Tell me about your FETs

eponine7682 · March 2012

Hi ladies,

So, I really want some real advice about what you were told about your FETs. While I like my RE, I feel like him and the nurses there are always over-positive and don't give me the real stats when it comes to whether or not IVF and FETs will work. What I want to know is were you told that your frozen embies would be less successful then your fresh ones? Did you transfer more frozen then you did fresh? How many stuck?

I know it will depend on quality after the thaw, but I am seriously considering transfering 3 frosties. I have a lot ot hinking to do, but my time that I will have some IF coverage is dwindling and I want to have the best chances here for my FET. But, I really don't want to put me or babies health at risk so I definitely need to think more. I just need real advice as to what your docs told you and the decision you made. Thanks in advance!

missjul61 · March 2012

I was told that FETs at my clinic had a slightly lower success rate as compared to fresh. I want to say 10% less or so. However they freeze the embryos conventionally vs the newer vitrification process. From what I understand, clinics that use vitrification claim that there is virtually no difference in their stats between fresh vs frozen.

We transferred the same # of embies with a FET (transferred 2) and one implanted. GL with your decision! Do you know what freezing mechanism your clinic uses? That info would help a bit with my decision if I was in your shoes.

Sloane99 · March 2012

Good luck with your cycle eponine!

I can give you my experience, but it may have been a bit different as we didn't do any fresh transfer after ER, just an FET a few months later. I was told however by my RE that typically the best looking blasts are transferred at ET and therefore by default it remains that some of the lesser looking blasts remain for an FET which is sometimes why FETs are cited as having lower success rates. Now having said that, we had two cycles of PGS done on our embies and I can assure you that the best looking blasts are certainly not always the best chromsomally. We had 3 "perfect" highest rated blasts, all of which were not compatible with life.

We transferred 2 blasts for our FET and I'm currently pregnant with a singleton. Both embies came through the thaw great and we're expanding before the actual transfer and both had zero chromosome issues.

We made the decision for two because we were okay with twins (although honestly I'm somewhat relieved it's one) and since we are 100% OOP we wanted to give ourselves the best chance rather than having to go through another fully medicated/expensive FET. Does your clinic use vitrification or is there a chance that your embies may not all survive the thaw? That may change things as well.

marieinmonaco · March 2012

Hi eponine! I am not sure if you already know my story from over on the IF board but I am a terrible fresh transfer candidate and so frozen transfers are likely the only way we can go in the future. I'll try and answer your questions...

-My RE told me he is now seeing equal success rates of frozen vs. fresh transfers at his clinic (vitrification method). Not sure if this helps, my embryologist told me that the embryo's/blasts are vitrified, thawed separately (not re-thawed), watched very closely during their thaw and have a 95% chance of survival after thaw in their lab. (About an hour before my transfer, we met with our Embryologist who gave us our final update on our 1 blast prior to transferring. In our experience, the blast did not loose any quality from the freeze/thaw.)

-We were strongly advised to only transfer the 1 blast (based on age, that it was a blast, the quality & already being high risk with a singleton).

-1 stuck (or so I think as long as it didn't split!).

Good luck to you and I hope to see you over here soon!

eponine7682 · March 2012

missjul61:

We transferred the same # of embies with a FET (transferred 2) and one implanted. GL with your decision! Do you know what freezing mechanism your clinic uses? That info would help a bit with my decision if I was in your shoes.

Well, given how clueless I am about this process I had to not only look up whether my clinic does vitrification but also what the heck vitrification was! LOL! Anyhoo, yes, they do vitrification. This explains why my nurse said that they very rarely lose embryos after the thaw. I just didn;t want to believe her, but I guess with this process there is a higher rate of embryos surviving.

Echloe · March 2012

I did 4 FETs. 2 were positive. One yielded my sweet little girl. We thawed 3, since I had a bunch of failed transfers and then one arrested. We transferred 2 and 1 stuck. Lots of us Vets have frostie babies. It can work. Good Luck!

nikinikinine · March 2012

Your success rates are totally dependent upon your age, the quality of your embryos, your clinic's own success rates and the method by which they were frozen (vitrified embryos have a higher rate of success since they don't break down as much in the freeze/thaw process).

My clinic has only a 13% success rate for FETs. That means two years ago out of 15 FET cycles only 2 couples ended up with take home babies.

We thawed two, both survived the thaw with minimal degradation and we transferred them both. Neither implanted and we ended up having to do another fresh.

I know many ladies who have twins from a 2 embryo FET though.

vanessagorc · March 2012

The fet rates at my clinic are not great. They also don't vitrify. So he thaw rate isn't as high. That being said, they don't think vitrifying improves success, just thaw rates.

Since the freeze standards are very high, if the embie survives the thaw..,,it's doing pretty well.

I wouldn't transfer 3, especially it they are blasts. That's like transferring 5 day 3 embies.

I only had one, but opted to try a natural fet before starting ivf4. Well, it was the one cycle that worked for me. So I'm an advocate for trying w ur frosties.

bumpuser6119831 · March 2012

I am not sure what they told me the chances were but for the IVF we transferred the 2 best and neither stuck. For the FET we transferred a 4AA and a 4AB and we are having a singleton! From what I remember they gave me a good chance with both over 60%.

Also, for the IVF I was on Endometrium and the for FET we sucked it up and did PIO.

I should add that we had 5 frozen, thawed 2 and they both thawed fine and those were the ones we transferred. They were day 5's when frozen and they did assisting hatching on them before the transfer. Before they were put back they were both almost out of their shells.

kme930 · March 2012

My current pregnancy is a result of an FET - we transferred two and one stuck. My clinic uses vitrification so success rates are pretty close, as others have said. I'm not sure it's relevant, because my embryo quality was best on my fresh cycle, but for what it's worth, my son is the result of an eSET on a fresh cycle - so I was one for one with him (he was a 1AA blast). The LO I'm carrying now is the one that stuck after two FETs of two embryos each, in all cases 1BA blasts.

I can think of at least one poster on the boards who has identical twins from an FET, so there's still a possibility of getting more than you transfer. If I wasn't already limited in what I could carry based on having a suspected unicornuate uterus, I would strongly consider sticking with 2, at least on the first try, given the remaining risk of splitting!

eponine7682 · March 2012

Thank you SO much everyone! I think I will take your advice and give 2 a try (at least for the first time I do it). I was told all 6 made it to blast, however I was drugged up at the time so I need to ask again, so now that I think about it transferring 3 probably wouldn't be wise.

After my bfn of IVF 1 I was feeling pretty low, so it's nice to get hopeful again. Thanks again!

kthappy76 · March 2012

The reality is that neither the RE nor the nurses know whether any cycle will work. At my WTF (after we lost our first pg), my RE encouraged me to do an FET rather than do a fresh cycle again. I was optimistic, but honestly didn't know our chances given how our fresh cycle ended. We ended up getting pg w/twins. My clinic does have really great success rates and even better FET than fresh (>70%), but I've seen ppl get pg w/crappy embies, FETs, whatever. We transferred two each time, fresh=m/c of singleton after heartbeat, FET=twins. It's a crap shoot. My advice is never transfer more than you are sure you want to carry. GL!

lovebug33 · March 2012

I had no choice but to do an FET because I was part of some study and I wanted the 5,000 dollar discount. My clinic has a really high success rate for FET's. I was told I had a 75-95 percent chance of getting pg. because of my age and my general issue. I put two in and one stuck!

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