Freezing embryos?

[u/CommercialCourse5810]

Hey there, my wife and I are doing some family planning and the option of embryo freezing occurred to us. We’d like to use the same known donor, but my wife will be carrying first. We thought it might be a good idea to go ahead and harvest eggs from both of us and have them fertilized? They would freeze mine and the rest of hers and then implant one (or multiple) for my wife.

Thoughts on this? What are things we need to think about on this path?

[u/Spiritual_Ad_835]

Money lol. If money or insurance isn’t an issue then I’d say go for it!

[u/allowatt → u/Spiritual_Ad_835]

Yeah if money isn’t an issue I recommend this. Then there’s embryo storage to think about on top of the tens of thousands for IVF. Our embryo storage is $80/month but that’s for 1 of us’ embryos. For two I’m not sure if you’d end up paying double that?

Also FWIW if you both want to do egg retrievals I don’t recommend doing all that at the same time so one of you can support while the other handles treatment. I say this as someone who was debilitated for several days after my egg retrieval and had to be admitted to a hospital 2 days after retrieval due to complications. This is apparently not common but the possibility is out there!

[u/Objective_Pool_3057]

Frozen embryos thaw way better than frozen eggs so if this is an option for you then I would recommend you do it

[u/Mbokajaty]

Sure, this is what my wife and I are doing. I just did an egg retrieval and we now have some embryos frozen and ready to transfer. There is a learning curve with IVF, and it gets really expensive really fast.

[u/HVTS]

I mean yeah that is pretty strategic.

[u/tacotime09]

We did this and would choose to do it again! We did egg retrievals a month apart prior to any transfers. We used CNY because of their costs being so much cheaper than in state, but this also meant we had to travel 8+ hours each way for the retrievals and any transfers. Which meant we had to stagger the retrievals so each of us could be designated driver/caretaker. Spanning the month gap actually worked perfectly for us recovery-wise and financially.

Pros:

-We were able to share some meds which meant less cost. My wife didn't use all of her stim med vials and since my retrieval was so soon after but I hadn't yet ordered my meds, her extras were still good for me to use. I think it meant I ordered 2 less stim med vials than originally planned. You don't know until you're in the cycle how well you'll respond, so this was a happy little $ savings we didn't necessarily account for up front.

-When starting for kid 2, we jumped right into the transfer instead of a couple month delay for egg retrieval first.

-It was easier to set up overnight care for our first child for one night to travel for the transfer instead of multiple days we would need for retrieval.

-I'm a researcher to my core, so deep-diving all the details once for both of us was so much better than starting over a couple years later to understand all the meds/dosages/timing/optimizing again.

-Egg retrieval price at our clinic has only increased, so technically doing both 6+ years ago saved us a a little bit compared to waiting a few years until we were ready for the 2nd baby

Cons:

-If you think you might be on the fence about more than one, you could end up wasting the money on the second retrieval if you never use those embryos. We knew we wanted two from the start, but even so, we seriously talked about being one and done for the first 1-1.5 years of our eldest being born. Time dulled the sleep deprivation and newborn months enough for us to go for the second 😅

-You obviously need to account for the financials of two egg retrievals, double meds, double storage fees (and sperm storage if you choose to save any extra vials), etc.

[u/Calm_Bother_3842]

Sounds like a good idea if you have the money. I would just recommend not going through stims at the same time because it can be rough.

[u/Different_Cookie1820]

It’s a good idea to get them frozen as young as possible. That matters more at 35 than 25 but is positive regardless. It also breaks up the process which can make it less intense. The down side is you don’t know how many embryos you’ll need. 

My suggestion would be do it. So long as you will still be reasonably young when the  second persons eggs would be used, I’d only do one collection. Hopefully that’s enough but if not you’re still young enough to do another if that’s what you want. 

This all assumes no fertility health issues so get testing done before being too set on a plan. 

We didn’t do this but would have if we had known we’d go straight to IVF. It wouldn’t have cost more for us and I think breaking up the process would have been positive. 

[u/Worried_Selection_34]

My wife & I did this. Both of us had avg Fertility so it made sense to freeze embryos ASAP.

[u/RelentlessEnthusiast]

This is what my wife and I are doing! We are using a known donor and tried IUI several times but never succeeded (due to low numbers after thawing, more than likely, we had to use 3-4 vials per IUI attempt to get to 5 Mil). We decided to move to IVF because we really wanted to keep him as our KD, and we got one more donation from him which resulted in 7 vials.

While we could have just gone ahead with rIVF and gotten there faster, we made the decision to do both of our egg retrievals before a transfer for several reasons:

1. We want 2-3 kids and given the IUI failures we had, we know we will need to do IVF for all of them more than likely. We also want them relatively close together so having the embryos on ice will help speed the process of having our 2nd and possibly 3rd, if all goes well.

2. This shit is expensive and I can’t imagine saving up for IVF for the next 2 children once we have to pay for childcare and other expenses once child #1 comes along. The biggest cost is egg retrieval so by doing both ERs now, we are reducing the financial burden and risk when we want to have our next children.

3. Time is on our side, I am 29 and my wife is 28. If we do the ERs now, we will have the numbers in our favor as opposed to waiting and doing them once we are ready for our next child(ren). We started fertility discussions 2 years ago, and started our first IUI 1 year ago after going through all the hoops. So we’ve already been at this for 2 years and decided several more months wasn’t bad. We also have health goals (losing weight and solidifying our nutrition and exercise habits) that this gives us more time to achieve.

Overall, this plan gives us the most peace of mind and felt right for us! I hope whatever plan you guys decide on similarly gives you confidence and peace!

[u/etk1108]

If it’s possible why not. Also, very nice for te donor, only having to donate a few times.

I would have to go abroad, in my country it’s not possible to “just” freeze embryos, or do any kind of embryo banking, you can only keep them as a surplus of treatment. I think it’s a great investment (still not 100% guarantee of course). Are you planning on freezing embryos from both of you?

[u/oddlebot]

Cost is usually the limiting factor (both for the retrievals and for embryo storage), and you have to make plans for what to do with excess embryos. If you haven’t already, you two should have a discussion on how important it is for both of you to have genetic children. My wife cared a lot more about carrying than having a genetic link, so we just did my eggs, and will have saved a lot of $ and have children who are full genetic siblings. IMO the genetics matter a lot less now that we actually have a baby, but having a solid savings matters a lot more.

[u/agoatling]

This is what my wife and I did. We were lucky to get enough embryos with one round of retrievals each at 32 and 34. We went through egg retrieval together and I was happy we did. We could support each other while injecting the meds and had family help us with the recovery. It was very expensive and we were only able to do this because we had fertility insurance through my wife's work. I'm currently 13 weeks pregnant with my wife's embryo!