Local hospital

After sending hours on the train, in the waiting room, at cheap accommodations and anywhere but home during the weeks of our previous two PGD-IVF cycles we decided it was just too stressful. We contacted the two IVF clinics in our city and luckily one of them is willing to assist us. They are going to do all the necessary tests prior to treatment and all the scans and blood test during treatment up to egg collection.

On work days I just have to get up a bit earlier as tests are at 7:30 am and the hospital is 10 minutes from work. This clinic is realtively small so hopefully it will not be as busy as the London one and I can start work at 8:30 the latest. (I normally start at 8 but it is flexible).
On Lily days I don't have to take her to a whole day trip where her meals and naps are completely mixed up. We won't have to move to London either as we did at the busiest parts of both previous treatments. She can sleep in her own bed and play in her usual playgroups.

I completely trust our local clinic. They are willing to follow whatever protocol we are given and we had a really good consultation with them.

Although they do not offer PGD the actual consultant we saw had PGD experience. We discussed the effect of testing on the embryos. Testing is done when the embryos are 8-cell big. The embryo's outer layer is pierced and one or two cells are removed for testing. These cells are destroyed during the test because of the nature of the testing.

What remains is an embryos with less cells and a hole in its shell. This is a shock to the embryo and might delay further growth. There is however a similar procedure called "assisted hatching".

Accroding to the Human fertilisation and Embryology Authority "before an embryo can attach to the wall of the womb, it has to break out or ‘hatch’ from its outer layer called the zona pellucida.It has been suggested that making a hole in or thinning this outer layer may help embryos to ‘hatch’, increasing the chances of the woman becoming pregnant in some cases."

A lot of clinics tried this approach including our local clinic. According to our consultant they did not see any changes. Neither for better nor for worse. So at least the hole might not affect our embryos that much, only the sudden loss of cells.