and grateful overwhelmed and old and your desire for further children will be very minimal.

You haven't said why you can't have more children naturally, but is that an absolute? If you aren't using contraception isn't there also some chance of a natural pregnancy?

Yes some chance of natural pregnancy but 1.5 years of TTC with no success meant it's unexplained infertility.
DC was conceived first month of stopping contraception, not even properly timing anything, so really is a mystery why it isn't happening.

I think you're in a good place, far better than most women your age or older. You're young. You have proven fertility (even if struggling with secondary infertility - but many take this long to conceive a first child!). You have good quality eggs (even if not as good as some women of your own age), you have EIGHT genetically healthy embryos waiting on ice, and the money to do more IVF in the future.

If there is an issue I suspect it's with your marriage, not your fertility. It seems odd to me that you are even thinking about freezing eggs in this situation. But that would be for another board!

Are we all ignoring the fact that you’re thinking ahead to what will happen if you get divorced? Granted, we do not know the future (I was in a 17yr relationship that ended all of a sudden) but it’d never cross my mind to even consider it!

I guess I'm just very cynical.
I don't expect to divorce as such, in fact as of now I don't see the reason we would... but the reality is 40% of marriages end in divorce in the UK. Sure, that means that most (60%) don't but... it's not a low percentage.

Not to psychoanalyse myself too deeply here but I've grown up in a wealthy-ish family (which is why I'm saying that financially it could be done and shouldn't be a deciding factor), and I think because of that I've seen a lot of things that have made me cynical. Women leaving husbands for wealthier men. Men leaving wives for prettier women. Spouses betraying each other for personal gain. Long time friends betraying each other. I don't want this to be outing so not going to go into much detail here, but that type of thing. I also think that when there's less money people sometimes can't afford to divorce (what if after selling your house you can't afford to buy 2) whereas in my personal experience people walk away quite easily from each other. All this has made me probably more cynical than average. So yes, at my age I should probably have very romantic views thinking we're together forever, soulmates, that friendship is real, that love exists, but sadly that's not my experience (from observing other families and people).