There must be a thread around here somewhere on this but I can't find one.
What made you choose between 1 and 2 embies to be t/f?
Hubby is a little concerned about the chance of twins when t/f two blasties in someone under 30 and without a previous IVF failure to implant (we had failure to fert ).
He is relaxing and suggesting he'd rather 2 single pregnancies than 1 twin pregnancy (he desperately only wants one more child, but he knows we are playing the odds).
So how did you choose?
If you were me would you go 1 blastie or 2? FS has given us permission to t/f 2.
I read somewhere that the twinning rate for double blasties in someone my age is close to 60%???
We had no choice at age 21, it was 1 ONLY ever. Our clinic believe that they have better success when only tranferring the one embie On numerous occassions it was mentioned that 2 embies have the potential to be not only twins but quads
Not much help but a bit of food for thought. Crossing everything for you, hun
we personally did 2 to increase our chances. i'm not scared of twins, i would actually love to have twins, cause then it would mean we wouldnt have had to go back and do it all over again so soon. if we had twins i wouldn't be nagging dh to try for our next one for a few years, but with a singleton, i can see me keen to go back only after 1 year (2 max). the clinic were all more than happy to put 2 in, except after wards they looked terrified the words "oh my.. what have we done?" were thrown around a bit with pure fear on their face. (i'm 27 btw).
but only one stuck. if it was meant to be 2 it would have. but i feel it just doubled our chance of getting 1
I just kept re-reading the potential problems with twins.
Then it came down to discussing with the FS. Maternal age, quality of embryo, fresh vs frozen (not an issue for you), reason for infertility etc all play a part. It's an issue that's very individual.
I had two put back once. The FS basically said hey, there are two here and i think you should go with two today. So we did.
It was taken out of our hands b/c our FS will only t'fer one. But having said that I'd only t'fer one b/c I don't want multiples and we only want one more child to add to our family anyway.
We only given the option of transferring one unless we had multiple failed cycles. We would have only ever transferred one anyway though because my DH would have died at the thought of twins. As it stands the FS told me that for some reason even single embryo transfers in IVF have a higher rate of being twins than naturally. Not sure why though.
We only had two left make it to transfer stage, and only one of those was looking reasonably 'good' to go. The FS recommended putting both back, so we did. We got twins!
Of course FS also is told me that the overall success rate goes down from 80% to 50% if someone elects to do a SET. Which kind of makes sense: assume 100 women, 20 don't get pregnant, 80 do get pregnant, and of that 80, about 26 have twin pregnancies.
If you do eSET with those same 100 women, 26 would become pregnant with one embryo no matter what (they were the twin group), 20 would be BFN no matter what (they are the group that didn't get pregnant with two embryos). The remaining 54 who had singleton pregnancies with the double transfer - with a single transfer, assume only half of them would get pregnant with a single transfer (because they transferred the 'best' two embryos which may have been indistinguishable). So 26+26 = 52% pregnant with eSET.
So... one way to think of it is
DET 80% pregnancy and 26% chance twins
SET 50% pregnancy and almost zero chance of twins (I don't know the stat, but in some ways I didn't worry, because we have no way of controlling if an embryo splits)
So my approach is to assume that I may have had to do a few FETs with embryos before I have success if I chose to transfer one - which is why you should pick a place that has really solid FET success as well.
Due to to my age and the number of embryo's we had my fs was always happy to transfer 2 at a time - of 5 FET's where we had 2 transferred we ended up with
1st FET - BFN
2nd FET - suspected ectopic and subsequent miscarriage
3rd FET - DD now 2
4th FET - BFN
5th FET - my beautiful twin boys who are now 6 mths old
So out of 10 embryo's transferred we ended up with 3 kids so it is always a bit of a gamble as none, 1 or both can work (as in my case). I look at the twins now and think that I am so lucky to have them both in our lives as our ideal was to only have 2 children so one of my precious boys wouldn't be here if we only had 1 transferred at a time.
A friend of mine also told me "if you are meant to have twins then you will have twins" and saying that there is always the chance of having identicals when only transferring 1, that is what happened to the IVF nurse at my clinic.
Hi Had a similar conversation yesterday. FS recommended 2 to increase chances of one working. DH wd love twins, thought not so great for me! Guess when it comes down to it, it is about the chances of success and if you could live with twins. In the end, I have left it to the FS's judgement as to what will give us the best options.
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?!
Registered User
1 or 2?
).
On numerous occassions it was mentioned that 2 embies have the potential to be not only twins but quads
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks