Day 20 in Turkey-We are officially parents of 10 embies!

Hi everyone!

Well as you probably read we are the proud parents of 10 little embryos!  Of the 23 eggs they retrieved, 17 were mature and they tried fertilized them by injecting Glen’s sperm into them.  Of those 17, 10 fertilized and have begun growing into embryos.  They grade the embryos on a scale of 1-4, with 1 being the best. The grading system is based upon how symmetrical the cells are dividing. By today they wanted to see the embryos to be 3-4 cells.  The 2 cells still have a little bit of time to catch up. They said they are constantly changing and multiplying so you could look at a 3 cell embryo and then come back to look at it an hour later and it could already be a 4 cells.  Tomorrow they would like to see most of the embryos at 6-8 cells with good symmetry.

So here is the count of how many we have of each cell count and grade:

3 embryos that are 4 cells and grade 1

1 embryo that is 3 cells and grade 1

2 embryos that are 4 cells and grade 2

2 embryos that are 3 cells and grade 2

2 embryos that are 2 cells and grade 2

Isn’t it funny how you can already love and be proud of your future children when they are just two days old and a  fewcells each!  LOL  Grow our little embryos, grow! 

Depending on how the embryos look tomorrow the transfer could be tomorrow afternoon or Wednesday day morning. They say the best place for the embryos is in their mother’s belly.  So if they can tell by tomorrow morning which embryos are going to be the hardiest then they will do the transfer then.  If we have a lot of 6-8 cell grade 1 embryos tomorrow morning, then they will probably wait another day and watch them grow and see which of those turns out to be the hardiest. Then they will transfer the 2 or 3 best embryos and then freeze all the rest that look to be hardy enough to with stand freezing and possibly thawing later on down the road.

Now comes the tough decision, do we put in 2 or 3 embryos.  At first we thought we would just do 2, but we are really leaning toward 3 now.  The doctor told us today that only 3 out of every 10 Grade 1 embryos, which are the very best, will implant!  So here are the odds of implantation and getting just ONE baby according to how many Grade 1 embryos are transferred :

1 embryo transfered -30% chance of getting ONE baby

2 embryos transfered-close to 60%  chance of getting ONE baby

3 embryos transferred-70% chance of getting ONE baby

The odds of mutiples if we decide to go with three embryos:

Less than 10% chance of triplets

30% chance of twins  (which deep down we have been hoping for twins, two and done, no more IVF)

In the end we will make the final decision we feel is best for us, but for now…. we wanted to take a vote and see how many all of you think we should put in, now that you know the odds!

Thank you again for all your prayers and support!  Please keep those prayers coming for the wisdom to make the best decision possible for our future babies and that our future babies will love their new home and want to stick around for 9 months!!

Lots of Love,

Staci & Glen