mp1648

Hello, I just saw your response.

 A frozen donor embryo cycle is fairly cheap, usually about $5000 in the US.  The problem is that the wait can be lengthy.  Ask your clinic if they do it, but chances are they don't because the legal aspect of it is getting more complicated.  It is a myth that there are so many frozen embryos waiting in the US. 

We did not go with embryo adoption because it is closer to $10,000 and if the cycle fails then you would have to pay again to give it another shot.  Another option is the site miracleswaiting.com.  It only costs about $100 to join and it helps match up donating and receiving couples. 

There are a few clinics in the US doing it, check out ivfconnections.com on the embryo adoption board for specifics.  The problem we had though was the wait was long, like around 12 months. 

It sounds crazy, but we went to the Czech Republic for our baby.  Most women go to the CR for egg donation.  Our embryos were created for someone who was planning to travel there for a fresh egg cycle, but for some reason they couldn't go.  Because the donor is already stimmed, they retrieve the eggs and use donor sperm to fertilize them.  This is fairly common and they have a decent size bank of frozen embryos just waiting for a home.  We liked this idea better because our embryos were coming from donors, rather than IF couples.  I was always scared of passing my IF down to my children.  The success rates are similar (around 30%) to frozen cycles for IF couples.  Something else that really appealed to us is that we were able to choose embryos that closely matched both of our features.  If we were to choose embryos in the US, we would have taken whatever we could get.  Not that matching our features really mattered to us, but it was a plus. 

Another option is to do a fresh donor cycle, which makes your success rates go up to around 55-60%.  The cost difference is about 2k for frozen and 8k for fresh.  Travel is more expensive in the summer, but you would only need to be there for about 5-7 days.  A fresh donor embryo cycle would have cost us about 30k in the US. 

Our 2nd IVF failed in May and we were on a plane June 30th.  That was another big factor for us. 

 I hope I haven't flooded you with information.  I completely understand taking a mental IF break.  My only way to cope was to keep moving forward, but it would have probably been helpful for me to take more time inbetween cycles to grieve.  I hope you get some answers at your follow-up.  I'll be thinking about you.