December 2016 - IVF #5, Retrieval and Day 1 & 3 Reports

Retrieval went very well, and they were able to get 5 eggs from my follicles.  4 of them were mature enough to attempt fertilization, and 3 of them made it through the first 24hrs.  The attrition has officially begun.

Right now I'm waiting on the Day 3 report.  It's 1:15pm, and still no word from Michelle.  Even though it's just a mid-point report, I still get anxious about what it will reveal.

10 mins later...

Apparently writing about it did the trick!  Michelle called at 1:25pm with the Day 3 update, and it's a mixed bag.  We have gone from 5 eggs, to 4 mature eggs, to 3 fertilized, and now it looks like only 2 are progressing.  We have 1 7-cell embryo, which is perfectly in range and has a 0% fragmentation score, and we have 1 3-cell embryo, which is quite a bit slower and also with 0% fragmentation.  Our 3rd embryo is still at 1-cell stage, which means it has likely failed.  They will keep watching it, but in all reasonable likelihood, it's finished.

With an update to the chart I showed last round, this is where we stand:

Updates with Round 5 Day 3 info included.

Round 5 data added, the dark green stripes indicate embryos that made it to blastocyst stage
(recall, however, that the Round 3 blastocyst failed genetic testing)

We have not been successful with any embryo that was <6 cells on Day 3.  That doesn't make it impossible, just highly improbable that anything but our 7-cell one will make it.  We have also had an 8-cell and 2 6-cells fail between Day 3 and Day 7, so we have had embryos of similar size not make it to the end.  Only time will tell if we will have any success from this round.

The next update is Thursday.