Fresh vs Frozen?

Just like the additional health benefits that you get from fresh vs. frozen foods, there may be some benefits to transferring fresh vs. frozen embryos.  At this point the argument hasn't been definitively proven either way.

It used to be that many IVF clinics reported up to 10% better pregnancy rates using fresh vs. frozen embryos.  But, a lot of that had to do with the method used for freezing embryos - slow-freezing vs. vitrification used now.   The faster freezing method that decreases the chances of the embryos developing ice crystals and is now more often used by many IVF centers.

Also important to note is that the frozen success rate is not only influenced by the method of freezing but also by the quality of the embryos frozen.  Generally, the best two embryos are transferred at the time of fresh transfer and the “second best” embryos are frozen.  Some IVF centers freeze all the remaining embryos while others will only freeze the remaining embryos of good quality.  The better the quality of the embryos at the time of freezing, the better the freeze-thaw success.

We had assumed that we would just send over our frozen embryos and that would be that.  But, we quickly find out that we could actually do another IVF cycle in India for the same price that it would be to ship our frozen embryos (Shipping frozen embryos is actually kind of expensive - around $3,500).  Also, we have to travel to India for the transfer regardless of whether using fresh or frozen embryos (the travel time just increases to also do the IVF cycle).

Hmmmm......we only have 4 frozen embryos which is realistically only 1 try.  If we go through another round of IVF we could have 2 maybe even 3 tries.  Plus, the cost for us is about the same.  I know I said before that I did NOT want to do another IVF cycle but I think that I should reconsider that decision.