Only three embryos survived on Day 5

Out of the five embryos on day 3, only three had made it to day 5 blastocysts.  I’ve been told that this is at par of what the norm is – exactly what they expected.  I’m a bit sad the other two didn’t survive even though they are just a cluster of cells.  But thank you Lord three made it up to this point.

My three blastocysts are graded as follows which are pretty good:

Blastocysts	Grading
1	5AA
2	4AB
3	4BB

To understand how the grading system works, I googled and here’s what I found from http://www.advancedfertility.com/blastocystimages.htm

The Gardner blastocyst grading system assigns 3 separate quality scores to each blastocyst embryo:

1. Blastocyst development stage - expansion and hatching status
2. Inner cell mass (ICM) score, or quality
3. Trophectoderm (TE) score, or quality

Expansion grade	Blastocyst development and stage status
1	Blastocoel cavity less than half the volume of the embryo
2	Blastocoel cavity more than half the volume of the embryo
3	Full blastocyst, cavity completely filling the embryo
4	Expanded blastocyst, cavity larger than the embryo, with thinning of the shell
5	Hatching out of the shell
6	Hatched out of the shell

ICM grade	Inner cell mass quality
A	Many cells, tightly packed
B	Several cells, loosely grouped
C	Very few cells

TE grade	Trophectoderm quality
A	Many cells, forming a cohesive layer
B	Few cells, forming a loose epithelium
C	Very few large cells

A “perfect” day 5 embryo would be a 4AA.  But many pregnancies do occur from AB or BB quality embryos. 

And I took this pictures from the internet to see what a grade 4AA blastocyst looks like since I'm a visual person.

So right now, our 3 blastocysts are frozen.  Our clinic is using the more advanced method called vitrification and at first I was worried about this ‘freezing’ process but I was told it has over 98% survival rate.  The older method was slow freezing can do more damage to the embryo and they don’t do that at all at the clinic.

Also biopsies have been taken from our 3 blastocysts and is being sent to U.S. for PGS (Pre-Implantation Genetic Screening). I’m praying that at least one or all three of them come back as chromosomally normal.  We have only 3 and it’s a bit scary…

So here's the summary so far.

Follicles: 16

 Eggs: 11

 Mature eggs: 7

 Fertilized: 6

 Made it to day 3/5:  Five made it to day 3 and three made it to day 5 blastocysts

 Fresh or FET: Frozen (since we’re waiting for the PGS genetic testing results)

 Transfer date: most likely mid-November if the genetic test results come back normal and my uterine lining is thick enough by then.

 How many transferring: 1 (praying hard it will happen and will stick)