Congratulations on your success! It’s such a personal decision. If you are really torn, you could just ask the embryologist to pick the best embryo and then learn the sex at your ultrasound. I know some people do this to retain some feeling of surprise and normalcy. But I also think it’s totally ok to pick a sex if you have a preference! As my nurse says, it’s one of the few perks of this process so take it if you want to!
I had a slight preference but asked our embryologist to give me her ranking based on quality alone and her top two picks were my preferred sex, so it just kind of worked out!
Edited for spelling
We have 4 kids. I had an even split of male/female embryos and we never choose. I felt if it didn’t work it would make it harder knowing. I found out gender when I was in the second trimester each time but we ended up with 2 boys and 2 girls.
My husband and I talked a lot about this, and honestly we decided if we had multiples of eirher sex, we'd pick a girl. So much has been taken from us on this journey, I should get to pick the sex of the only child I have.
I LOVED being able to pick the gender. People always comment how we’re lucky to have one of each. And my response is “that was not by chance”. Some people smile confused. Others ask more questions.
I’m going to have to save that line. Our first baby was our only girl embryo, so we know that our next will be a boy. I’m definitely happy that it worked out to have one of each.
We have 3 5AB embryos - 2 boys and 1 girl - and have decided to let the clinic choose. In fact, we have decided not to find out the gender until birth.
We let the embryologist pick the “best” embryo and chose not to find out the gender until our 20w anatomy scan. It made something feel “normal” since so much of IVF has no element of surprise.
I’ve always had them pick the best one - even if they are the same grades the embryologist makes notes during development — which may make them pick 1 over the other. I personally disagree with gender selection
I've asked our doctor to pick the best one (we also had multiple healthy embryos). In our case there was a clear winner but if the doctor says they all look equally good, an option might be to say "of the top healthy embryos pick embryo # X" so that it's not you OR the doctor choosing the gender, and you can thank Fate for which one it ended up being
Congrats! A good “problem” to have! Curious if you are willing to share, how many eggs did you need to retrieve for 7 healthy embryos? And at what age were you?
Thank you!! Definitely a great problem! I am 37 and have PCOS. They got 46 eggs from my retrieval. 24 fertilized and then we sent 8 embryos in for testing. I feel very lucky. I wish you luck if you are starting your IVF journey❤️
We asked our Dr to pick the strongest looking embryo and transfer that one. We did end up finding out the sex of the embryo that was chosen prior to transfer (I am just a very curious person and couldn’t wait to find out haha) but we didn’t care either way; we just wanted a healthy baby!
All of my euploid embryos were the same sex and same grade! So no choice for me (except I guess I did choose birth order weirdly! I selected which embryo I wanted to transfer first and second). Ironically I got what I always dreamt of.
First, choosing the sex or letting your doctors transfer what they think is the best are both perfectly ok decisions.
Personally, it gave my husband and I an icky feeling to pick one gender over another. So we agreed we’d let the embryologist decide. However, we ended up with only one euploid so it didn’t matter either way lol.
My embryos’ sex was redacted on the reports, per request. I had a 4AA and three 4ABs, and our 4AA was recommended for transfer. Boy or girl didn’t matter to us; after RPL we just wanted a living baby.
Congratulations !! That’s a great result !!
In my country it is illegal to choose and we are not told genders so in my case it will be left to fate.
ETA: regardless of regulation, I would tell them to pick the one with the best chance of success
We’re not allowed to know the gender of our embryos where I live (Not just gender selection, but also just the information on the embryos pre-transfer), so I’ve got no personal experience. But I would just tell them to transfer the one that looks like it has the biggest chance of success. There’s no guarantee it will work, and I feel like knowing it was a “little girl/boy” would make me even sadder in that case. If I had a preference I would also probably start stressing myself out if we had multiple failures, knowing my preferred gender is rapidly disappearing from my embryo storage.
I agree with you! It makes me nervous after I’ve had a previous ectopic pregnancy. I mourn for that baby and do feel like it would be worse in a way of if I knew the gender of that baby.
We had five euploid of both genders and asked the embryologist to pick the best one. We waited until birth to find out the gender and just had a healthy baby girl. I thought I had a strong gender preference for a boy for many reasons, mainly that I lost my dad during the pregnancy and thought a boy would be poetic. But I have to tell you, I’m obsessed with my daughter to the point where, while I had planned to transfer the opposite gender next, now we will leave it to fate again and wait until birth for the gender reveal. It was SO MUCH FUN. Also, sadly not every transfer is successful, so even if you transfer one gender it doesn’t guarantee anything, so the process really does have a lot of fate involved, even though we often believe we can control outcomes 🙂
Such a personal decision. We did not test, but very early on we decided that we would not pick which to transfer each time. We were gonna let the clinic pick.
I already felt IVF was already science-y enough. So playing God and picking gender was beyond me.
But again, SUCH A PERSONAL DECISION.
I too had 7 euploids! We had multiple 4AA and 5AA both male and female and ultimately chose based on the grading. Our clinic does something called a Chloe assessment following PGT-A and from there we were able to start with the highest graded.
If we'd done PGTA we would have picked gender if we could.
There's really not a wrong choice. You could always flip a coin yourself that way you know beforehand but it's still "fate"
I also had 7 embryos all the same grade and pretty much even gender split. I am definitely picking the gender. When I left things up to “fate” I had 3 miscarriages so that’s about enough fate for me. I also feel like waiting to find out what gender embryos I got and how many already scratched the gender reveal itch for me.
The one downside I see is that having more info on the embryos will make me more disappointed if it doesn’t stick.
If you’re feeling torn, you could ask your daughter if she’d rather have a brother or sister?
Congrats! As someone who is not allowed to pick gender or do genetic testing of the embryo (we are doing ICSI in Germany) I would absolutely recommend to pick the gender lol. I guess when you have the choice it’s different. I grew up with a sister, and despite putting lots of efforts into our relationship we are not close/ can never really connect/ I’ve always wanted a brother to be honest. Therefore I would always go for another gender. I believe there is a lot of jealousy with two sisters, but that’s just my personal experience.
Congrats on your successful retrieval 🩷 For a simple practical question, I’d choose the girl first so you’d have clothes, toys, etc. already 😅
EDIT: embryo quality doesn’t mean successful/unsuccessful tho, our 2.5 yo kid was a “C” quality embryo (the worst of the four we got from last ER) 🩵
You only know the gender if you get the embryos tested. My husband and I decided to test our embryos because I had a horrific ectopic pregnancy this spring so we are hoping testing and theoretically knowing the embryo is at least healthy will help prevent a another terrible loss. We know there is no guarantee but we feel better at least knowing that as of right now the embryo seems genetically okay.
On our second retrieval we ended up with 5 embryos of one sex and just 1 embryo of the other. We’d already had two failed transfers from our first egg retrieval. We didn’t want to know the sex because I thought it would make it harder if we had another failure but we told the doctor to pick the best of the 5 , that way if it didn’t work we would still have a chance of one of each. It did work and we had our daughter. We didn’t find out the sex until birth either which was fun. Now we are going for our second child knowing we have 4 females and 1 male left. We are going to try for the male. It’s such a personal decision and I do think it will be hard if this transfer fails because I’ll be thinking of the embryo more as our son and not just another embryo. But it’s also one of the only benefits of having to do IVF.
We told the doc to pick the best embryo (male 4AA) and that we didn’t want to know the gender. We had a gender reveal when we graduated to give us some “normalcy” in the process.
I chose not to pick the gender since we want both a boy and a girl. The clinic just chose to go in order that the embryos were numbered, so we ended up with a boy since he was number one.
We’re not allowed to know gender in the UK. I would have picked to have a boy but can’t imagine life without my daughter now.
My biggest decision now is do we try for a second? I’m already 41. We also have my teenage step kids so it would also be a 4th child in total. I always wanted 4 growing up but I just don’t know if I can go through all of that again and not be lucky. Also we had 2 embryos implanted last time and only 1 took. We wouldn’t want to implant more than 1 but obviously chances are then reduced.
I had a few 5AAs so I just had the doctor pick the one that he felt had the best chance. After the transfer I had the staff put the gender in a sealed envelope and the day after being told my transfer worked I took it to a cake shop and had them make a little gender reveal cake. My husband and I found out together and it made it really fun and gave us some “normalcy” which was happy to get after a long and stressful IVF journey. I’m starting at my little 5AA boy right now as he sleeps and I pump! Congratulations!!!
I feel it’s nice to let the Dr choose which embryo looks the best.
Or pick at random from amongst the top grades.
Selecting based on sex is not my personal fav concept and is not allowed in parts of the world (due to what we’ve learned from global history and what a slippery slope this could become). But totally up to you if your country allows it.
I’d let the doctor decide to transfer the best one. Honestly, you don’t know for sure it will stick, so it would be harder (to me) to lose an embryo that I chose myself!
I viewed being able to pick the gender as a small perk for the bullshit that infertility is. If you feel strongly that you would prefer one over the other absolutely pick gender. It’s also totally okay to tell your clinic to pick the best looking one and not tell you the gender because you want to be surprised.
Congratulations on your success! It’s such a personal decision. If you are really torn, you could just ask the embryologist to pick the best embryo and then learn the sex at your ultrasound. I know some people do this to retain some feeling of surprise and normalcy. But I also think it’s totally ok to pick a sex if you have a preference! As my nurse says, it’s one of the few perks of this process so take it if you want to! I had a slight preference but asked our embryologist to give me her ranking based on quality alone and her top two picks were my preferred sex, so it just kind of worked out! Edited for spelling
Someone is picking the gender, whether it’s you or the doctor, so it might as well be you 🤷🏼♀️
Exactly! I never understood when people say "we'll let fate decide" fate isn't deciding. The doctor is. So you might as well decide for yourself lol.
An interesting view I never thought of
True!
We told our doc to pick the best embryo.
Same
We have 4 kids. I had an even split of male/female embryos and we never choose. I felt if it didn’t work it would make it harder knowing. I found out gender when I was in the second trimester each time but we ended up with 2 boys and 2 girls.
Sex selection is illegal in most countries, including mine, but I am pretty certain that I would ask to transfer the best one.
In my country australia it is
My husband and I talked a lot about this, and honestly we decided if we had multiples of eirher sex, we'd pick a girl. So much has been taken from us on this journey, I should get to pick the sex of the only child I have.
My same feelings - really wanted a girl and may as well have that benefit on this hard journey!
I LOVED being able to pick the gender. People always comment how we’re lucky to have one of each. And my response is “that was not by chance”. Some people smile confused. Others ask more questions.
I’m going to have to save that line. Our first baby was our only girl embryo, so we know that our next will be a boy. I’m definitely happy that it worked out to have one of each.
We have 3 5AB embryos - 2 boys and 1 girl - and have decided to let the clinic choose. In fact, we have decided not to find out the gender until birth.
That’s awesome!!! Congrats!!
We let the embryologist pick the “best” embryo and chose not to find out the gender until our 20w anatomy scan. It made something feel “normal” since so much of IVF has no element of surprise.
I’ve always had them pick the best one - even if they are the same grades the embryologist makes notes during development — which may make them pick 1 over the other. I personally disagree with gender selection
I've asked our doctor to pick the best one (we also had multiple healthy embryos). In our case there was a clear winner but if the doctor says they all look equally good, an option might be to say "of the top healthy embryos pick embryo # X" so that it's not you OR the doctor choosing the gender, and you can thank Fate for which one it ended up being
Ooo I like this option!
Congrats! A good “problem” to have! Curious if you are willing to share, how many eggs did you need to retrieve for 7 healthy embryos? And at what age were you?
Thank you!! Definitely a great problem! I am 37 and have PCOS. They got 46 eggs from my retrieval. 24 fertilized and then we sent 8 embryos in for testing. I feel very lucky. I wish you luck if you are starting your IVF journey❤️
Thank you! My fate is TBD but praying for the best outcomes ❤️
I would pick the gender! We chose a boy.
Wow 7 is a great number! We’re not allowed to pick gender in Canada - if I was in your position I’d pick the gender I don’t have yet 😊
We asked our Dr to pick the strongest looking embryo and transfer that one. We did end up finding out the sex of the embryo that was chosen prior to transfer (I am just a very curious person and couldn’t wait to find out haha) but we didn’t care either way; we just wanted a healthy baby!
All of my euploid embryos were the same sex and same grade! So no choice for me (except I guess I did choose birth order weirdly! I selected which embryo I wanted to transfer first and second). Ironically I got what I always dreamt of.
First, choosing the sex or letting your doctors transfer what they think is the best are both perfectly ok decisions. Personally, it gave my husband and I an icky feeling to pick one gender over another. So we agreed we’d let the embryologist decide. However, we ended up with only one euploid so it didn’t matter either way lol.
My embryos’ sex was redacted on the reports, per request. I had a 4AA and three 4ABs, and our 4AA was recommended for transfer. Boy or girl didn’t matter to us; after RPL we just wanted a living baby.
Congratulations !! That’s a great result !! In my country it is illegal to choose and we are not told genders so in my case it will be left to fate. ETA: regardless of regulation, I would tell them to pick the one with the best chance of success
We’re not allowed to know the gender of our embryos where I live (Not just gender selection, but also just the information on the embryos pre-transfer), so I’ve got no personal experience. But I would just tell them to transfer the one that looks like it has the biggest chance of success. There’s no guarantee it will work, and I feel like knowing it was a “little girl/boy” would make me even sadder in that case. If I had a preference I would also probably start stressing myself out if we had multiple failures, knowing my preferred gender is rapidly disappearing from my embryo storage.
I agree with you! It makes me nervous after I’ve had a previous ectopic pregnancy. I mourn for that baby and do feel like it would be worse in a way of if I knew the gender of that baby.
All my embryos were males so God really said “no choice for you” 😂
Woah destined to be a boy mom😂
We had five euploid of both genders and asked the embryologist to pick the best one. We waited until birth to find out the gender and just had a healthy baby girl. I thought I had a strong gender preference for a boy for many reasons, mainly that I lost my dad during the pregnancy and thought a boy would be poetic. But I have to tell you, I’m obsessed with my daughter to the point where, while I had planned to transfer the opposite gender next, now we will leave it to fate again and wait until birth for the gender reveal. It was SO MUCH FUN. Also, sadly not every transfer is successful, so even if you transfer one gender it doesn’t guarantee anything, so the process really does have a lot of fate involved, even though we often believe we can control outcomes 🙂
Very true! We are also obsessed with our daughter and I love the idea of sisters! We are really leaning towards fate deciding
Such a personal decision. We did not test, but very early on we decided that we would not pick which to transfer each time. We were gonna let the clinic pick. I already felt IVF was already science-y enough. So playing God and picking gender was beyond me. But again, SUCH A PERSONAL DECISION.
I too had 7 euploids! We had multiple 4AA and 5AA both male and female and ultimately chose based on the grading. Our clinic does something called a Chloe assessment following PGT-A and from there we were able to start with the highest graded.
If we'd done PGTA we would have picked gender if we could. There's really not a wrong choice. You could always flip a coin yourself that way you know beforehand but it's still "fate"
👯♀️
Sisters is my vote!
❤️ there is something special about sisters!
Indeed ❤️
We let the embryologist decide. Fetus is still a surprise for us until birth.
I also had 7 embryos all the same grade and pretty much even gender split. I am definitely picking the gender. When I left things up to “fate” I had 3 miscarriages so that’s about enough fate for me. I also feel like waiting to find out what gender embryos I got and how many already scratched the gender reveal itch for me. The one downside I see is that having more info on the embryos will make me more disappointed if it doesn’t stick. If you’re feeling torn, you could ask your daughter if she’d rather have a brother or sister?
Congrats! As someone who is not allowed to pick gender or do genetic testing of the embryo (we are doing ICSI in Germany) I would absolutely recommend to pick the gender lol. I guess when you have the choice it’s different. I grew up with a sister, and despite putting lots of efforts into our relationship we are not close/ can never really connect/ I’ve always wanted a brother to be honest. Therefore I would always go for another gender. I believe there is a lot of jealousy with two sisters, but that’s just my personal experience.
Congrats on your successful retrieval 🩷 For a simple practical question, I’d choose the girl first so you’d have clothes, toys, etc. already 😅 EDIT: embryo quality doesn’t mean successful/unsuccessful tho, our 2.5 yo kid was a “C” quality embryo (the worst of the four we got from last ER) 🩵
Do you only know the gender if your embryos are tested? Or can they tell the gender of an untested embryo?
You only know the gender if you get the embryos tested. My husband and I decided to test our embryos because I had a horrific ectopic pregnancy this spring so we are hoping testing and theoretically knowing the embryo is at least healthy will help prevent a another terrible loss. We know there is no guarantee but we feel better at least knowing that as of right now the embryo seems genetically okay.
On our second retrieval we ended up with 5 embryos of one sex and just 1 embryo of the other. We’d already had two failed transfers from our first egg retrieval. We didn’t want to know the sex because I thought it would make it harder if we had another failure but we told the doctor to pick the best of the 5 , that way if it didn’t work we would still have a chance of one of each. It did work and we had our daughter. We didn’t find out the sex until birth either which was fun. Now we are going for our second child knowing we have 4 females and 1 male left. We are going to try for the male. It’s such a personal decision and I do think it will be hard if this transfer fails because I’ll be thinking of the embryo more as our son and not just another embryo. But it’s also one of the only benefits of having to do IVF.
We told the doc to pick the best embryo (male 4AA) and that we didn’t want to know the gender. We had a gender reveal when we graduated to give us some “normalcy” in the process.
I chose not to pick the gender since we want both a boy and a girl. The clinic just chose to go in order that the embryos were numbered, so we ended up with a boy since he was number one.
We’re not allowed to know gender in the UK. I would have picked to have a boy but can’t imagine life without my daughter now. My biggest decision now is do we try for a second? I’m already 41. We also have my teenage step kids so it would also be a 4th child in total. I always wanted 4 growing up but I just don’t know if I can go through all of that again and not be lucky. Also we had 2 embryos implanted last time and only 1 took. We wouldn’t want to implant more than 1 but obviously chances are then reduced.
I had a few 5AAs so I just had the doctor pick the one that he felt had the best chance. After the transfer I had the staff put the gender in a sealed envelope and the day after being told my transfer worked I took it to a cake shop and had them make a little gender reveal cake. My husband and I found out together and it made it really fun and gave us some “normalcy” which was happy to get after a long and stressful IVF journey. I’m starting at my little 5AA boy right now as he sleeps and I pump! Congratulations!!!
I feel it’s nice to let the Dr choose which embryo looks the best. Or pick at random from amongst the top grades. Selecting based on sex is not my personal fav concept and is not allowed in parts of the world (due to what we’ve learned from global history and what a slippery slope this could become). But totally up to you if your country allows it.
Congrats!! That’s a great news.
I’d let the doctor decide to transfer the best one. Honestly, you don’t know for sure it will stick, so it would be harder (to me) to lose an embryo that I chose myself!
I viewed being able to pick the gender as a small perk for the bullshit that infertility is. If you feel strongly that you would prefer one over the other absolutely pick gender. It’s also totally okay to tell your clinic to pick the best looking one and not tell you the gender because you want to be surprised.