Day Three Report: Twelve 8-cell Grade 1 Embryos

Yesterday was Labor Day.  Both Bob and I were home.  Yesterday was also the day to find out how our 17 fertilized eggs were faring.

I am not going to lie.  I was super nervous.  I had a reason.  At our last donor egg cycle with our frozen egg, all 10 eggs thawed and fertilized well.  The day three report was horrible as there was no grade one embryos.  Everything was grade two to grade four, from 4-cell to 10-cell.  We ended up having only one early blastocyst that we transferred and one day six blastocyst that was later transferred.  They resulted in one chemical pregnancy.  It was hardly a good cycle.

Yesterday I had this fear that all of the embryos somehow had died.  It was super irrational, I know, but I couldn’t help having these thoughts.  We have been traumatized for so long, it was hard for me to keep these thoughts out of my head.

I had so much nervous energy that I started cleaning the floor, tidying up things, and folding laundry.  Yup.  I clean when I am angry or nervous.

Bob wasn’t too much better.  He was super distracted while working on an assignment.  I checked my email every three seconds.

Dr. E’s email came after 11am.  Once I saw her subject line, I knew we had good news.

She wrote on the subject line: Gorgeous!!!

This is her email:

“Good morning!

We have GORGEOUS embryos this morning!

We have 12 embryos that are 8-9 cells and grade 1

1 = 7 cell grade 1

1 = 6 cell grade 1

1 = 8 cell grade 2

1 = 6 cell grade 3

1 = 4 cell grade 3

Next report will be on Wednesday

I expect approximately 8 blastocysts or more on day 5 = Wednesday

More news to come!

:)”

Wow!!!  Out of all of my own egg cycles and that one DE cycle, we have NEVER had ANY 8-cell grade 1 embryos.  It is out of this world to have 12 of them!  Looks like all 17 embryos are still dividing, with the 12 8-9 cell grade 1 ones that are leading the pack.

Praise the Lord for answering our prayers!

I was grinning from ear to ear.  My shoulders were finally down.  It was the best news ever!

I know that we still have a way to go.  First we need to have some blastocysts tomorrow.  Then we’ll have to test them to see which ones have normal chromosomes.  But we are definitely heading to the right direction.

My dear friend Jane is right.  Maybe we will need to come up with a bunch of embryo names this time.