Lurker from IF:Anyone used a small number of eggs and had success?

mfarmer0811 · June 2013

DH and I are trying to decide on how many eggs we want to fertilize. We believe every embryo has a chance, and we want to be responsible. We are thinking between 3-6 eggs. Has anyone had success with only fertilizing 3-6 eggs?

TIA!

ARS0805 · June 2013

I understand where you are coming from. But I agree with the previous poster. I had 20 retrieved and only 11 of those fertilized normally. In the end we transferred 2 on Day 5 and had 3 to freeze. Starting with 20 and ending with 5 to work with was quite a shocker to me!

Andplusalso...we transferred two excellent day 5 blasts. RE gave us the highest odds possible for twins. I am pregnant with a singleton. If/when we try for a sibling, I have my doubts that all three frosties will survive the thaw. So I feel we will be left with one or two, and we will transfer whatever we have.

Very personal decision that only you can make. I just wouldn't want to go through stims and ER more than absolutely necessary!

Julie21613 · June 2013

I 100% agree with PP. The most eggs we've ever gotten was 10. 7 fertilized and only 3 made it to day 3. We transferred all 3 and got pregnant with a singleton but sadly ended in a miscarriage. This past and successful cycle, they only got 1 egg. Thankfully it fertilized and I am now almost 22 weeks pregnant with a little girl. Never having had frosties.... I would definitely fertilize all of them with the hope of having some to freeze to be used if your current cycle doesn't work or for siblings. Good luck!

mae141 · June 2013

I had 10 eggs retrieved. Only 6 were mature. Only 4 fertilized with ICSI. Only 1 made it to day 5. Luckily, I am now 12 weeks pregnant. You really don't get to decide how this works out; you can only do things to help increase your chances of success.

Also, fertilizing all the eggs you get is not "irresponsible" (to use your word). Your belief about when life begins is personal, but your choice of words is offensive. There are many options of what you can do with extra embryos, if you have any, other than destroy them.

luvboston · June 2013

Fertilize all

jezebel57 · June 2013

I got 3 mature my first round and only 2 fertilized. BFN. My 2nd round got 6 mature, 5 fertilized, transferred 3 and the other 2 stopped growing before making it to day 5. Because you won't be able to gauge how many will actually fertilize, i'd say do more. Would you be willing to give them up for embryo adoption if you had more than you wanted? Will you be freezing them also? These are all questions to discuss with your RE, but I would fertilize as many as you had because you never know. Good luck!

CNYBride05 · June 2013

We only had 5 retrieved, 4 fertilized, and 1 passed PGD. Will you transfer all that fertilize? There's no guarantee that any will fertilize, continue to grow, or be transferable, so I'd try for all. But that's just my approach. Best of luck with your decision and cycle.

BootsOrHearts · June 2013

Fertilize all of them. You can't really freeze eggs and you have no idea how many will fertilize and how many will keep growing and how many will actually take. You can fertilize 20 and none may make it to transfer, it depends on your egg quality but there's also a lot of chance in there.(of course, all 20 could make it also, you have no way of knowing ahead of time)

You can always freeze the embryos you don't use and there's a very good chance they will survive the thaw. If later you decide you don't want to use them, you can give them up for adoption to a couple who needs them. This is an amazing gift you can give an infertile couple.

We are DOR, we retrieved 7, 7 were mature, 5 fertilized with ICSI, we transferred 2 (BFN) and froze 2. The freezies are still there and we'll plan to use them after this pregnancy.

Agree with PP - if you're worried about too many eggs, try mini-IVF where the goal is only to get 2-5, not the maximum number.

new+tothis · June 2013

I guess this is an unpopular belief but I see where you're coming from. Personally, I don't share your opinion but I don't think that matters here. It's YOUR belief that matters. I have endo and low AMH. I had 25 eggs retrieved, 15 mature, and all 15 fertilized. We transferred 2. I believe we still have 10-12 that are frozen. If DH and I shared your beliefs about giving every embryo a chance then we would have to do a LOT of transfers. kwim? We don't want that many kids. I would talk about the maximum number of embryos you're willing to have and tell your RE. They should be able to shoot for the right number of eggs retrieved. You may not end up with many but in this case that seems better than going against your beliefs. Look into the term "mini IVF".

myshaybaby · June 2013

Just piggybacking on what the PPs have said. Fertilize all of them. I had 22 eggs, 19 were mature, 9 fertilized normally, and only 6 survived in the end. We transferred 2 and froze 4. We are pregnant with twins, and if everything goes well and we decide to stop our family at twins, we've talked heavily about donating the 4 embryos to an infertile couple. You're still giving those embryos a chance! I definitely wouldn't go through the stress and financial pressure of an IVF cycle without giving myself the best chances possible and only fertilizing a few eggs. Good luck with your decision!

mfarmer0811 · June 2013

mae141:
I had 10 eggs retrieved. Only 6 were mature. Only 4 fertilized with ICSI. Only 1 made it to day 5. Luckily, I am now 12 weeks pregnant. You really don't get to decide how this works out; you can only do things to help increase your chances of success. nbsp;Also, fertilizing all the eggs you get is not "irresponsible" to use your word. Your belief about when life begins is personal, but your choice of words is offensive. There are many options of what you can do with extra embryos, if you have any, other thannbsp;destroynbsp;them. nbsp;

My intent was in no way meant to be offensive! I'm truly sorry if it came across that way. That is just a word my DH have used as we go through this process. I didn't even say irresponsible anyways. I didn't say fertilizing all eggs was responsible or irresponsible! I just meant we want to be responsible in the decision we make!
Thanks.

mfarmer0811 · June 2013

Thanks everyone for the advice! We have a lot to think and pray about!

mae141 · June 2013

mfarmer0811:
mae141:
I had 10 eggs retrieved. Only 6 were mature. Only 4 fertilized with ICSI. Only 1 made it to day 5. Luckily, I am now 12 weeks pregnant. You really don't get to decide how this works out; you can only do things to help increase your chances of success. nbsp;Also, fertilizing all the eggs you get is not "irresponsible" to use your word. Your belief about when life begins is personal, but your choice of words is offensive. There are many options of what you can do with extra embryos, if you have any, other thannbsp;destroynbsp;them. nbsp;
My intent was in no way meant to be offensive! I'm truly sorry if it came across that way. That is just a word my DH have used as we go through this process. I didn't even say irresponsible anyways. I didn't say fertilizing all eggs was responsible or irresponsible! I just meant we want to be responsible in the decision we make! Thanks.

I know you are not meaning to be offensive, but you just did it again. By saying that you want to make the "responsible" decision, you imply that anyone who doesn't make the same decision as you is not responsible.

There are options- donate to science (though I am guessing this does not mesh with your beliefs), donate to another couple, freeze indefinitely, or transfer back at the wrong time so that they won't be able to implant. But I think as you can see from all the other responses, you might not even have to make that decision. Unfortunately for all of us there is no way to know what will happen.

Either way, I wish you the best. I am very sorry that you find yourself here and I hope everything works out well for you.

xladybassx · June 2013

I agree with pp's, I think your best option is to let all the eggs have a chance to fertilize. We got 15 eggs, 10 were mature, and only 4 fertilized with ICSI. We have no issues with egg quality, so the low fert was a complete surprise. Only 2 of the 4 survived long enough to transfer. Since so much if this is just up to chance, or factors that have not yet been discovered I would absolutely give every egg a chance!

jadwedd · June 2013

I understand what you mean about worrying about having possibly unused embryos. This was our thinking - If all of the eggs fertilized and we wound up with extra embryos we would use as many as possible and when we felt our family was complete we would adopt out any extras. That was our plan. Once the eggs were retreived we had 10, 9 fertilized and I loved them already and told dh that I didn't care, I was going to carry them or get someone else to carry them for me. Only 2 made it to day 10 and they were considered to be very low quality. But one of them hung in there

I still think about all the ones who did not make it but I am glad that we fertilized all of them because you never know which one is going to wind up being "the one." Good luck with whatever you decide.

Citygirl1015 · June 2013

I have to echo PP's sentiments and recommend fertilizing everything. It seems like you're trying to be responsible by not having too many embryos leftover, which I get, but that also assumes that IVF is going to work for you in the first or second try. What if it doesn't, and you could have saved yourself the trouble of going through another fresh cycle?

Check out my siggy for specifics, but I ended up having a good amount of eggs retrieved and then 6 were eventually frozen and sadly still didn't get my take home baby out of any of it. I would give yourselves the best chance because you never know what is going to happen in your cycle, and things do not usually go perfectly according to our plans. Best of luck!

Laurakat81 · June 2013

I totally get where you're coming from but unfortunately there is no easy answer. If funds are unlimited and time doesnt play a huge part in this then by all means only fertilize a number you're comfortable with. We were terrified of having too many embryos, naively. For the same reasons as you. We knew we would give each and every embryo a chance, whether we ended up with 1 or 30.

Our diagnosis was tubal factor and my RE gave us excellent odds. He put me on a "micro" med protocol because he was concerned we would overstimulate and end up with way too many or cancelled for that matter. We got 12 mature eggs. 10 fertilized. So right there we lost two. By day 5 only 3 were living. And two of those three were rated pretty badly. And the one was rated "okay". He gave it a C. We were devastated and truly thought we didn't stand a chance. Had we decided to only fertilize half our eggs it is extremely possible that we would have not had a thing to transfer. We decided to transfer the three that were still alive regardless of quality. Thank God it worked.

We did a lot of praying about what to do. In the end we decided it was best to trust the doctor. We made it clear of our desire to not let a single embryo go to waste. But not in a million years did any of us think out of 12 we would only end up with 1 decent quality embryo.

brooklynesque · June 2013

Lurker on this board, and pitching in because I've had a conversation with my RE about this subject. If your RE has an excellent lab for freezing, you can absolutely fertilize only a subset of your eggs -- understanding that you will be decreasing your odds somewhat by doing so. Ladies come from all over the region to freeze their eggs at my RE's practice (i.e., for their own future use), and my RE would have been willing to let me choose a set number to fertilize and to freeze the remainder to be fertilized later if necessary (or to be donated to someone else). I'm talking about my DE cycle here; I was so far away from having anything to freeze in my OE cycles it didn't even come up then. But you're very young and might well produce a ton of eggs. With many DE cycles where the donor is your age, the cycles are done as split cycles and each couple only gets half the eggs or less. That is, you do not necessarily need to fertilize all of your eggs to have a good shot at a successful cycle. If you have moral qualms about destroying embryos you're not at all crazy to be thinking about pursuing this path, IMO.

ETA: You could make a decision about how many to fertilize at retrieval, when you'll know numbers.

ETA #2: It's dead wrong that you can't freeze eggs, notwithstanding what a PP said above. There are DE egg banks made up entirely of frozen eggs. And SART (or whomever makes these decisions -- I forget) recently removed the label "experimental" from egg freezing, since the technology has gotten so good. But you'd want to check the reputation of a given clinic's lab.

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