What are you going to do with your extra embryos?

Question

Question for those who may have completed their families and have frozen embryos leftover. 
We just completed our second retrieval, so nowhere near even having a successful pregnancy or even needing to worry over this, but my crazy overthinking self is already starting to stress about it. 🤔
Our first cycle resulted in only 1 embryo so obviously we had to do a whole new cycle. This cycle we had 24 retrieved, 12 mature, 11 fertilized with ICSI and 10 blasts frozen. We got a cryo report yesterday and some pics. We are in disbelief that 10/11 made it, especially with how our first cycle went. We were told to expect 50% so we were hoping for 3-5 and we would’ve been ecstatic. 
8 of them are all AAs and AB’s. 2 of them seem to be lower quality (BC and AC). But they told me not to get too hung up on the grades.. And also, we are not PGS testing so I  am realistic that it may take a few tries. My daughter will be 2 in June, and we want 1 more, although not ruling out possibly 2 more but I just turned 33 and my husband his 43 so his age is a factor. Right now I’m just focused on our next transfer and hopefully having success and a live birth. IF we decide we are content and happy after that point, I do not know what we would do. The only thing I can think of is leave them frozen. We absolutely do not agree with destroying. As much as I would love to help a family and give our embryos a chance at life, I just do not think I can donate. Not knowing their quality of life is something I can’t handle. I guess I’m just looking for others perspective and opinions. This is a dilemma I really didn’t think we would have. And again I know I’m way way ahead of myself here. Thank you 🙂

Answer

We decided to donate ours in the event we have extras. We were not given the option to donate to science, so our only options were to destroy them or donate them. After struggling with fertility and knowing that pain, we decided that if we could potentially help another woman/couple have a family then that's what we would do. It is scary to think about my biological children being out there, but I can't justify destroying them. To me is feels selfish. - And I'm not saying it is - no judgements because it is not an easy decision either way - that's just how I would feel on a personal level

Answer

We opted to donate ours to laboratory science when we’re done. Should we divorce, they get destroyed. Should one of us die, the other gets to choose what to do with them/if they would like to use them. If the lab doesn’t need them, they’ll be destroyed. I could not deal with another family raising my genetic child for multiple reasons (including not knowing they were in a good home and being hunted down by that child in later life/having it effect the children I raised). I’m all for science, though, and hopefully my embryos can be used in a study one day or something. I have over 20 still frozen above a C grade, and there’s probably not much of a chance we’ll come close to using the majority of them.

Answer

We are the very thankful recipients of embryo adoption/donation! We struggled with infertility for years, and embryo adoption is how we got our first ever positive pregnancy test and how we will become parents this year! It’s an amazing thing. There is a group on FB for donors and recipients called Embryo Adoption/Donation support. They’re AMAZING, and answer all of your questions about the process. Thank you for even considering donation/adoption ❤️❄️

Answer

We never thought we would have to make that decision either. And it has been our biggest decision I feel as a couple. At first we did not agree. I was like you I couldn’t imagine destroying them and neither of us could not imagine not knowing what happened to them. I think it’s a very hard choice and every couple has to do what’s best for them for us it was give them all a chance with us. We put in 2 fresh and froze 5. Both fresh took and we had boy girl twins! 1 didn’t make it to freeze. So 2 yrs after our twins were born we put 2 more in both took but one was blyted and we had a little boy! When he was a year old we put the other 2 in and one took and we have a 5 month baby girl! We are 36. We were 29 when we started the ivf journey after 6 yrs of ttc with no known factors.

Answer

My first cycle also resulted in just one embryo and we got pregnant with it. But if we had more we would have donated for scientific research.

Answer

We had 3 frozen, 1 of those is my 20 month old, I’m 20w3d pregnant with a second and the third is still frozen.  We are both 31, will be 32 when baby is born.  We think our family might be complete after this baby.  We have decided to keep the embryo frozen until we are 40.  If at that point our family is truly complete we will see if we can donate the embryo to science.  If we can’t donate at that time we may continue to freeze until we can donate to science.  We also struggle with someone adopting our embryo, or us choosing to destroy it.  Our last thought is possibly transferring it at a time in my cycle where it’s unlikely it’ll implant, but we aren’t too sure.  Unfortunately it’s 1k a year to store, so it gets a bit pricey, but for us it’s currently worth it.  Best of luck.

Answer

You may never face this. A possible scenario is needing to use all 10 embryos to get to 1 baby. 
We have 10 frozen embryos. The 5 from our second batch (1st we lost all of them) were "rescue frozen". They were likely to stop growing so they froze them day 4. We do not plan to transfer them so when the renewal letter comes in, we plan to destroy them or if my clinic allows it, donate to science. 
The other 5 I have are 3 day 6 blasts and 2 day 3s. We can afford to do 1 fet. So we will transfer 2 of the blasts. If it doesnt work, I do plan on storing these until we can afford to do another transfer. After that, we will likely destroy or donate to science.

Answer

we got lucky and currently have 16 PGT tested frozen embryos. once we feel our family is complete we will probably go with open embryo adoption for the remaining embryos if that is possible in our state.

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I have never been in y'all's shoes (egg retrieval) but we adopted 2 embryos. I give praise to the unknown couple for donating these embryos. Sad part is we never got to experience the transfer either because we showed up to do it and our embryos didn't survive the thaw process. Glad we did get the chance to try and build our family even though it wasn't successful. Hopefully there will come a day that I can experience motherhood.

What are you going to do with your extra embryos?

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