We are looking to start our third IVF cycle, with a new doctor & new clinic. We are currently doing our initial tests (blood tests, sperm analysis, ovarian reserve,...). Our initial proposed treatment is the following: IMSI + Embryo batching + PGS + Embryo Freezing
How many of you have done embryo batching? I can not find enough information about it... Therefore, would you please share your experience or any info you have. Thank you.
I am 38 and I have a poor ovarian reserve, and although this “embryo batching” seems like a great idea to get some spare embryos, however, it might not be the best option for us… First of all, we only want one baby, secondly my partner I have decided to keep trying with IVF until the end of the year and then we will stop. The whole IVF process is just so heartbreaking and I don’t think I (we) can take it much longer.
Thank you for any info on embryo batching!
xoxo
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ourbundleofjoy
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Fertilityjourney thank you. I've also been on this "alcohol-free" diet for a while now, additionally, I drastically reduced coffee, sugars, dairy products and become vegetarian. And as you said, I am also taking so many many supplements/vitamins, that my pee became fluorescent yellow I hope it will pay off. Wishing you all the best!
Hi, I did embryo batching after our 4th failed ivf cycle. We did 2 stims cycles in the end, had icsi, imsi and ended up sending a good number (for us) for pgs testing. Only a third came back as being normal so I feel like it was a helpful thing for us to do otherwise we could have ended up doing a load frozen transfers with abnormal embryos. I think we probably have high dna fragmentation coupled with high nk cells on my side so we’ve got a couple of issues to contend with but it has meant we’ve been able to concentrate on tweaking things with me on each subsequent frozen transfer without also having to go through stims on top of that, for example adding in steriods/intralipids to combat my possible immune issue - the thought of all that medication on top of a stims cycle would just be too much to cope with!
I was 36 when we did the batching and had normal ovarian reserve but because of our potential sperm issue we still ended up with a relatively low number of viable embryos and we’ve already used a couple up with further unsuccessful cycles. I also did have a concern that we’d end up with loads of embryos in the freezer but due to other issues we’re down to our last few and i’m just really hoping that there’s 1 in there that will stick as not sure we can stomach starting the process all over again.
Thank you Bistbee. I really appreciate you sharing your story, it put all my missing pieces together. I have (had) a concern that embryo batching will give us lots of spare embryos and as said we made a decision to stop trying with IVF at the end of the year. So the question is, will I actually be able to stop trying if I have a couple of embryos still in the freezer at the end of this year? However, if you checked my profile you could see that in our 1st cycle we had 1 viable (day5) embryo and the same in IVF Cycle 2. So, I am not sure how come I thought that we will end up with so many extra embryos
I think we will follow our doctor's advice. However, it is good to hear from someone going through the same (similar) thing. Thank you for sharing.
I really wish you all the best and that it works out for you two!
I did three back to back embryo batching cycles due to my low ovarian reserve and partner's high DNA fragmentation.
We had several failures before (4 cycles, 8 embryos transferred, 1 miscarriage, 1CP and 6 failures), so our chance of success was very slim. It made more sense to us to store as many embryos as possible now that I was "younger", rather than try, fail, and go back to square one slightly older. In our case, having a lot of embryos wouldn't mean that we would have a lot of children, it would just improve a bit the odds!
The only difference with your plan is that we refused PGS. At my age, I wasn't producing many embryos anyway and PGS is not an exact science (clinics oversea that can transfer also abnormal ones still get some success), so we wanted to give them all a chance.
Dear MofM, thank you for your message. I've also read a few things on PGS (PGT-A) and it makes you question is this the right choice??? I don't know, I would just like to have the best option. However, we could end up with 0 embryos, even a good embryo can get 'lost' in this process, so is this still the right option? Maybe you are right to refuse the PGS....Thank you for sharing your journey. I wish you all the best and I am sending positive energy your way!
Hi, it sounds like you are in a very similar situation to me. Same age, except my embryo batching plan was initiated after my failed third round + failed FETs.
Now we were also going to do the PGT route with 3 rounds then fet.
One thing I would say is make sure your doctor has a back up/ plan B up ready. In my case we had only one embryo on this latest round which they decided to put back at day 3, but with no immune plan ready so everything was rushed and not ideal as I didn’t have any steroids or ivig as they hadn’t tested my lastest NK.
I have 2 more round left and hopefully they will go a bit better.
I’m also giving myself this year.
Good luck and I wish you all the very best for your treatment
We had a follow-up consultation with our doctor and reviewed the Embryo batching approach. Below is the summary of our conversation, it might help someone else who is in the same (similar) situation.
- Batching has no significance on pregnancy but has significance if we are going for egg stimulation
- AMH drops every 3-6 months (therefore better collect more eggs now than in a few months’ time)
- Success with IVF depends on 3 variables:
- sperm,
- female age when we do the egg collection,
- the number of eggs we get (“magic number”=14 eggs)
- according to our doctor, 14 eggs would give us a success rate (@age 38-39) of 30-35%
- With lower AMH (AMH=9.8 pmo/l) we will not get 14 eggs in one collection, only 6-7 eggs, therefore reducing success down to 15-20%
- Based on the above our doctor proposed we go with 2 stimulation cycles at least, to defeat the “number game”
Why did my doctor suggest Embryo batching?
1. embryo accumulating, to get enough embryos, so that if we do the genetic biopsy, we know we can select the right looking embryo to transfer
2. banking enough number of embryos for the future (for sibling)
Batching timeline – between embryo batch 1 and batch 2
- we were advised to do it month after month. Therefore the batching approach would be as follows:
- First month / Cycle 1 – egg collection, create embryos, freeze them (freeze embryos on day3). Day after egg collection take tablets to take over the cycle and then on the next period or the subsequent month we would re-start the stimulation
- Second month / Cycle 2 – stimulation cycle to create more eggs, create embryos + thaw embryos from the first cycle, take all to the blastocyst stage, biopsy all + freeze all
- The third month – have a break and also we need 3 weeks to get genetic biopsy results – then we would know how many normal embryos we have.
- The fourth month - we would do the targeted transfer on the fourth month.
The question is, if we go with embryo batching, in two subsequential cycles, will we get more eggs on the second cycle? I acknowledge the fact that the longer we leave it the fewer eggs/lower quality there is. Our doctor’s opinion:
“Woman cycles are idiosyncratic, let’s say on the first cycle woman has 12 eggs, and then the subsequential cycle will fall 1 in 3 categories:
- either is the same results,
- or it is better because the stimulation improves the ovarian blood supplies
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for a while now, additionally, I drastically reduced coffee, sugars, dairy products and become vegetarian. And as you said, I am also taking so many many supplements/vitamins, that my pee became fluorescent yellow 
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