I’m expecting day 1 of my next cycle this week. That’s the day I call our clinic to set things in motion for our upcoming FET. The medium for thawing our embryos has been ordered (we were told it could take up to six weeks to arrive!), a calendar will be made up, drugs ordered and sent to our door. Only one question remains: one or two? I thought this was settled during our recent appointment, where our new doctor wrote down in her notes that we’d only transfer two embryos if the first one didn’t look good after the thaw. And yet, the first thing Hubby said to me after that appointment was, “I still think we should transfer two.”
And then my head exploded.
There are so many details, so many factors to consider, including–unfortunately–financial ones. There’s no way to predict how this cycle will turn out, despite our best efforts at control. Hubby wants to maximize our chances, but I’m torn between that and minimizing risk.
So I’m asking you: pros and cons for transferring two hatching blastocysts? All opinions and anecdotal evidence welcome!
Want to participate? Check out Mel’s post to find out how.
Something Out of Nothing 
I say two. Often hear of how only one implanted and the remains of the other seen in a scan. If you have twins… *gulp.* But if I were ever privileged to have two, I would do two.
Twins would be a big concern for me! But I keep thinking of our previous cycle and how only one of four embryos was even viable (and it still didn’t take). These embryos are supposedly better quality, but how they look doesn’t tell us anything about genetics. This is so hard!
One. I love having twins. But the pregnancy was insane. The 52 days in the NICU were insane. Too much risk
Thank you for weighing in! Yes, that’s exactly what I’m worried about with twins, especially since our local hospital does not have the NICU to deal with such issues. I believe the nearest hospital that does is 2 hours away! Oh, and we don’t have a car.
Yea that’s not a good situation at all. You need to be close to a high risk OB or maternal and fetal medicine (obviously a singleton is not a guarantee of no issues, but 50% of twins come BEFORE 35 weeks). I am pregnant with one now and this pregnancy is sooooooo much less physically and emotionally taxing. I can’t even describe how different the situation is being pregnant with one.
I actually see a lot of twins around here. I kind of want to grab their moms and just ask, “How did you do it?!”
Haha some people have great twin pregnancies and carry to term! But I only know one… and I know a lot more who had long NICU stays. That being said, the actual HAVING and RAISING twins part is mostly great, mine just adore each other
I say 2! I have done 3 fresh cycles and transferred 3 blasts each time – first cycle a singleton, second cycle negative, 3rd cycle twins. My twins had no NICU time and that pregnancy was way easier than my singleton one 🙂
Thank you for your input! See, this is why I’m so confused! We transferred 3 embryos from the same cycle as our frozen blasts, and I had a healthy singleton pregnancy. But those were day 3 embryos, so there’s no way to know if they would have even made it to day 5.
Really it come down to, which would be more devastating: a negative or a twin pregnancy?
I say two – only because infertility is SO expensive, and I would hate the idea of all that money for one chance (and I feel like two = two chances). But you’re the only who can make this decision! Good luck – such a tough decision!
Yes, the financial aspect is what makes it such a tough decision! If it weren’t for the money, we’d definitely just do one.
This is coming from me who is terrified of having twins. But I did two with my daughter and we ended up with just her. And when we go back again, I am going to do two as well. But it’s a hard decision. One that doesn’t come lightly.
Thanks so much for sharing your experience! My husband has said for years that he would LOVE to have twins, so when he says he wants to transfer two just to give us a better chance to get pregnant with one, of course I suspect he has ulterior motives!
How many did you transfer with Missy? I ask because it’s something to consider.
My vote is one. We transferred two for each round. And as soon as we figured out I had a clotting issue…. Like Kimberly, I love my twins. But i haven’t spent a night away from these two since they were born. And I’m told I’m not uncommon in the multiples community.
We transferred 3 embryos to get Missy, but they were day 3 embryos, not blastocysts. So that doesn’t give us much useful information to go on. What we do know is that the last time we had blasts and did PGS, only one of the four was genetically normal. That in itself has me leaning slightly more toward transferring two, even though that was a totally different cycle and the embryos were of lower quality than what we have now.
I’ve never spent a night away from Missy, either. She is…intense in a lot of ways. One of the reasons we waited this long to pursue number 2 is that she only recently started sleeping through the night, so we were all exhausted.
What are your options if you end up on bedrest? Do you have someone you trust who can care for Missy, your household, and *you*, for potentially several months, if you are required to stay flat on your back (and/or are hospitalized) for the second half of your pregnancy?
All pregnancies are different, and the kids are different, too (I once met a mother who said caring for her twin infants was easier than her older singleton son–the babies were just so much more mellow!), but if you have limited help (could H take leave for a few months to hold the fort down until you deliver?), I’d be super-hesitant to risk a twin pregnancy.
My twins are lovely, and I managed to keep them in till 36w6d, but I started contracting ~17w, had very restricted mobility from 18w onwards (I’d have to lie down after a single flight of stairs…), was on modified bedrest after ~25 weeks, and went full-on flat before 31 weeks (bleeding, pre-term labor, hospitalization then a temporary apartment 40 miles from home till delivery). It was a frankly awful (and awfully expensive) time, but my husband and I got through because it was just the two of us. But now, with a pair of still-needy twins? Never. (But, that’s just me.)
As far as the financial aspect–for us, we’ve found that raising twins costs more than twice as much as a singleton. It sounds counter-intuitive, but in addition to all the extra costs associated with a high-risk pregnancy, we had to hire the equivalent of nearly 1.5 full-time nannies for the first year (plus my husband nearly halved his working hours), partly because I was so physically and emotionally decrepit from the pregnancy, and partly because my son had horrible reflux and had to be carried and soothed 24/7. And we needed three proper cribs, because although the children mostly slept in the same room, there were times they really, really needed to be apart, and a travel crib wasn’t going to cut it. Etc.
That said–I’ve met a number of adult singletons with younger twin siblings, and generally they’ve seemed pretty positive about the situation, so clearly it’s not all bad. 🙂
Hi, JC. Wow! I’m sorry you had such a difficult pregnancy! That is definitely one of my concerns with the possibility of having twins. My other big concern is that we don’t have much of a support system here. We don’t have any family on the same continent, let alone the same country, and we’re still in the process of developing friendships, since we’ve lived here less than two years. I know other people have done it, but I can’t see making things harder for ourselves if we don’t have to. My husband asked me why I was okay with transferring 3 embryos to get my daughter, but now I’m hesitant about transferring more than one, and I told him: I’m not as desperate to have a child as I was then because we have our daughter.
Only you (and perhaps your doctor) can answer that question. There are factors we don’t know about that are making you feel one way or another about it. I’ll agree that raising twins are expensive on one hand — you can’t reuse many items because both humans need it at the same time vs. back-to-back — but less so in others (places will give a twin discount or you can get away with one of something or buy things in bulk). I think twins are probably easier based on what I see and hear in regards to singletons, but I’ve also never raised a singleton so I’m basing that on observations from the outside. But is this about the possibility of having twins? Or having expectations change?
Hi, Mel. Yes, the decision is ours, but I was hoping it would be one of those situations where you ask for someone’s opinion, and you know immediately by your reaction to their response what the answer is for you. That’s not what happened, though. What I’ll probably do is see if I can get a phone consultation with our former doctor, the one who helped create these embryos, to get his opinion. With our history, I think I know what he will say, but I’d still rather hear it from him, rather than go by the recommendation of our current doctor who 1) admitted she hadn’t thoroughly read our file and 2) is going by protocols rather than our personal history.
Obviously, I’m concerned about the increased risk of a twin pregnancy, but beyond that, I sometimes feel completely frazzled raising one child and wonder how I’ll cope with adding *one* more, never mind two.