Well, it is Thursday night and no news about our 11 little em-babies. The embryologist told us that they would be watching them closely to see wether we would do a 3 day or 5 day transfer. The hope in all IVF cycles is that you will make it to a 5 day transfer and this is the reason why...
In natural conception, the embryo reaches the uterus during the blast stage and it is still in the fallopian tube during the cell stage. In an IVF embryo transfer the embryo(s) are sent directly into the uterus. Therefore, transferring to the uterus during a 5 day (blastocyst) replicates the natural process more closely as compared to a 3 day transfer. Doctors also consider the blastocyst to be a more sturdy stage in embryo production so there is a greater chance of successful implantation.
Since we did not hear anything from our embryologist today (day 3) it is pretty safe to assume we are all set for our day 5 transfer on Saturday morning!
Day 1: 1 cell with 2 dots in the middle. This indicates a normally fertilized egg with each dot representing genetic materials from the mom and the dad.
Day 2: usually 2-4 cells. The cells are expected to double every 24 hours or so.
Day 3: usually 6-8 cells. Sometimes more cells. Same doubling effect. This is when fragmentation can be observed (small dots, not clean cell divisions) representing abnormal cells. I’ve read somewhere that chromosonal abnormality can be around 25-70%.
Day 4: Morula or compacting cell stage. This is when the cells have doubled to around 16 and the individual balls are starting to expand and blend with the others. You can see the bumps still.
Day 5: Blastocyst. This is when we see 3 distinct parts – the shell, one dense bunch of cells (the baby), and the lighter cells (the placenta). The blastocyst is ready for implantation but first it has to hatch from the shell. The picture on the bottom right is a hatching blastocyst (can happen naturally or with the help of your embryologist – assisted hatching (which is most likely what will be done to ours). The hatched blastocyst should implant within 12-24 hours to the uterine lining.
Pray for some good looking blastocyst babies on Saturday morning!
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