I barely slept last night. I was up at 6 and by the time we got to the RE at 9:30 I was nauseous. After a ten minute wait that felt like ten years we were brought back into an exam room for a consult with the embryologist.
On Tuesday 6 mature eggs were retrieved and ICSI was performed on all of them. Our fertilization report on Wednesday showed that 4 (2 rated good, 2 rated fair) had fertilized and another 2 (rated poor) had yet to fertilize.
Today we found out that of our 6 mature eggs ALL SIX fertilized and 5 continued to develop and thrive.
Here are the initial four that fertilized on Wednesday.
They were given a numerical score which evaluated their shape, size and level of fragmentation. 4 being the highest and 0 being the lowest. The second number indicates the number of cells each embryo has.
We were delighted to see we had a grade 4, 8-cell; a grade 3, 8-cell; and a grade 2, 6-cell. One of our initial four embryos arrested (the 0/2).
We put back the 4/8 and the 3/8 from this group. Hopefully they are snuggling in and making themselves at home.
But what we were even more delighted to see was that the two “poor” quality eggs from Tuesday had not only fertilized but they grew into rockstars. Both of them are a grade 4, 8 celled embryo! Not bad for the cells that were (lovingly) referred to as the runts of the litter!
Because these two were slower to fertilize, the embryologist couldn’t be confident about their stage of development. So they are watching these two grade 4, 8-cells and the other grade 2, 6-cell through Sunday. If they continue to grow and mature they will be cryopreserved for a future FET.
We’re ecstatic that we had two awesome embryos to put back today and that there are another three that are candidates for freeze.
The procedure was a breeze, and aside from throwing any modesty I once had to the wind, I was very comfortable (given that I was in stirrups, legs akimbo, with my crotch out for all to see). Suddenly I am exhausted. I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off of my shoulders and I can finally breathe again (or at least, sleep again).
Our beta is January 19. Only 11 more days to go.
