Comprehensive Chromosome Screening

Discussion forum for those particularly interested in IVF and embryo transfer including frozen embryo transfer.
bdantonio
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Post by bdantonio »

three everytime i never had more then 3... the most i ever had retreived was 7..
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Liam'sMommy
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Post by Liam'sMommy »

Wishing, i think you are confused. It takes several weeks to get the results. So your biopsy will be done on day 3 or day 5. SIRM is where this started. They do day 3 biopsies then wait to see what embryos are still good quality on day 6 and they only freeze those embryos. CCRM was the next place to do it and the only difference is they prefer day 5 biopsies. Other than that they do everything else the same. Once results come back you will schedule the FET. You can't really schedule the time for the FET in advance. The labs can have a really fast turn around or production can be very delayed. I have seen women get their results in under a month and other over 3 months later.

ON IMPORTANT THING TO REMEMBER, IF YOUR CLINIC IS NOT VITRIFYING THE EMBRYOS YOU WILL MOST LIKELY LOOSE 20% OR MORE OF THEM DURING THE THAW.

41, you will not be facing selective reduction. Due to your age, the vast majority off your eggs are bad. You will get pregnant with twins at most and that is even very unlikely. Now if you did a donor egg cycle with a year old's eggs that would be a different story completely.

I can't remember the exact questions but they were regarding what is the benefit of this testing. First, the clinics doing it require that the embryos are still good on day 6 for freezing. That right there weeds out most bad embryos. Those embryos that didn't make it to that stage would not make a baby to begin with. You only allowed to transfer embryos that have the correct number of chromosomes. That is the deal. The docs will not transfer those that come back abnormal.

I think Lynnie already addressed the issue as to how this is different than a elective abortion post CVS or Amnio. You can't equate not transferring an abnormal blast with aborting a fetus that you have had growing inside you for several months. You have already seen its figers, toes, heartbeat, felt it move.........big difference.

Another issue is time. If you are an AMA patient such as Lynnie and myself you don't have time to monkey around. I was last pregnant with injections/iui on my third iui the month i turned 42. It ended in a missed m/c. So by the time it was all said and done i had lost 5-6 months of trying to conceive. That was time i don't have. So now i am doing (to start with) three CGH/banking cycles. The fastest i can cycle is every other month. Due to my age i have only a 50/50 shot of having 1 normal embryo per retrieval. It will be a miracle if i come up with 2 normals in 3 retrieval. I really want to cycle until i have banked 3 normals before i start transferring. As we age our eggs are aging in dog years unlike the rest of us. I am trying to collect some good eggs while i still have some left. If i did a fresh cycle i might get pregnant again with an abnormal egg and end up m/c or worse which would eat up possibly all the time i have left before all my eggs are crap.

I know i am just writing as i am thinking and this is too long to edit so i hope i am making sense. :oops: I am not sure if i addressed everything so let me know if i didn't. Also, let me know if i still need to clarify anything.
Kelly 42
DH 50
DS 11/03/06
wishing4baby
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Location: Southern CA

Post by wishing4baby »

I don't think I was clear in my post. My RE is going to be freezing all embryos at fertilization. He will not be allowing them to go to Day 3. This is because it will be a few weeks before the cells can actually be sent out to be tested. Once the clinic is ready to do the CGH testing, they will unfreeze my just fertilized embryos and let them go to day 3. I didn't realize they let them continue to day 5 before they refreeze, but that makes more sense.

Liam'sMommy - I am new to this testing. Can you explain VITRIFYING THE EMBRYOS? Any other information you have would really be appreciated.

As for the ethical issue of it all, it does bother me a little. But I do agree that terminating a pregnancy of a baby that is growing and progressing inside of you is something different. After being through 3 early miscarriages (very hard), I think this is what I need to do to find out of my eggs are the real problem.
ME-29 (stage IV endometriosis; maybe poor egg quality) DH-28 (perfect)
IVF#1 & 2 - BFN
3 FETs - all chemicals
IVF#3 - 31 frozen day 1 embies
FET - 6/12/09- BFP
Beta #1-522 Beta #2 -1899 u/s shows twins!
3 blast frosties & 16 day 1 frosties
41andscaredsilly
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Post by 41andscaredsilly »

Liam's Mommy: Thank you for your response.

I can't shake the being nervous about every last detail.

At my first ultrasound, the doctor said I had "over-achievers" for ovaries because at that time under no medication, he found a lot of follicles. He started clomid in september, and for lack of a better way of saying it, clomid just turned my body inside out. By December, he took me off it and in Jan we started again.

I dont know what an AMA patient is -- i thought AMA stood for American Medical Association. But I do understand the "don't have time to monkey around" concept very clearly. At that first ultrasound, I thought I had time. I thought when they retrieved eighteen eggs I would be fine. When only half fertilized, I still tried to be positive. Then less than half of those made it to day five. The Doctor said my attrition rate was "high" and then that none of those four would likely be viable. So I do understand how crappy the eggs are at my age.

I still disagree that there's any difference with the chromosonal testing and the amnio -- the results are the same -- you stop either from be born. But that's more a moral issue than a medical issue.

Thank you for reiterating my doctors words about "even with four transferred, the most you'll end up with is twins: and even that is highly unlikely." I am at least thankful that selective reduction wont be something that I have to deal with, also.

I felt like I was pregnant up until yesterday. I just think something happened inside my body yesterday, although I have no idea what. I just don't feel like I did the days before.
Liam'sMommy
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Post by Liam'sMommy »

41, try not to worry about that the signs you were having are gone. Those were most likely due to all of the hormones that were released from multiple mature follies post ER. Real pregnancy signs will come a little later.


Wishing, vitrification is a newer freezing technique. It is fast freezing. The old slow freezing caused ice formation in the embryos. Almost all embryos are viable after thaw if vitrified but you can expect to lose 25% if they are slowly frozen. This comes from Dr. Silber's site. It just explains it. Although the technology has been around for away must clinics still don't do it. You do not want to take a chance that any of your precious few CGH normal embryos are killed by the freezing technique. At least i wouldn't.

This new technique of freezing called “vitrification” avoids the damage caused by ice forming inside the cell by not trying to pull every last molecule of water out, because it is impossible to do this 100%. In fact, 70% of the cell is water, and at best you can reduce that to 30%. So with the conventional controlled rate slow-freezing technique, there is always going to be some intra-cellular ice crystal formation, causing some damage to embryos, and severely damaging most eggs. Vitrification uses a super high concentration of antifreeze (DMSO and ethylene glycol), and drops the temperature so rapidly that the water inside the cell never becomes ice. It just instantaneously super-cools into a solid with no ice crystal formation at all.

We can now freeze and thaw, and even refreeze and rethaw, with impunity, using this new protocol from Dr. Masashige Kuwayama from the Kato Clinic in Tokyo. With conventional “slow freezing,” the temperature of the embryo goes down at precisely 0.3°C per minute. With vitrification (using four times the concentration of antifreeze, or cryoprotectant), the temperature is dropped at 23,000 degrees C° per minute, that is 70,000 times faster. At that speed of cooling, and at that concentration of antifreeze, ice crystals simply cannot form.

HTH, Kelly
Kelly 42
DH 50
DS 11/03/06
dcu917
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Post by dcu917 »

Hi everyone,

Have been reading this post today as I am considering CGH for my next and final cycle. I am waiting to miscarry as I had my US at 6w5d and they saw a gest. sac only, and maybe a fetal pole. I have to go for a repeat US in a week, but this doesn't look good. I had done ZIFT with 2 one day embryos at CCRM. So, with this and my chemicals, I think there is either a chromosomal problem or an immune problem. I have been checked for recurrant miscarriage after my two chemicals, but have not been tested for the immune disorders. I am considering CGH, but I only have one ovary and don't make a lot of eggs (between 4-7 in previous cycles - 5 at CCRM). I have some questions as I try to determine if it is worth it at all.

With the low number of eggs I make from my one ovary, I'd likely have to bank cycles. I read someone on here say they were banking until they got 3 normals. In my case, I'd probably only transfer 1 or 2 normals since I have a small uterus and twins would be bad. However, with the cycles I've completed, I transferred 7 embryos so far and have only gotten chemicals and this one likely mc. What are the chances that I will have any normals? My FSH and AMH are good. Has anyone cycled a lot and thought of this? There are some that I didn't transfer that didn't "look good" enough to make it to freeze and I had one that was frozen but didn't survive the thaw.

Did anyone hear that with cryopreservation freezing they do not know the long term affects on the baby since they haven't been doing it that long? They warned me about this at CCRM. This made me concerned.

Lynniecat - I am hoping that everything works out great for this baby!!!....I've been following your story through different threads. I read on this thread about your feelings on doing CGH. Your hindsight is good to know. Thanks for sharing.

This post is a little bit wishy washy....probably because of my emotional state right now. I'm just trying to figure out my final step before we move on to adoption, etc. I plan to get the immune testing done, but that is controversial. I will wait to talk to my RE at CCRM when this one is finished and then go from there. I know what he is going to say already, but I'm hoping for that miracle!!!
Me - 39 (one ovary) DH - 40 (OK)
IVF #1 7/07 - tx 1-3day BFP, chem
IVF #2 11/07- tx 1-3day BFP, chem
IVF #3 1/08 - tx 1-3day BFN
IVF #4 3/08 - tx 2-3day BFN
IVF #5 1/09 - CCRM tx 2 via ZIFT, BFP but M/C at 10 wks - chrom problem
bdantonio
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Post by bdantonio »

dcu dont give up.... My first dd they told me i was not gonna carry her they didnt see her progressing right. My levels were not doubling they told me to prepare myself for a loss, and that if i did carry she might not be normal. Then they saw her a week later, then at 10 weeks they said she had downs. Again at 18 and 20 weeks. However she is now 4yrs old and has NOTHING WRONG she is normal and etremely smart so have faith and dont give up
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NY4thtry
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Post by NY4thtry »

i met with a very interesting RE yesterday Dr Richard Scott of RMA in NJ..

He says that for CGH to really be accurate should be done on day 5 as embryos that ay not be good on day 3 can self correct by day 5 and that you cant afford to throw out an embryo that could make a baby..

I was going to do CGH next cycle but apparently SIRM only does day 3..

this is something to really think about
Me 43 dh 65
6 cycles 3 chemicals
13+ banking cycles. 2 failed transfers to Surro
12/9 transfer 2 hatching blasts to surro beta 12/ 15
Liam'sMommy
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Post by Liam'sMommy »

NY, the SIRM REs think just the opposite. If you guys follow this link and read all the announcements in the top section you will learn a lot about vitrifying embryos and CHG. If you are still unclear you can register to post and ask the Drs. about it.

http://forums.haveababy.com/index.php?showforum=3

I am trying to bank 3 normals before doing any FET. I don't have time to do it any other way. I will only transfer one at a time. I do not want twins and i do not want to risk loosing more than one in a cycle if my body does something funky causing a m/c. That is the great thing about CGH, if you transfer 1 normal embryo you will most likely have a baby from it unless you have some underlying immune issue or something that is causing your m/c.

Follow this link and you will find a spread sheet following a bunch of the recent CCRM CGH cyclers. Go to JJENNY's post on 2/12 for the most recent chart. You will be blown away.

http://www.ivfconnections.net/board/sho ... ge=2&pp=25

HTH Kelly
Kelly 42
DH 50
DS 11/03/06
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