Help? Clinic messed up dates of cycle - not sure what to do - if embryo is struggling to get to day 5 blastocyst, might it still be born?

[rainbowbaby8320]

Hello everyone

I am struggling and really don't know what to do. I'm with a clinic in Cambridge and there has been a catalogue of errors made since I joined them. The latest one, is they booked me in, to have a fresh egg collection three days before I go away on holiday with the intention to do PGTA on any embryos that make it to day 5.

The clinic have just written to me saying they need to push my egg collection date back to the day before my holiday because they don't do PGTA testing on the date that it has fallen on. As usual they have waited until I got my period and the cycle started to give it any intelligent thought. What this means is that if i've got any embryos that are struggling to make it to day 5, it has eliminated my option to transfer them into myself before I go away? I just wondered if any of you have had babies born from embryos that were struggling and looked like they were not going to get to day 5/blastocyst? Is it unlikely they would be born in this scenario? The thing is, on my last cycle, the slower one was the euploid one and passed PGTA! So i'm scared that you really can't tell and I don't want to cut off any options or destroy embryos that might be ok? I'm also scared of miscarriage which is why I want PGTA and I don't want to waste precious time - i'm 41.5 years.

I'm thinking I could do the egg collection on the original date and freeze them all and then unfreeze and biopsy them if I want to - but this knocks 10% off your PGTA success rate...

I am just so angry that the clinic keep on making these errors - they book your cycle and then fix the c*ck ups after it has started. I want to transfer back to my old clinic but I don't want to lose time with my eggs getting older.

Does anyone have any advice or anything?

You might say it's stupid I booked a holiday that close to egg collection but they assured me weeks ago that they would work around my holiday and I have been so down about the IVF not working and I feel sad for my son - I wanted to do something nice with him

[Eggfreezer2015]

I know this is not ideal and from what I understand from what I have read, is there a possibility to either delay your holiday or delay the cycle to after your holiday? As the clinic messed up if you abandon now, they should cover drugs already taken. Otherwise you’re just going to get stressed and may create what ifs around the embryos if you’re not here… I’m sorry you find yourself in this situation as it’s stressful enough without clinics making errors. All the best xxx

[rainbowbaby8320 in reply to Eggfreezer2015]

Thanks for your reply! I haven't asked about moving holiday yet... we are going with a friend so it's awkward but there is another issue - I booked to have my breast implants taken out on the week after I get back from hols... (because I think they are causing my auto immune issues and blocking pregnancy). I don't want to be recovering from that with all the anesthetic in my body when they harvest my eggs? So it's a snowball of garbage because of the error... and it's infuriating because on my FET cycle they did the same thing - booked me in and then after cycle starts they say 'actually, we don't have availability to do that date'. I had to get the consultant involved and she fixed it last time. I've written her a message - just waiting for a reply.

Potentially I could push my surgery back and do the cycle next month instead... i'm thinking about that... why should I have to!? I'm so worried about what they are doing with my eggs and embryos too if they are this incompetent.

I'm so angry!

[rivershark]

I can say my son was born from either an 8 or 16 cell day 5 embryo. Embryologist would not have done a transfer as we had no blastocysts. But I wanted to give them a chance. Although to be honest no one was more surprised than me when it worked. I guess some embryos are slow growing but doesn’t mean they can’t catch up. Xx

[rainbowbaby8320 in reply to rivershark]

wow! When I hear stuff like this it makes me so nervous that I might have discarded good embryos already 😟

It’s lovely your son was born xx

[Millbanks]

Hey lovely,

I had my blastos frozen / thawed / biopsied / frozen for PGTA. One was then thawed for transfer - so they can definitely do this.

If there were embryos that only made it to day 3, would you want to transfer them anyway? As you mentioned you're PGTA testing because you're scared of a miscarriage - would you want to transfer an untested embryo? Just playing devils advocate here....

xx

[rainbowbaby8320 in reply to Millbanks]

hi thank you to all of you for replying! You are right- I’m scared of more miscarriages and also the time it will use up!

The clinic have now moved my dates forward so I can do pgta on day 5 and I can still have early transfer in absolute worst case scenario - hope I won’t have to x hope I can get another good one on this cycle!

[Millbanks in reply to rainbowbaby8320]

Ah that's great news! I found PGTA very reassuring so everything crossed for you xx

[Shelleybean]

Oh gosh this sounds stressful! Sorry you’re having to deal with all of this on top of the usual worries/ stresses of IVF. Just to say that I’ve had 4 fresh rounds with a day 3 double embryo transfer each time (once day 2) of slow growing embryos that didn’t look like would make it to day 5 and were the only two left so made sense just to put them back in. Never had anything good enough to freeze. Never saw a single blast in the lab. But had a positive first round with heartbeat seen on viability scan (sadly later mc) and then have a beautiful 3 year old son from my 4th round. Also now 5 weeks away from giving birth with a miracle natural pregnancy! So I’m proof that those “slow growing”/ “poor quality” embryos can work!

Wishing you loads of luck and hope you get to enjoy your holiday xx

[rainbowbaby8320 in reply to Shelleybean]

wow! That’s really interesting and what a lovely outcome for you with your son! Makes me wonder if I should be doing pgta at all 🤔

Sometimes I wonder if my embryos don’t like being frozen because all this is happening on FET cycles and my son was born from a fresh transfer x

[Shelleybean in reply to rainbowbaby8320]

I think it possibly depends how many embryos you end up with. If you don’t have any to choose between then for me it was a no brainer to pop one (or two if you dare risk twins!) back. Although I’m aware some people just can’t cope with dealing with mc so would rather have them tested to try to avoid this. Good luck and keep us updated! 🍀 xx

[rainbowbaby8320 in reply to Shelleybean]

hi Shelley

I am scared of miscarriages - my last one went on for months and my body still didn’t know so I had to have d&c… and if I get just one of those my eggs will be older again by the time it’s over so it’s got a double impact for an older woman - I’m 41.5 years now x

Think I will see how my cycle goes - they have pulled it forward now so it’s not right on top of my holiday! X

Thanks for replying!

[Shelleybean in reply to rainbowbaby8320]

That sounds awful, so sorry to hear you went through that 😢

Really glad to hear your clinic have been able to bring your dates forward, great news. It’ll be nice to have a holiday to look forward to after your cycle xx