Anyone donated or 'succumbed' their frozen embryos?

[MummyNaomi]

Not yet, but we have 6 frozen embryos and after this baby is born our family will be complete so will be needing to make our final decision.

At this stage we plan to donate the embryo's to research, rather than to another couple. I feel like they are OUR potential babies, not someone else's so donating to another couple doesn't sit right with me, I would always wonder if a life was created, if they are OK, who they are, etc etc, it would do my head in! Destroying them seems like such a waste when we worked so hard to create them. I like the idea of donating them back to the lab though to help with further improvements in IVF technologies - I then feel like we are doing something to help others affected by infertility (but less directly than actually donating them to another couple of course).

A GF took hers home and buried them in her back yard. This was a decision she was most comfortable with, but it's not one that I would do personally, it feels too 'death' like to me, whereas using them to help improve others chances of conception makes me feel like our decision has more to do with creating life than commemorating a death - Hope that makes sense.

[Maruschke]

We have one frostie.

I can say that I hate the idea of donating the embryo, and then for the child to come back to me later in life and say "hey mum why didn't YOU carry me and raise me?" for which I would have no real answer. That's just me. I would feel like I gave up on my child.

It seems that most people's decisions depend on whether or not they consider the embryo's to be alive or not. Do you?

difficult times, I hope you get an answer you are comfortable with.

[RhiChiChi]

Gosh, what a difficult decision & one we will be faced with soon (we have one frozen embie). I honestly have no idea what we will do. I've briefly considered all options and no one decision sits right for me/us yet. I feel the same as you when thinking about succumbing them and I never thought I'd have an issue b/c we only wanted one more child. Can you access counselling to help with your decision?