Donor Egg Advice 🙏🏻 how many collections needed?

[SKC111]

Hello, after a poor response to ivf with my OE I have started looking into DE. I have one more OE round next month, then I’ll move to plan B. I have found a clinic abroad and they offer a few different price packages. You can pay more for guaranteed 1,2 or 3 blast per DE cycle/collection. It’s a gamble, if you pay the lowest amount with 1 guaranteed but get more you still get to keep these. If you get less they will do another collection to make up the guaranteed number. I’m keen to hear from others who have been through the process, do you think one DE collection should hopefully 🤞🏼 be enough or have you needed multiple DE collections? Thank you in advance x

I understand this varies for all but I’m keen to hear others stories 🙏🏻

[Boo718]

hello, we needed multiple donor egg collections. We had a few rounds that the embryos were all abnormal. It also gave us the chance to do more tests before transfers. We moved on to double donor and I still had to have 4 transfers xxx

[SKC111 in reply to Boo718]

Wishing you all the best with the four you needed to transfer ♥️ I would have thought with DE you wouldn’t have had abnormal embryos, did you use the same donor? Thanks for relying, all the best x

[Boo718 in reply to SKC111]

We changed donor. We were told that just because the donor is younger so should have better egg quality that didn’t guarantee that they would be chromosomally normal. So we chose to pgta test them all. All the first round were abnormal we changed donors and the next time 2 were abnormal xxx after my 4th donor transfer we had our little girl xxx

[SKC111 in reply to Boo718]

Aww congrats on your little girl! What tests did you do in between out of interest? Thanks this is helpful!

[Boo718 in reply to SKC111]

We did the era, Alice and Emma tests. A hysterocopy, thyroid and a heap of blood tests. Xxx

[SKC111 in reply to Boo718]

Ok thanks! I’ve done the thyroid but will look at the others, thanks x

[Kitkat10]

hi, it’s a hard decision to make and largely down to luck I guess. I bought 6 frozen eggs, got 2 embryos and the first one worked. I had paid more for a 50% refund guarantee after 2 seperate cycles so I ended up overpaying I guess, but I wanted some kind of reassurance that I could have multiple transfers if we needed them x

[SKC111 in reply to Kitkat10]

Thanks this is really helpful! Congratulations! They do offer a refund programme too but the cost is so much more so I’m trying to weight it all up! I appreciate the reply thank you 🙏🏻 xxx

[Kitkat10 in reply to SKC111]

You’re very welcome, good luck with everything x

[Nevergu]

It's not just eggs that make up an embryo, you need to consider sperm quality too. Also., not all good embryos implant first time. If you never been pregnant before you may need multiple transfers. Going just for one embryo is a huge gamble in mho. I would go for a few just to be on a safe side.

[SKC111 in reply to Nevergu]

Thanks for the reply! I’ve never been pregnant, it’s hard/impossible to predict. I think a few guarantees would be good I’m not sure if the refund is worthwhile, it’s a gamble I guess! Thanks for the reply! X

[CXCYCZ]

when I did DE (double donor) I did not use a guarantee programme. The thought never crossed my mind. Maybe it was not a thing pre COVID which is when I registered with the clinic and locked in my prices.

I ended up with 7 embryos. Trf 4 was the one. 1 bfn, 1 chemical, 1 week 7 miscarriage. Donor was 24. None of mine were tested. The clinic was happy with them and they said they would not have frozen them if they were not good quality.

Personally I feel that guarentee programmes are bumping up prices and pray on the vulnerable. My Double donor treatment in Spain cost around £6k with another £1.2k re fets. I suppose with that cost, if I had needed to try again, it wasn’t prohibitive. I don’t know what it would cost now though.

Like most things re IVF for me, I went in a little bit blind and trusted the medical professionals.

I was not aware of guarantee programmes and maybe if I had, I wound have agonised about it and I get it. It’s that thought that if you go with it you won’t need it but if you don’t then you will. As if there is not enough stress and second guessing in IVF to start with.

[SKC111 in reply to CXCYCZ]

Thanks for your reply! Were all 7 from one collection? If I did one collection with 1 guaranteed blast it’s £6k and for the refund it’s £25k. A big difference and I’m already stretched with all my current ivf costs! In your scenario above of all 7 was all from one collection then the one cycle/collection would have done it. You are only guaranteed one but obviously if you get more it’s a bonus. Thanks again x x

[Boo718 in reply to SKC111]

I was about £6000 for my double donor rounds then about £1500 for fets. So pretty much the same. We must have spent between 25/30 grand all together but that was for a number of rounds. We had rounds before donors. A lot of tests. We had cancelled transfers due to embryos not defrosting properly, rounds cancelled for covid. It also included all meds. A testicular biopsy. So for me it would depend what else was included in it xxx

[SKC111 in reply to Boo718]

Thank you! Such an investment of time money and energy! All the best with your remaining embryos x x x

[CXCYCZ in reply to SKC111]

It was 1 collection.

[Doodlebug23 in reply to SKC111]

My guarantee program was only £17k

[andromedae9]

Good morning, we got 3 embroys from our first donor. Only one viable and resulted in a miscarriage. 2nd donor - 3 top quality embryos and only had to transfer one. Wishing you all the best. xx

[SKC111 in reply to andromedae9]

Thanks this is good to know! I think I need to account for a few attempts but maybe not the refund 🙏🏻 congrats to you x

[Clara22]

we only had one DE collection in Spain, which resulted in 6 embryos and got pregnant with my son on the first transfer. There was a guarantee of 2 embryos included in the price we were given. Not sure it was needed. Good luck 🤞 xx

[SKC111 in reply to Clara22]

Thanks so much for sharing & congrats, that’s great! After a long few years I feel like there is hope xxxx

[Zassa]

It's a tough choice but I would recommend 2 and if not too different between 2 and 3, choose 3. The reason for not choosing 1 is because it will often only be a fresh one then and you'll never know if it's good enough to be frozen. Basically, a bad batch of eggs can often still manage a fresh blastocyst but would be difficult to freeze. Therefore, by choosing 2 you need at least one frozen one and I suppose they need a guarantee that the 2nd embryo will survive freezing and thawing.

[SKC111 in reply to Zassa]

Thanks, the eggs will be frozen and transported from another country so it wouldn’t be a fresh transfer. The guarantee is for blasts so I maybe best to do 2 or 3. Thanks again x xx

[Forevertrying2]

We had one donor round with fresh eggs and got 7, out of that 3 made it to blast. First fresh transfer and FET didn’t work but I’ve just got my pregnancy confirmed from our last embryo. So just one round for us. We used a UK clinic x

[SKC111 in reply to Forevertrying2]

Awww congratulations 👏 thanks for sharing! Great to hear! All the best x x x

[Tnthketnf]

We had treatment in Greece. We chose a blastocyst guarantee program with a minimum of 4 blastocysts. One donor retrieval gave us 7 blastocysts out of 10 mature eggs. Our first transfer failed. Our second transfer resulted in our first ever positive test. Currently 16 weeks.

[SKC111 in reply to Tnthketnf]

This is amazing 🫶🏼 so happy for you! This was a lucky collection clearly 🧡 Please can you DM me the clinic you used? All the best X x x

[Doodlebug23]

My program included 3 collections all embryos transferred.

First donor I got 3 blasts. All BFN.

Second I got 7 blasts and took all 7 transferred to get my BFP.

I’d pay for the guaranteed amount as DE for me was not the quick straight to my miracle that I thought it would be x