I.C.S.I success rate

[fidget]

Hi I am usually a member on the ttc board and never really scrolled down to the other forums. This forum struck me as a place where I could possilbly get some help. After 5 losses my RE has finally discovered that my eggs do not close properly after being penetrated by one sperm allowing for other sperm to come in. They have given me two options.

1) to keep trying naturally and hopefully one good egg will come around

or

2) do I.C.S.I. (Intercellular sperm insemination)

Has anyone here ever had this procedure and if so what was the your success rate? My husband and I have been saving for 5 years to by our first home and need to know how wise it would be to spend so much on a procedure that has a minimal chance of working for us. My guess is that no one will be able to tell us if it will work or not, but i would still like to hear from those who have gone through it and have precious little ones from it.

TIA,
Tanya

[lizzy]

Hi I have had it done but Iam a surrogate so they did it with the mothers eggs and put the embros in me and the rate of it working was 5-10 % and did not work after we did 5 cycles it depends on your age, quality og egg(folicals) and what meds they put you on but maybe ask about blasting the sperm into the egg I can get you better info on it when I get more time good luck and its very costly so I would check on your insuracle some do cover some of the costs. Liz

[fidget]

Hi Lizzy,

Thank you for responding. I am aware of the costs and my insurance covers very little of it. It is highly unlikely that we will be doing the procedure, especially with those odds. At the moment money is a bit scarce and the odds just don't seem worth it. We haven't totaly thrown out the idea we are just going to put it on hold...maybe until we have a large sum collected (5 or more years from now) However if you do have info i will still ove to read about it. That would be very helpful.

Thanks again,
Tanya

[becca]

My RE only does ICSI when doing IVF. Their successful pg rate (live birth) is about 25-30% and their implantation rate is about 40%. I think that is a little above average for IVF, but since they only do ICSI ....

I can't tell you whether or not to try IVF/ICSI because I don't know all of your dx and infertility factors. I know we tried one IVF and then an additional FET with our frozen embies with no success, but with a great chance at success on the second or third try. We decided to stop treatment because we couldn't take the chance of any more babies being made and then not implanting. We have nine IVF angel babies (embryos who never implanted), that was enough for us.

To this day, I cherish the opportunity we had to try to build our family through assisted reproductive technology, and I would never argue that there is anything immoral about any form of ART. But, everyone has their threshhold.

I guess what I am saying is this ... be sure you are ready for another loss if you try IVF. They will retrieve all the eggs they can and try to inseminate them all ... that's the point of IVF. Several will inseminate and divide into embryos. Personally, once they start dividing, I consider them individual humans. That's just my personal opinion. In reality, not all of those embryos will make it to live birth. Just as a for instance ... if one of those nine embies had implanted for us and we'd have made it to a live birth of that child, there would still be eight embies who didn't make it. Be sure you are ready to cope with all of that before you begin. And, be sure you are open to when your heart says you've had enough as well. I'll be praying for you.

Becca

[fidget]

Becca,

Thank you for your information and advice. It sounds a bit more promising for me. I too, believe the same as you about the point of life beginning and the value of it. Surprisingly, I never thought about that when talking about ICSI. Thank you for enlightening me to that. Dh and I do have many things we need to discuss. We are definitely not rushing into this. Thanks again for your insight it is very, very, very much appreciated.

Tanya

[smartiepants]

Dear Tanya

We started ICSI nearly 3 yrs ago, our 1st cycle we lost 3 embryos, on our first FET we lost 3 and had a wonderful baby girl, it does work!!! We just did another FET lost 3, got pregnant with one and M/C at 10 weeks wich as you know was awful. I would not wish IVF on my worst enemy, it is increadibly financially, emotionally and physically taxing, but I think I would do it again, it was all worth it for my daughter. Good luck with your decision making process, Liz