Fertilisation Report

Today can be the worst day of IVF - the day you get told how many of your eggs have fertilised. Waiting for the phone call from the embryologist is agony.

Today we had the call earlier than expected and the embryologist started off with "Good news!". Relief soared through me and I smiled at Hubby. Then she checked that I had been told how many eggs they collected yesterday - five. Then she said out of the five, four were mature enough to try to fertilise. Out of the four, two had fertilised over night.

I sat in shock - this was NOT good news!

She went on, "so we'll see you tomorrow at 11.30am for a 2 day transfer, bring your nightie, dressing gown and slippers. Do you have any questions?"
I just said no, I'll have to talk to my Husband.

Anger and upset flooded my body. I've been through all this discomfort, pain and emotion to end up with the worst cycle so far! We had such high hopes.

Well I'm not going in.

I waited until this afternoon, as I know they are really busy in the morning, and I rang them back. I told them that we do not consider 2 embryo's 'good news' as we were hoping to have more so that we could aim for a five day transfer. I said that we would rather not come in tomorrow and that we would like to see if they make it to Saturday.
The embryologist explained that if you have enough embryo's they like to take them to blasto so that they can decide which are the best to put back but with me only having two, that didn't come into it as they were the only choice. She asked if we were prepared to possibly have none left to put back and I said we were.

The protocol now is that they will look at our 2 embryo's tomorrow afternoon to see how they are doing and grade them - they like to see them at the 4 cell stage on Day 2. They grade them based on how symmetrical/equal the cells have divided and if there is any fragmentation - this is when little bits of the cell break off as they divide.
Then they leave them in the incubators on Day 3 and look at them on Day 4 (Friday this week)to see if they have reached the compaction stage. Day 5 they should have compacted and turned into blastocysts:

this website explains the stages really well:
IVF Tutorials

And this website explains our reasoning behind waiting:
IVF Authority blog

So now we pray harder than ever that we have made the right choice!