Need advice on PGD! To do or not to do? Any advice would be appreciated..

[blossom73]

Hi I have been diagnosed with mosaic turner syndrome which is a genetic condition that affects my egg quality and fertility. I have just had a m/c at 5 1/2 weeks after a stim cycle
We are now about to start on the pill in a couple of weeks for a Oestrogen Priming cycle and i have spoken to my FS about doing PGD this cycle as well.
As my egg quality is not great and i am a poor responder i dont get a good number of embryos.
We only had 2 embryos survive from 4 collected last time. My FS doesnt think the risk of PGD is worth it as we dont get enough embryos to play with.
I have no idea what to do as i understand what he is saying but i am also concerned that i could keep m/c due to my syndrome that i was diagnosed with and i am a little concerned that i could pass on the gene on to my baby if it is a girl....
He said the chance of them surviving after PGD is slimmer and with my egg quality not great he doesnt seem to think that this is a good option..
He said that we should spend the extra couple of thousand dollars for another cycle if it doesnt work??
Anyone else been thru PGD i'd love to hear your stories and thoughts.
Thanks

[ferrals5]

Hi Blossom73,
To be totally honest with you if i had known back when i had done my PGD the chance of having embryos actually make it to testing was not real good i would have continued to try to fall pregnant naturally my DH and i lost our daughter to a genetic condition and we were told we have a 1 in 4 chance of each pregnancy being affected so we waited 8 months for testing to be completed before we could start our cycle in the mean time we used contreception because we asumed they would get eggs and fetilise them and test them at day 5 then put a healthy one back they did not tell us that most embryo's don't make it to day 5 and the embryos that do need to be at least a grade 1 or 2 to be tested any lower grade is not good enough and then the embryos might not survive the testing and if they do they might not get conclusive results so out of our 8 eggs 8 fertilised and only 1 was a good enough grade to test the others were ok for normal IVF but not the PGD test so our one embryo was effected.
If i had know that the chances were that low and the grade of the embryo's was an issue i would have seriously reconsidered doing PGD.
I feel i wasted 8 months for something that has very slim chances and i believe my chances of falling pregnant with a healthy baby are better than embryos making it through such tough requirements to be tested i have read many women's embryos have inconclusive results that to me is just not acceptable for such a huge amount of money and such slim chances.
But i will say that for chromosonal disorders it seems to be a little better and i have seen success in a few ladies.
It is a hard decision to make and if i had the money to do another PGD cycle i would seriously consider if it was worth it because you need a lot of eggs to have a chance for a few to be a grade 1 or 2 to be tested and if you don't make many eggs your chances are reduced i am usually full of follicles and they only try for 8-10 eggs at a time so it doesn't give you a lot to start with when over half usually don't make day 5.
Read up as much as you can on PGD i found the negative results outweighed the positive ones i don't want to be a downer on PGD it is great what they can do i just wished they had been more up front with me on the testing part i didnt know they don't test all the embryos you have until after i had my EPU and by then it was to late and some people say it only takes one but what is the chance of you having a day 5 blastie at grade 1 or 2 to be tested if it is good then go for it if the chance is slim i would save your money.

[sevie]

Hi Blossom,
It's impossible to 'think' in your shoes but I'll tell you what my sis and I did. I've only ever collected 1 or 2 eggs per go so PGD was never recommended (also I don't have a history of recurrent miscariage...more because my DH's sperms really quite dodgy), but the only pregnancy I've had resulted in a 12wk m/c, we had her tested and she had Trisomy 18. My sis has had PGD done on her last few cycles and all were bad and were discarded. And despite being devastating, both of us have thought it was better to have taken the risk of embryo loss, compared to the loss once pregnant. It also provides clearer answers toguide future decisions.
But all the same, it's such a person decision, so good luck with it all, I hope success is soon.

[Sara69]

Hi Blossom,

I think I agree with Sevie, I've done five cycles, two of them cancelled, one cycle that didn't porduce any embryos that could be tested and two cycles with one embryo each for testing, one of them was unaffected and transferred but didn't take. My feeling was it is a numbers game and we are losing it so in the ende I decide last year to look for an egg donor, within three months I found a lovely lady who agreed to donate to us and I am now pregnant - it is very early days but I don't think we would have gotten there on our own.

Wishing you good luck with your journey,

Sara

[Foxy77]

Hi Blossom,
It's such a hard call. It's a money+chance of finding a "normal" embryo in a small number of embryos vs. uncertainty/chance of miscarriage/inherited disorder.
I've just had my first cycle of PGD for recurrent miscarriage/failed IVF cycles and am requiring huge doses of Purgeon (600 units daily) and only got 10 eggs so I guess you could call me a poor responder. Of four embryos, all were chromosomally abnormal. Today (the day after the result) I'm so relieved we did PGD despite the costs - I won't have a pointless 2ww or another emotionally draining biochemical pregnancy.
If you're only getting one or two embyos though, it might make more sense just to put them back and hope for the best - unless you want to pay a lot of money to know for sure either way. If we'd had only 1-2 embryos, I would have just put them back without testing them. But it's such a personal decision.
Also Melbourne IVF does PGD on Day 3, so there's more chance of an individual embryo being tested than what it sounds like in Sydney, where you have to wait for a good quality blast... then again, maybe testing them earlier is pointless, when they were going to be abnormal anyway. I'm not sure if I'm making sense, except to say that there is no right or wrong answer. Sounds like your FS is trying to save you money. I guess it depends on how you and your hubby feel about it, but there's no easy answer. Come and join us or have a browse on the PGD forum if you want.