revisiting the topic of reciprocal IVF

maggiemay33 · March 2014

I know there's at least one old thread on the topic of reciprocal IVF, but I wanted to see if anyone else is headed down this path as well.

My wife and I are in the initial stages. Trying to coordinate everything feels like some serious cat herding so I guess I'm just looking for some general commiseration and looking for folks who've had success in the past as well.

maggiemay33 · March 2014

Thanks for the response and congrats on your baby girl, @herbabymama

It's just frustrating, like I don't even know when we're going to "start" let alone when anything might happen. It's like waiting on the waiting. Oh well. Best choice for us too but there are very few people who understand the nature of the complaints!

I may have questions as things get underway - thanks for the offer.

Manada · March 2014

Hi @maggiemay33,

@healz413 and I did reciprocal IVF (well, not so reciprocal as she had the eggs and I didn't have many)..... When we first started the planning stages of TTC we talked about how it would be such a great thing to do, but were initially scared off by the cost. Ha! We figured that for $12,000 we'd be able to have a couple of kids via iui and a little bit of money left over easy

   (WRONG!).

For us, it was a journey to get to the place where we did IVF with H's eggs and my body.    First I have DOR so I neither respond well to stims, and the suspicion is that the eggs I do have may not be great quality.   Then H was dx'd with severe endo and had her tubes removed.   At that time we were also advised that her ovaries had chocolate cysts in them and the endo was impacting them.   At that point we basically decided to move on to IVF sooner rather than later because endo is progressive, and the longer it grew the more it spread within her ovaries.    Looking back now I'm glad we made that decision, the endo was a HUGE issue with our IVF cycle, and had a big impact on the resulting number of eggs and their quality.

And then, we decided to put them in me.... because.... well, I wanted it. And I was really grieving the loss of having a genetic connection to our children - and this seemed like a really, really good way for us both to have a chance to be recognized as physical parents to our kids.    We hoped going into IVF that we would have enough embryos for a single embryo transfer and a bunch of frosties for us both to be pregnant eventually, but it didn't happen that way.

In the end we had 10 eggs retrieved of which only 3 were good enough to ICSI, and 3 embryos on Day 3 and did a double transfer that day.   We were terrified that we would end up with NO babies, and made the choice that we felt better transferring two than risking the majority to the freeze/thaw process.      And now I'm 9 weeks pregnant with twins, and we have one Day 3 embryo frozen to try to thaw in a few years.

I guess the point of sharing our story is to share that we are very happy with our decision to do partner IVF, but it was definitely a decision we came to through a pretty intense journey.   For us, a lot of the choices we had to make around who donates and who carries was made for us by our own Infertility challenges.

You didn't really ask for advise, but if I were to share one thing I would be to just give you a heads up that so much of fertility treatment is trial and error -- and if you're going straight to IVF you may not have the benefit of going in knowing which drugs the egg-giver will respond best to, or how the cycle will go, this can be stressful with a ton of money on the line... so just be prepared that you may end up learning a lot from your first cycle, but it may not be the one that is most successful.

I'm also here for questions

Megeliizabeth · March 2014

Definitely will be watching this thread; I have an IUI this weekend (#3) but we are also starting to get my wife prepared for at least retrieval of her eggs. If this IUI doesn't work for me, then we'll likely transfer her eggs for me to carry and go from there!

maggiemay33 · March 2014

So many more responses than I expected! How wonderful!

A little more about us, we started interviewing clinics a little more than a year ago and then decided to have one more snowboarding season before we started trying.

We didn't like how we were treated at one clinic but really loved the other, with whom we're currently working. My wife's menstrual cycles aren't predictable so we're in the process of syncing things up which is proving to be a total PITA. Additionally we might be dealing with a genetic blood clotting issue which we will need the donor to be negative for, and it's really hard to figure out if the cryobanks test for this thing. If they don't, most can but it's an extra $500, and if it's positive of course, we have to try again. Very often the people at the cryobank don't know wtf I'm talking about.

So we're actually fairly far into the process but really don't know when we'll be trying which is making me a little nuts.

maggiemay33 · April 2014

So my wife recently started the pill so we're officially doing something, finally, which is exciting even if our actual schedule is still TBD.

Would anyone be interested in a check-in thread where we can share updates?

LaireAndLia · April 2014

I certainly would! My partner and I are doing reciprocal IVF, but also donating half of her eggs per cycle to her sister.

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revisiting the topic of reciprocal IVF

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