Just thought I would add my own personal perspective on this one. Not trying to change minds or anything - just my 2c worth.
I have been pg three times with twins. twice was with IUI so no real choice in number of eggs released/fertilised. The third set was from elective 2 x ET - mostly out of fear of losing potential babies if nothing suitable to freeze.
As you can see from my sig - we don't actually have any twins! we m/c all in the first 2 sets (although It appeared 1 twin in each pg lead to the demise of the other). The last pg did lead to the birth of my gorgeous DD but it was a very complicated pg after the loss of her twin and she was born 5 weeks early - albeit very healthy in the end.
I still feel some sadness that some of those babies may well have gone on to be healthy children had they been singletons
All the lists of complications etc etc the IVF clinics scare you with are because they all DO happen.
The stats indicate that the actual overall live birth rate following double ET is not that much higher than with single ET. ie there may be higher chance of getting pg but there is also higher chance of losing one or both along the way.
I have no fear of actually giving birth to or parenting twins (would actually have loved to complete our family with twins last pg) but I am terrified of the extra risks and potential to lose babies which may well have survived had they been in utero on their own.
I totally get the desperate need to be pg ASAP and the practicalities of $$ (every extra cycle does put a strain on the wallet) but I have now learned to be a bit more patient and try to have faith that those embies that freeze will still have the same chance at success.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts Meredith. We are quietly freaking out about the decision, it is not set in stone yet, and the closer we get... the less in control we feel... so the more likely we are to give up, lose all control and just go with 1 and be happy to "give every embie a go" if we have frosties. It's hard for me to balance all the competing ideas, but I never want to risk the health of my children (if we conceived twins) because I was too selfish to go through two single FET's and have potentially two pregnancies. If you know what I mean? I'm not calling everyone selfish but I feel that part of my motivation is selfish in nature, wanting to dictate that we have one more child and one more pregnancy and then that's it. No offense to anyone who implanted two, we all have our own reasons and I'm not implying anything about anybody but myself .
Our FC asked whether we intended to transfer more than one embie. After confirming that we would only want to transfer one at a time we were told "good", it's our preferred policy to only transfer one! The nurse then posed the question - what if both embies were successful and both embies split: would you want to have four babies at once?!
We had 2x 3 day embies put back we weren't afraid of twinies or more either and that TF resulted in our DD. So just because you put 2 back doesn't always mean that twinies will take.
We chose to put 2 back because of the success rate. It's not much more than TF'ing 1 but a % is still a % and the more % we have the better I thought.
We will be cycling in Dec (if AF arrives before the 5th Dec) and we are putting 2 frosties back again.
Best of luck with it Porsche. FX you get a great outcome.
My thoughts are still up in the air. We had to do ICSI rather than IVF, and ICSI has a 5.9-8.9% chance of monozygotic twinning. Transferring 2 blasties from ICSI in someone under 35 is about as risky as it gets.
We are hoping to transfer the best blastie, and then perhaps if there is a blast they think is low quality and wouldn't survive the freeze/thaw, putting that one back in as well.
I don't want to freak anyone out unnecessarily, but I found an article of a 37 year old woman who had two ICSI blasties put back in and had QUINS on her first scan (one egg split into triplets, one egg split into twins). And she selectively reduced a triplet and all three trips were lost . It is very very rare though.
FX
Registered User
. It is very very rare though.
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