NHS funded but want to seek to pay privately to freeze or transfer

[BGMart28]

We are in a tricky situation and would love to hear from anyone with experience of this.

We are in the middle of our first NHS funded IVF cycle, we had 14 eggs retrieved which was amazing as I have low AMH, however only 1 got fertilised which was so disappointing. There is apparently an issue of communication between my eggs and my partners sperm, which explains why we have been having trouble getting pregnant.

Where we live, we get two NHS cycles which only count once you transfer, and this is eligible for one frozen and one fresh transfer. As we only have one embryo it is probably going to be sensible for us to restart the process without transfer (so we technically have our two NHS funded transfers left) and then they would use the ICSI fertilisation process.

My questions is, would we be able to pay privately to either transfer this one embryo we currently have, but still have NHS funding for a second round if we needed it, or can we pay privately to freeze this embryo, and still be eligible for two chances of NHS transfers going forward.

Has anyone else been in a similar situation? We do plan on asking these questions at our debrief this week.

Hi OP, sorry to hear you are having a difficult time. Each areas policy is different but I’d be surprised if they let you stop the cycle midway to freeze without a reason when you have a viable embryo to transfer. Wee stopped my NHS cycle to freeze but it was because my lining wasn’t good enough to transfer at the time. In my area if you pay privately to transfer that counts as a round so you’d lose access to an NHS round. I’d done two freezing rounds before reaching the top of the queue for NHS funding and they said even that could count as a round and they’d have to write to the board to confirm. Thankfully I didn’t need those rounds anyway so I never found out.

The NHS doesn't allow you to pick and choose in this way. Almost always it's the egg retrieval part that counts as a round (regardless of what then happens) as that's the expensive part. Otherwise someone with fertilisation failure or no ability to reach blast could keep going forever.

Do you know categorically that your area truly defines a round as the transfer or are you relying on technicalities of the wording? Either way, if you have an embryo to transfer they would require transfer before providing further funding.

If you do a future round, 14 eggs + ICSI gives a good shot!

Thank you for your response.

I thought this might be the case…think I was just clutching at straws.

We were made clear that it is the number of transfers in our area that defines a round. Which is amazing really when you think about it. I will double check this when we speak to the consultant this week.

I’d love to transfer this embryo that we have, depending on quality that we will find out tomorrow, but we are quite literally putting all our eggs in one basket and then don’t have a back up one if the transfer fails. Unfortunately we then have no funds to self-fund.

Trying to stop myself catastrophising that we will never be parents but it’s hard to not. My rational thoughts seem to come in waves and I’m sure others can relate to this. :)

I was told the same as sirensong and zypig - an egg collection is a round of IVF, and that they’ll keep going with transferring any embryos they think are viable from that egg collection until all of those transfers fail.
Only then do they consider the round done. And only then would you be eligible for another round i.e. another egg collection.
I suppose the silver lining about this is you’ve only got one embryo so if it failed the delay wouldn’t be that long…
I was worried before starting that it’s what you say it is - one round one transfer. I’m 39 and only eligible for two rounds, which by your logic would mean two transfers, and those could both very easily flop. I would prefer the round of IVF to be an egg collection than a transfer - so many more possible chances…

Yes, afaik the NHS won’t allow this. I had 2 NHS rounds at 39 and had to race to get my 2nd round started before I turned 40 (just made it in under the wire - I started the stimulation meds about 2 days before my birthday 🤣). They insist on transferring any viable embryos after each round until you achieve pregnancy or run out because it’s usually the egg collection and the Stim meds that costs the most.

Otherwise lots of people would want to do multiple egg collections and freeze/“bank” as many embryos as they could on NHS funds whilst they are on the younger side, in case they wanted to try for further children down the line (even though they would have to transfer those “extra” embryos privately, it would still be cheaper and likely stand a better chance of success than doing more full rounds again at an older age).

Good luck! Hope your one works or that you’ll be quick enough to get your 2nd round.