Day 3 Fertilization Report

I'm back at home now and settling back in. As I put my long johns and extra layers on this morning, I thought longingly of the warmer weather in Denver but at least the sun is shining here in Toronto! It's amazing how you can come and go and nothing seems to have changed yet everything is different somehow. I've been pretty tired since getting home which I attribute to the 2 hour time difference and the additional hour we lost to daylight savings time this past weekend but I'm adjusting so everything is fine.

Technically, today is day 4 post ER so we did get our day 3 fert report yesterday but late in the day. I basically spent the day sitting by the phone, waiting for it to ring which was pretty nerve wracking. To bring everyone up to date, the two eggs which matured overnight after ER were ICSI'd on day 2 and both fertilized!! That brings our final count up to 11 eggs retrieved of which 10 were mature (!!!) and 8 fertilized (!!!). This is definitely the best cycle ever for us and I know I'm not blowing anyone out of the water in terms of absolute numbers but we are pretty thrilled to have done so well given our past history.

At this point, embryos should be between 6-10 cells with 8 being the perfect number. CCRM begins grading their embryos on day 3 and I asked the embryologist to go through and give me the grades for each of our embryos. In short, the day 3 embryos at CCRM are graded using the following chart, 4 being the best and 1 being the worst:

4 : 0% fragmentation
4- : less than 10% fragmentation
3+ : less than 20% fragmentation
3 : less than 30% fragmentation
3- : less than 40% fragmentation
2+ : less than 50% fragmentation
2 : less than 60% fragmentation
2- : less than 70% fragmentation
1+ : less than 80% fragmentation
1 : less than 90% fragmentation
1- : 100% fragmentation

Our embryos were as follows:

Embryo 1: 8 cell grade 4 & compacting (this one is the most advanced of the bunch)
Embryo 2: 8 cell grade 4
Embryo 3: 8 cell grade 4
Embryo 4: 8 cell grade 4-
Embryo 5: 8 cell grade 4-
Embryo 6: 7 cell grade 4
Embryo 7 (from day 2 ICSI): 8 cell grade 3
Embryo 8 (from day 2 ICSI): 6 cell grade 2+

We are pretty impressed with the lab so far because at this point in all of our other cycles, we had a ton of eggs either a) not fertilize or b) arrested already. So far, we've been lucky enough to only lose 1 egg due to immaturity, and 2 other eggs failed to fertilize. In comparison, my last cycle we had 7 immature eggs out of 10 eggs retrieved! To my knowledge, nothing is arresting at the moment; however, the embryologist that I spoke with did tell me that they do expect to lose 1/3 to 1/2 of all embryos going to day 5 so it is unlikely that all of ours will make it to the blastocyst stage. We will continue to hope and hang onto positive thoughts.

The embryologist also told us that the next time that they will be checking on our embryos will be tomorrow (Saturday). Any embryos that have progressed far enough will be biopsied with any remaining embryos biopsied on day 6 (Sunday). After the biopsy, they will be vitrified (flash frozen). Since it is the weekend, they may not be able to call us tomorrow but they will definitely call us by Sunday to give us the final report post biopsy. For once, I want to beat the odds and have all of our embryos make it to blast and biopsy. I can always hope can't I?

My DH has been cracking jokes since ER and asking me whether our kids will have U.S. citizenship since they were conceived in the beautiful state of Colorado! We also lovingly refer to them as "our American children" :). It's wonderful to think that right now, at this very moment, there are 8 little embryos in this world that are made up of half of me and half of my DH.

For now, we're back to reality...DH has returned to work and I am sorting through all of our travel expenses, paying bills and getting our tax return ready. I hope our good luck will continue to hold.

One final note - I wanted to say a very warm thank you to everyone who have posted comments on my blog and given me such wonderful words of support and encouragement throughout this cycle. You have touched me and at no point did I ever feel alone. You guys are the best!!