Good Problems to Have

On Saturday, May 21st (2 days post retrieval) our babysitter embryologist called at 10:15am with our daily update.  I'm still so happy they call so early in the morning so I don't worry all day.  It would drive my Type A side absolutely nuts.  He reported to me that all 7 little embryos were still growing and dividing as they should.

I got a lesson on the growth of embryos from our babysitter at this point about how they are graded.  They are each given a grade ("very subjectively" he said) from 1-5.  He looks for abnormal dividing and spots in the cells to determine the grading.  The more uniform they are, the more they divide, and the clearer they are, thee higher the grade.  He said 1s and 2s are really good.  4s and 5s are not so good.  He said to put it in terms I could understand, he has a lot more success making babies from 1s and 2s than 4s and 5s.  OK, I get that.

Then he went on to update me on the status of our actual embryos.  At that point, we had:

• 2 two-celled grade 2 embryos
• 1 three-celled grade 1 embryo
• 4 four-celled grade 1 embryos

Was I hearing this right?  We had good news again today?

He said that we have a wonderful problem.  Usually by this point in time, he can pick out several that are stronger than the others to use for a 3-day transfer.  However, because ours are all going strong, he is having trouble deciding.  He said they should have all divided at least once by today, which several of them have done more than once.  He said they're all grades 1 and 2, which are similar.  His recommendation, with my blessing, was to move transfer to a Day 5 (Tuesday) transfer.  By then, he hoped he'd have a clearer understanding of which ones to use.

By all means, if that meant a better chance at success, let's do a 5-day!  So, once again in this process, we were pushing dates further back, but it was for another good cause.  Keep on growing little 7!