We've finally reached the end of the big first half of IVF - we know many have been patiently waiting to see how our retrieval went!
After the egg retrieval the embryologists determine how many of the retrieved eggs are mature enough for fertilization. We gave a set number for them to fertilize and asked to have the rest of the mature eggs frozen for future use if needed. Of the 28 eggs retrieved, 18 were mature. We asked if they could fertilize 10 of the eggs since we knew the odds of the number fertilizing and forming into embabies (embryos) was likely lower, and in many cases around 50%. By Friday last week, we were told we had 8 eggs that were frozen, and of the 10 we had them fertilize 8 of them made it to the next stage as they successfully fertilized.
Then began the waiting game to find out how many of our embabies made it to the next stage to become viable. We were told we'd receive our report Thursday 6/26 but unfortunately we didn't hear anything. We continued to wait, and I put a message to our team asking when we'd get the results - it's really hard to be patient!
Finally Friday as I was walking out of work I checked my portal and found our final report was uploaded. I immediately called Frank and we decided to open it before I got home as neither of us could wait any longer. The reports are a bit hard to read as there wasn't just a set list that said how many made it to blast. Thankfully after some internet searches and being able to finally open the report we saw that of our 8 embabies, SEVEN of them reached the blast stage. We were amazed as everything I've seen in the world of IVF you should prepare yourself to "lose" half of your numbers each step. So by that we would hope that we'd have 4, but we have been blessed with 7. Each one had a grade attached to it on what day they reached the blast stage and how the cells looked. We have 2 that are considered "perfect" and the rest are either just under perfect or in the "good" category.
We are so incredibly thankful to have received this outcome. I can't say how many times I had the thoughts of "what if this doesn't work?" "what happens if we don't have any success?" "could we do this again if we had to?". I'm in a few IVF support groups on Facebook and I see so many women posting they only had 3 or less make it through the process. A huge weight has been lifted from us just knowing that everything we went through this past month has been worth it. Since June 6th I've had 34 shots injected to my body, and have 5 more doses of the most recent one from after egg retrieval to assist with preventing blood clots due to my high estrogen levels.
Now to wait again until we can determine when we can transfer one of our embabies. We're hoping to be able to head back in July as long as my body is ready for it. I'm hoping to start with labs in the next week or so and we'll know more by then. See some images of our embabies below!
These were taken on day 5 - this day 5 of them were frozen, which is huge!
These were taken on day 6 - 2 more were frozen!
The report didn't say for sure that the 8th didn't make it, but we're assuming that since the report only showed that 7 were frozen that this one didn't make it. I asked gemini to enhance the image for us and put a rainbow on the image and this is what it came up with.
Thank you all for the well wishes, supporting messages, and prayers as we've gone through each step through this process. Please keep them coming!
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