Refreezing embryos

jbasore1123

Hi ladies,
I am set to do a FET July 31st and we have two blastocysts that are currently frozen. If both thaw, we have the option of putting one or both back in. I'm concerned about both options, for different reasons. However, one of the reasons I am concerned about doing a single embryo transfer is needing to refreeze the other embryo.
Does anyone know if refreezing does any damage to an embryo or if it causes a decrease in the likelihood that it will thaw a second time?

LundleBean

My understanding is that there is a chance it won't survive freeze and there is a chance it won't survive thaw.  Increasing the number of times to freeze or thaw would raise that risk.  I know it can be done, as I have seen questions about genetic testing on frozen embryos before refreezing them.

jaztastic

LundleBean said:

My understanding is that there is a chance it won't survive freeze and there is a chance it won't survive thaw.  Increasing the number of times to freeze or thaw would raise that risk.  I know it can be done, as I have seen questions about genetic testing on frozen embryos before refreezing them.

This! It is possible to do, just very risky. As with each freeze and thaw you risk quality and survival. You should decide on 1 vs 2 prior to the thaw process. In this case my opinion is it's better to thaw 1 and hope it makes it survives the thaw, if it does you still have 1 on reserve for another attempt later on. Opposed to thawing 2 and only wanting to use 1, taking the risk of refreeze.

ksgsmu

I wouldn't refreeze....

Twinkie0612

We had planned on refreezing some of our embryos during our donor embryo cycle. Our situation was a bit different, our embryos were frozen in two straws, one with 6 day 2 embryos and one with our 3 blasts. We grew our day 2 embryos, but only ended up with one morula. We thawed our blasts and planned on transferring our morula and one blast and refreezing the other two. Only 2 of the blasts survived the thaw, so we decided the risk of refreezing the one blast was just too high and transferred all 3. If we had 2 blasts to refreeze, I would have probably done it, since we would have had a better shot at having something survive a second thaw.