Ghost, question?

[Kacie]

We had 5 embryos reach blastocyst and had PGD testing done on all of them. They confirmed one embryo was abnormal (my husband has a balanced translocation) but the other 4 they received "no signal". My RE told us that once they did the biopsy on those 4 "no signal", they stopped growing and became degenerative. She told me this was rare and could not explain what happened. Could you offer any explanation for this? We had to cancel the rest of the cycle because we had nothing to transfer. We are now opting to try on our own...i have had 3 previous miscarriages, no children. Its like rolling a dice we were told a 33% chance of a normal pregnancy.

[Ghost]

We had 5 embryos reach blastocyst and had PGD testing done on all of them. They confirmed one embryo was abnormal (my husband has a balanced translocation) but the other 4 they received "no signal". My RE told us that once they did the biopsy on those 4 "no signal", they stopped growing and became degenerative. She told me this was rare and could not explain what happened. Could you offer any explanation for this? We had to cancel the rest of the cycle because we had nothing to transfer. We are now opting to try on our own...i have had 3 previous miscarriages, no children. Its like rolling a dice we were told a 33% chance of a normal pregnancy.

We can only guess at the underlying causes of embryo developmental behaviors. Your doctor is correct, that it's rare for all the embryos to arrest after the biopsy, and it's probably not the fault of the biopsy procedure itself. My guess is the embryos were genetically nonviable. Embryonic DNA kicks in on day 3, the same time most biopsies are performed. Embryonic arrest after day 3 usually reflects genetic flaws in the arrested embryos.

As you know, you can expect many miscarriages with a translocation in one parent, and without genetic testing on the embryos.

An option you might consider in the future, an expensive option, is to bank embryos in multiple cycles, by having them frozen earlier than the day 3 stage. Once you get "enough" (20 or so?), then you can have them thawed, grown out, biopsied, and then transfer the good ones. You'd need to pay for multiple retrievals, but only one PGD (not sure about your clinic, but my clinic has one fee for PGD regardless how many embryos are tested).

I assume you have ruled out donor sperm?

[Kacie]

Thank you for the response. If all 5 were genetically abnornal, then we have a long road ahead of us.

[mrsEshaw]

Kacie,

I have a BT trans too. We have a son, and he is unbalanced (which is how we learned of my BT). It's totally a numbers game trying to find the golden balanced embryo. it took us 3 retrievals and 20 biopsied embryos. Unfortunately that embryo didn't stick! We are going to try again.