Has anyone done FET with someone else's embryos?

[ladydi03]

I got a BFN today, did a 5 day blast and only had 1 good embryo to transfer.  I did gender selection for a girl.  I am almost 42 and after the 20k for just one round and NO embryos to freeze, I can't afford to do it again and fail.  Has anyone used someone elses embryos, if so, how many and how did they take?  I am just thinking of a way to try one more time, but I can't go through all of the meds again, or another 20k.

[ladydi03]

We are meeting with the Doc at the IVF clinic on Tuesday to see our options.  

Sounds like donor eggs are very expensive, but donor embryos is like going through a full adoption and takes awhile.  I am not sure yet what my office will have for me.  Donar eggs will allow my husband to be part of it.  

Very confused on what to do.  Cost is a huge part now.  

[AnnieBrooke]

I used donor eggs, it is pretty common to do that.   (You pick the donor and your husband provides the sperm.)  We ended up with five and six embryos, the two times we did it.  (Both times, they started with 19 eggs, and it wound up at 5 and 6 by the fifth day.)  I can't tell if you are talking about using embryos (i.e., that someone no longer intends to use because their family is completed, so they are donated and you get to use them for no fee) or if you are wondering about using a donor in general.  There is an outfit in the U.S. where some people have donated embryos for others' use when they were done having a family through IVF.   It doesn't deal with huge numbers, since most people use up all their embryos, but I think they have produced maybe 200 to 300 pregnancies.  One of the ladies who writes on this site did that, and was very happy with it, she did it twice and had two kids.  Donor eggs maximize your chances for success because you can pick a young donor.  (The disadvantage is added cost.)  With donated embryos, I am not sure you get to be picky about the age of the woman who produced the egg, because there aren't that many donated embryos around.  

If you use another person's embryos or your own, you still have costs of embryo transfer and hormones.  You don't get stimmed and have the eggs withdrawn, but you do go onto hormones get your uterus ready, and then if you get pregnant, of course, you are also on hormones for the first 12 weeks (a shot a day).   You might know the numbers already, but at my clinic if we had not used an egg donor, we might have saved eight to ten thousand dollars, but it still would have been up to another fifteen thousand for all the rest of it.  If time is the issue and the need for certainty, I would opt for donor eggs, even with the added cost.  If you use a donor who is under 25, and if you pick one who has donated before so they know how she responds, you will have the best chances of getting a lot of eggs.  Also with donor eggs, your first transfer is with fresh eggs, and you usually wind up with some to freeze.

Anyway, there have been successes either way.  The money is daunting, but we always joked that if we paid off the costs of producing our son by the time he was 5, that was great.  Just in time to start saving for his college costs.  :)