How many embryos should I transfer ?

Dear friends,

 

I feel really sorry that my blog is sleeping for a long time. I am fine, actually extremely fine. Thanks to everyone who stood by me with your kind words during my most difficult time - it helped a lot ! I decided to post some queries I got and the answers I gave, perhaps it helps some of my blog readers. Please do not worry when writing to me, none of your personal information will be revealed here.

 

 

Question :  I've just stumbled across your blog and I think it's fab. Great source of information and research. Thank you. I just wondered if you have any thoughts on how many embryos to put back if you get that far? I had one fresh ivf cycle last year, we replaced a good quality blastocyst but this ended in miscarriage at 8 weeks. We then tried a frozen transfer of 2 blasts but neither survived the thaw well. We're just undertaking our 2nd fresh cycle and am 34 yrs. Would welcome any thoughts! Thank you, H

Answer :  Nice to hear from you. Please read this: http://myselfishgenes.blogspot.in/2012/05/my-ivf-journey-timeline.html?m=1. This is my IVF journey timeline and you can see how many embryos we transferred every time and what happened. The decision to transfer single embryo or multiple embryos is a very personal one. Although there are studies which say that twin pregnancy is as safe as singletons, one size doesn't fit all. Every woman is different and every uterus is different. When you transfer multiple embryos there is always a risk of multiple pregnancies. Inorder to decide rationally many things have to be considered including your age, your clinic’s success rate ( how good are their success rate when doing single embryo transfer ), your financial situation ( how many times you can play the IVF game ) etc. In my case multiple pregnancy proved to be a disaster. But there are women who carry multiples without problems. If you want to play safe stick with single embryo transfer, if you have the intelligence to take calculated risk go for multiple embryo transfer. Decide yourself so that you will not have regrets later.

I was very concerned that your clinic lost your embryos while thawing. What freezing method do they follow ?

Reply : Thank you so much for replying.

Firstly, I'm so sorry to learn of your twin miscarriage last year, how very sad. I hope that you are healing ok, it must be a very difficult time.

My clinic uses vitrification and usually has a very good record.  At the time of freezing they were a 4bb and a 3bb - my understanding is that the best was only 60% 'alive' after thawing and the other only about 40-50%...I did talk to an embryologist about this and she said we've not done enough cycles yet to indicate a pattern so she wouldn't be worried about the integrity of the embryos at this point.

I understand what you are saying. It's such a difficult decision. Everyone mentions the possibility of twins although my main worry is even getting one embryo to stick.....

Thanks and I wish you all the best of luck with your journey.

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 For further reading :

The irrational attraction of elective single-embryo transfer (eSET) :  http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/content/28/2/294.long