Making Babies

For those of you who have been following along you may remember that I did an egg retrieval prior to starting chemotherapy in December of 2022. The original reason for doing the egg retrieval was for a chance to have our own children in case chemotherapy damaged my eggs. However, after testing positive for the BRCA1 gene mutation there was now another reason for the egg retrieval. Not only can we test for the health of each embryo, we can also test for the BRCA1 gene mutation in each embryo. This allows us to prevent passing along this gene mutation to our children (which is a 50% chance).

My oncologist recommended I wait about 2 years post chemotherapy to attempt to have children. Not only is this time frame for my body to heal from chemotherapy but also to be able to monitor for cancer coming back since it is the highest risk in the first 2-3 years and they would not be able to perform scans (MRIs) if I were pregnant. Now that I am over a year of being cancer free and post chemotherapy, we decided to begin the process of turning my eggs into embryos and begin the testing process (which takes about 6 months total). We figured by the time the embryos were ready, we would be too. So here is the process of turning eggs into embryos, testing the embryos and making babies post cancer:

Step 1) egg retrieval (December 2022) prior to chemotherapy and freezing them for storage

Step 2) create a genetic “probe” that they use to test each embryo for the genetic mutation (takes about 2 months)

Step 3) create embryos from the frozen eggs which entails thawing the eggs, inseminating them with my husband’s sperm and re-freezing them (takes about 8 days)

Step 4) taking a small biopsy of the outer layer of the embryos and testing them for chromosomes matching and then the BRCA1 mutation gene (PGT-A and PGT-M testing)

Step 5) finding out how many healthy embryos we are working with (if any)

Step 6) The “transfer” (actually implanting the embryo for chance of pregnancy)

Now the statistics of this entire process are a little depressing. Out of the 10 eggs I had retrieved, 7 of them survived the egg thaw and fertilization stage. Out of those 7, 50% of them could possibly have the genetic mutation and 30% of them have a chance of having a birth defect or not having matching chromosomes which could cause birth defects. So I was told that out of the 10 eggs I had retrieved that I could possibly have 0-2 healthy embryos when this is all said and done. Crazy. But worth a try to not pass this along to our children if we can at all prevent it. However, here is the breakdown of the cost:

Egg retrieval: $7,000

Medications for egg retrieval: $4,500

Creation of Genetic “probe”: $2,600

Creation of embryos: $9,000

Chromosome testing (PGT-A): $250 per embryo x7 = $1,750

BRCA1 Genetic testing (PGT-M): $2,300

This is with a cancer “discount” and this does not include lab fees, face to face MD appts and ultrasounds…

All of this for an attempt at having a healthy, BRCA1-free baby. Not guaranteed…and you don’t get your money back