Thursday, July 21, 2022

The Fertilisation

Like I shared in my previous post, we were waiting for the embryologist to contact us. A day felt like a year to us.

The centre did call me the next day after OPU but it was the nurse over the phone. She was checking on me if I was having any discomfort or worse, bleeding. I told her I was feeling fine and there's nothing to worry (I was playing Dragon Age: Inquisition on PS4 when she called).

On Day 3 post-OPU, the embryologist finally contacted us!

He updated us that out of the 17 eggs collected, 15 were matured eggs. All 15 were fertilised and here comes the grading - 4 good, 5 fair and 6 poor. All of these embryos will be cultured to Day 5 to reach blastocyst which is an early stage of an embryo which is also the ideal stage for transfer to my uterus. 

Hence, the wait continued until we received another call from the embryologist in the morning on Day 6 (1 day late). 

Out of 15, 3 reached blastocyst stage. The remaining 12 went arrested. There's one most outstanding embryo which I believed to be the first to be transferred into my uterus. Since I was not suited for fresh embryo transfer, all 3 embryos were frozen. After the call, he sent me an email on the report and time-lapse embryo imaging (shown below).


There are 15 dishes and the top 3 are dish 1, 6 and 12. They are graded as 5AA, 4BA and 5AB. I did think the embryo in dish 2 could make it but it was graded as 5XB. Hence, it was not chose to be frozen. As the embryologist did not explain to be what these grading mean, I went to look up in internet. 

The number is the size of the blastocyst (Grade 1-6), first alphabet is the inner cell mass quality (Grade A-C) that will develop into a fetus and finally the outer layer quality (Grade A-C) that will form into a placenta. After I understood a little bit on the grading, I knew why 5XB was disqualified. 

What's next?

To go back to the centre again when my second menstrual period came. Hence, another waiting game..

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