Fresh or Frozen Transfer - first cycle?

[Noodleone]

We’ve just picked up our drugs for our first cycle.

We’ve been given the option of a fresh transfer OR freezing with PGS testing. I have just turned 41, high AMH (pcos) but no other issues. We are doing short protocol with ICSI.

Our doctor has advised there is no real difference in success rates fresh v frozen but we do buy time by doing the fresh transfer.

Of course we have no idea if we’ll get *any* quality embryos but kind of have to have a decision on this early. We are happy to pay for the testing (we’re in Australia and it’s $500 per embryo) so keeping costs down isn’t a driver for us.

How have others made this call? What are the pros and cons and did you base it on number of embryos?

[Tugsgirl]

Only my opinion of course but I’d probably opt for frozen for a couple of reasons. Firstly it will give your body a little time to recover from egg collection and secondly if you have good quality pgs tested embies then waiting won’t make any difference as they don’t age from the point of being frozen. Good luck xx

[Fingerscrossed38]

Definitely get pgs testing done. We did it and out of 9 blastocysts got 6 pgs normal. This is a very good number. Out of the three that were abnormal 2 of them were graded the highest grading which goes to show you can't tell for sure unless you get them chromosomally tested.

I always think it's better (if you can afford it) to find it earlier on that an embryo won't make it rather than losing it or finding out later on in the pregnancy awful news. Which in the end wastes more time and is devastating.

I've heard frozen has higher chances of success than fresh because it allows your body to rest and be rid of the drugs from stimulating during retrieval. It also limits chances of ohss which is common and not fun. We got our pgs results around 7 days later so could have started frozen cycle the next month if we wanted to.

Best of luck with your decision xx

[Noodleone in reply to Fingerscrossed38]

Thanks for your response! I’ve read a lot of the scientific literature on PGS testing and the jury seems to be well and truly out on whether it has any positive impact. There is even research that shows that eggs that may test ‘abnormal’ can correct themselves and become healthy babies. I am so confused as I am also scared of miscarriage and testing seems to make logical sense. I think we may base it on the number of embryos in the end...

[Bistbee]

It’s so hard because once you’ve been through the stims and egg collection you really do just want to crack on....however if you have the choice to freeze all and get PGS done then personally I would do that. Your body is so messed about with during stims, difficult to exercise etc that having a small break between egg collection and transfer to allow yourself to get back to normal and feel 100% Im sure would help. Also, you’ll be greatly increasing your chances by only transferring back genetically normal embryos. i’ve had 2 failed fresh rounds and now prepping for a FET next month, so being able to focus on getting my body back to fitness and my head in a good state I hope is really going to help this time around. Of course this all totally depends on how many embryos you come out with but from a mental perspective, knowing you’ve just got to get yourself to egg collection and you can then have a break (book a holiday or something to completely take yourself away from ivf for a week or so). Then you can regroup to focus on stage 2. I appreciate it feels like your prolonging the process slightly but with hindsight I would have much rather done that and known my chances of falling pregnant were the absolute best they could be rather than it just being total pot luck each time transferring straight away after a fresh round. Wishing you lots of good luck !!

[Sarah_37]

We did fresh for our first cycle, had unexplained infertility and it was successful xx

[Noodleone in reply to Sarah_37]

Hi Sarah, can I ask about your age? This is the biggest hurdle for us according to my dr.

[Sarah_37 in reply to Noodleone]

I was 33 at the time x