just miscarried - what's next?

[lroberts]

hi everyone,

i need some advice.

i just miscarried at 8 weeks (after seeing the hearbeat the week before). it was our first ivf attempt, and we were so excited that it worked but devastated to lose the baby.

my husband's job is moving us overseas next summer, to a developing country where ivf won't be available, so we're really hoping this works before we go. in addition, i'm a high risk pregnancy for several reasons, so we really wanted to deliver before we left so i could be seen by a top-quality high-risk obgyn. in other words, time is of the essence.

we only had 1 embryo frozen last time (i was hoping for/expecting more!). the clear next step is having it transfered. but here's my dilemma:

1. if it doesn't survive thawing, we're behind another month, and we're really running out of time (october xfer means july baby - we're leaving in august!). if we do a fresh cycle, we have a much better chance at transferring a healthy embryo.

2. having frozen embryos was a HUGE comfort for me, knowing that we won't be able to do ivf while we're overseas and really wanting to have a 2nd child. i was so excited to think that we could come home for a few weeks, transfer an embryo, and have another baby! i know it's not that simple, but if we use our only frozen embryo, it won't be an option at all.

3. we're doing the shared risk program at our clinic. my doctor said the policy is using the frozen before doing another fresh cycle, but if we felt strongly, she'd consider 'taking it to the committee to get an exception.'

i really need to make my decision - should we give the frozen embryo a shot and not worry about baby #2, or should i fight to do a fresh cycle?

thanks so much for any advice you can give!

[angelaezra]

lroberts - First, I want to tell you how sorry I am for your loss. I truly understand the devastating feeling of loosing children as you can see by my signature.

To answer your question, the decision is ultimately up to you and your DH but I would do a fresh cycle if I were in your position because I was in a similar situation (not moving overseas) but time was of the essence for us too. I had my first fresh cycle and transfer in 2008 and I received a BFP with twins. I lost one twin at 6 ½ weeks but the remaining twin (Ashley) started progressing fine until we went for our 20 week u/s and found out she didn’t have a heart beat so I delivered her a few days later. We tried a frozen transfer about four months after we lost her but it didn’t work, so we took about 6 months off. I quickly realized that I would be turning 35 this year and I am extremely high risk also so I didn’t want to add the age factor in regarding the age of my embryos that were being transferred, even though we already had 4 frozen embryos left but decided to do a fresh cycle instead. I knew my odds of getting pregnant were better with a fresh cycle and if I didn’t do the fresh cycle now I could possibly risk having to do it later. As you can see it all worked out for us because I am currently 26 weeks pregnant. My RE opted to only transfer 1 embryo because of my past history but did work. If you decide to do another fresh cycle you will at least have some frozen embryos as a backup plan. I wish you good luck and pray everything works out for you and your DH.

Angela