Hi
I don't really know where to post this without offending people or upsetting people but just wondered if anyone had any ideas/opinions?
We were diagnosed with unexplained infertility in 2007, had 3 unsuccessful IUI's that then qualified us for government funded IVF. We had DD1 in 2009 (she was a frozen embryo) and had one more left in the freezer. We had DD2 in 2011 (amazing natural fluke) and now i am thinking after having been through PND and finally getting back into a good routine with DD1 and DD2, maybe i am done.
I always figured i would use the frozen embryo (frozen freddie) one day but the more i think about it the more i don't know that i will.
So what to do with Frozen freddie.....
i could destroy (although don't know that i could cos i can see it's twin (DD1) running around talking and singing all day long and potentially that's what i am destroying)
I could donate it but am worried that in 16 years time someone will turn up on my doorstep and question why i kept their sisters but not them.
I could use it and hope it doesn't work (but that sounds awful)...what if it did work....would i resent it? Or once it was born would i just take it in my stride and never regret it for a minute.
I know this is a personal decision i have to make but just wanted to know if anyone else had been stuck in this conundrum?

TIA

I didnt wanna read & run,

We wondered all this pre-IVF but didnt need to follow through as didnt have any frostys,
Im not sure what we wouldve decided on My hubby was quite firm he didnt want any children out in the world that he didnt see grow up, I was quite firm I didnt want to defrost them as like you knew potentially it was a child full of beans & lastly depending if we'd finished our family didnt want to have another child not cause we wanted to but because the embie was there lol,

Big Hugs & im sure whatever you decide will be right for your family

Hi Acid Trip,

I'm not in your situation yet, but it is likely on the horizon. I have a DD from our publicly funded cycle, and had two frosties. At the beginning of last year we had the frosties replaced (one at a time) but neither of them took. We went through a self-paid IVF cycle in June/July last year and now have number 2 on the way. We also have 4 frosties from this last cycle.

Now, I've always kinda wanted 3-4 kids, depending of course on how things go. But what if all the frosties take? Then we'd have six kids! I don't think I could manage that to be honest. But then, me personally, I don't think I can NOT give them all a chance. After all we went through to get them... So much to think about! I'm also not sure I could donate embryos (apologies to anyone who reads that with dismay). I feel I have a responsibility towards them to let them be with their (our) family, if that makes sense. I think a part of me hopes that only one or two actually take.

So, while I don't have to think about it yet, I also don't have any answers. I have no idea what I will do. I think I feel more inclined to donate than destroy though.

Not sure this will help you, but just wanted to let you know you are not alone with these rather surreal thoughts!

Good luck with your decision making.

Out of curiosity - if you were to accidentally get pregnant again the 'old-fashioned way', what would you be inclined to do then? How would you feel about that?

Thanks Caterpillar - your last question 'if you were to accidentally get pregnant again the 'old-fashioned way', what would you be inclined to do then? How would you feel about that?'

I would be over the moon i guess and just go with it. Maybe that's what i should do with my frosty....oh so hard!
Good luck with your pregnancy!

Hi Acid Trip. We had the same thing happen, IVF with DD and a natural suprise with DS. I had 6 frosties though so was never going to use them all. With my personal situation (age and partners age) before DS I was umming and ahhing about having a 2nd child, I might have been able to convince DP to try once more but I was also very happy with just my DD.

We know that 2 kids is all for us and I'm happy about that - feel blessed I have my DS.

In the end we only had 2 options keep in storage and pay the $$ or destroy and deal with humanly which is what we did in the end. I felt this gave me the closure i needed.

There is one other option, it is quite common in the states apparently but i'm not sure what the clinics think of it here. I can't remember what its called, but basically you do a frozen transfer cycle, but instead of replacing around ovulation, you wait another week, so there is no chance of it 'sticking'.

You need to do what works for you, as a donor egg recipient i know how grateful i am, and will do everything possible to ensure DS never feels that he was given up by my donor, but i do understand that embryos are one step further, and also you don't have control over how the recipients will handle it.

Lol, bet you never thought you'd be having this dilemma

Wow Batty i have never heard of that...seems weird to go through having a frozen transfer cycle to replace an embryo when it will have no chance of taking!

Hmmmm still thinking about what we will do - so wish me and DH were in the headspace to donate the embryo but for different reasons neither of us think we could do it.

Seems totally bizarre that 4 years ago we were beside ourselves with the thought we would never have nay children and now we are in such a strange place. Funny how things work out!

The cost for the keeping him frozen comes up for renewal soon so imagine that will spur us to decide one way or another what the next step is for us.

I remember doing a post about this very same thing a few years ago.

After two kids we thought we were done and dusted. Dd2 was a difficult baby and I had undiagnosed PND.
We had 2 left in the freezer and just didn't know what to do.

We were going to destroy them, and I even went so far as to ring the clinic to find out what to do.

But in the end we decided just to leave them there and keep paying the money until I was too old to have a baby any way.

Anyway....fast forward a few years and we decided we did want to have another baby!
So we went ahead and thawed them out. One didn't survive thawing and the other one is now my 15 month old.
So now we have none left and are all done.
It is a nice place to be.

My advice is to wait as you never know what you might feel in a few years.

Good advice suomi, the cost isn't that great compared to having to go through the whole process again. I think if DS hadn't of come along I might of kept the frosties longer.

Hi Acid Trip,

we are in exactly the same position. We had come to the conclusion that we were never going to be lucky enough to have children, so when ivf worked we felt so blessed. We still have one frostie so thought although we were very happy with one child, we would use Frostie and if it worked then great we would have two children. So after last years big surprise natural pregnancy, we find ourselves with the question do we want 3 children.
I don't know why, but if there was more than one frozen I think it would be easier for me to destroy, but when it's just one I feel like I need to use it. I, like you, wish that I could donate Frostie to a couple to help them fulfil their dream too, but because it's already an embryo I feel like it's already mine and DH's child iykwim. So I can't donate, I couldn't destroy it because of the same reason, so our only option is to transfer it and if it works then it was meant to be. Every time the invoice arrives for the storage, we have the Frostie discussion. Who knows, in another years time we may have decided that we are happy with our two children and thats enough.
Good luck to you and your decision. It's a toughie. You'll know whats right for you

Similar position here too. My second IVF miracle is only two weeks old but I am
already thinking about my two frosties.
I am pretty sure I feel very blessed and complete with my two children but don't really feel comfortable with any of the other options. I think for now we will just pay for storage and I just hope that over the next year my family continues to feel complete.
Does anyone know if we are able to donate the embryos to research in
NZ. I feel more comfortable with that option. Scientific research allowed us to have the procedures that helped us create out family so it feels like giving back if that was an option.

Yes Chatabox you can. That is one of the options that we have been given

Hi Acidtrip...

I was interested to read your post as I had just been through the same dilemma that you are in currently.

We were blessed with twins after many failures and they are almost 4 now. I had one frostie on ice and every year when we got the storage bill, we would both kind of look at each other, pay the bill and not talk about it for another year!

DH wasn't keen, he has two, its all he ever wanted. I was never going to destroy it. Before I had children I always thought that I would like to be a donor in some form, but once I had my own, that opinion changed. I am totally in awe of woman that make that decision by the way!

So my only option was the replace it and see what happened. I figured that if I could get pregnant naturally, by mistake, then we would just deal with it, right?

So in October last year we finally replaced out last embryo. I was convinced (and had promised DH) that that was it! No more! At least I had given it the same chance as all the others, which is no less then it deserved.

Much to my surprise, I got an initial BFP, so spent the next week swinging between elation and devastation as DH was not happy about it at all. The next BT showed that my levels had dropped and it wasn't an ongoing pregnancy -

I think what I am trying to say is, before you do anything, try and cover all scenarios. I had thought about what it would be like if it worked / failed, but not what it would be like for it to work THEN fail!

Trust me, it opens a lot of old wounds, and having your DH onside whatever you decide, will be a heck of a lot easier.

I think that the knowledge that there was always one more sitting there was a comfort too, so now there are no more, it feels very final. Good luck with whatever you decide, its never an easy decision!

We are in the same boat, we only have one left but have been told that the chances of it working are good as its a good embie - just like the ones that got us pg with DD and DS.

I just keep paying the storage bill (very similar to TK) - I think one day we will probably destroy/donate to science....

Hi TK - long time no see!!!!

Its a very hard decision. I had thought I'd donate it but I haven't been able to work that through in my head as to me its a brother or sister to DD and DS.

Good luck with your decision.

Wow so interesting reading this thread. It's not a position I ever dreamt we would find ourselves in. But after these boys are born our family will most definetly be complete. For which I feel so very blessed about. I never thought I would get the completed family feeling so know we are very lucky.

However our road to completing our family has been long, difficult and expensive and DH and I are both in agreement that personally for us we couldn't bear to "throw" our 2 blasts away. So we will be looking to donate ours as soon as we are able which I think is when our boys turn 2? If I didn't feel 100% certain that our family was going to be complete I think it would be a much harder decision. We are hoping that we will have a bit of an open adoption type arrangement with whoever receives our embies, so we can from a distance know any child/ren that resulted from using them. Which for me would be easier than wondering for years about how those embies were doing. But I don't know how realistic that idea is. And know that wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea.

It's such a personal decision and one that at the start of your ivf journey you can't envisage happening!!

All the best to all of you making this huge decision.

Cocobean

I think at the start of your journey you view it as much more clinical/scientific. Well I did personally. I remember thinking that they were just cells but once you have had those embryos become your children then the frozens embryos become real. They are potential siblings to the children you have and as my two IVF miracles look alike I can visualize what the embryos might look like if they took.
That's why I think it has become such a harder decision. We will just keep paying the storage for now and hope we come to a decision we are both happy with in the future.

We had to make this decision to, but although I am not void of emotions, I am generally a practical decision maker, so I tried to have the same approach to this decision. We just have one DD, from ICSI IVF born in 2007. We had two frozen embryos. In hindsight if I ever was going to have a second child I should have gone for a transfer within the first year that our DD was born, but once she got to 2 and then 3 and life got easier and easier, my DH and I felt so content and that our family was complete. She is now 4 and a half and our family unit feels perfect to us. We made the decision to destroy the remaining embryos about a year or so ago. Adoption was never a real option to us as I personally couldn't consider having a full sibling to DD being brought up by someone other than us. I have no regrets.

Thanks ladies for all your candid replies. DH and I have talked about it a lot over the last week and both think we are done so will either see if we can take embryo home and plant a tree on it (like we did with the girls placenta) or see what donating it to research would involve. Like many decisions in life it's a hard one and everyone has a different take on it...none of them wrong, just different. I really appreciate being able to talk this through with you all and see what you would/have/might do/done.

A

Interesting i contacted FAW to ask about the donating to science option and they said
'Currently there is no option to donate for research purposes but this may be approved some time in the future. Unfortunately we do not have any indication of the likely timeframe for this. We envisage that couples would have full information and a say in the type of research that their embryos might be used in.'
hmmmmmmm

Wow, an interesting thread. We have this problem too (though on a rather larger scale than some of you - we have seven left!). Both of my pregnancies I've had diabetes, which has been really hard and quite risky. I can't do it a third time, even if I could persuade dh that two children wasn't enough. For a couple of reasons it wouldn't be ethical to donate the embies to anyone else. I can't see us making a decision to destroy them anytime soon though. I would find that incredibly difficult to do, even knowing I can't use them. Ho hum.