About My Embryos

Thanks everyone for all the birthday wishes.  I had a low key but pretty nice birthday.  To celebrate, Babe and I went out to dinner at a fancy restaurant that provided complimentary wine and dessert.  He kept telling me he didn't know what to do for my big 40th, nor what to get me for a birthday gift.  In the end he ended up getting me what I wanted exactly, a Kin.dle Paper.white.  And I was just about ready to order it myself from Ama.zon!  Not only that, that stealthy hubby of mine managed to throw a SURPRISE birthday party with the family at the park near my house the day after my birthday.  Sneaky little bugger!  In the end, I had a pretty awesome 40th birthday.  Don't forget to sign up for my birthday giveaway if you have not already done so.  Tomorrow, Sunday is the last day to sign up.

Last Friday, I emailed Carol, the embryologist at NEDC and found a few more things about the embryos we adopted.

Carol was able to tell us the quality of our embryos when they were cryopreserved.  However, that does not mean that they will be the same quality when thawed and culture to transfer.  The embryos will be re-graded after the thaw.   We will be presented with pictures and their new grades at the time of transfer.

This was Carol's explanation of the embryos to me:

• For blastocysts (which is what we adopted), the embryos are normally graded with a number and two letters.   
• The number is how expanded the embryo was at the time of cryopreservation and really does not have anything to do with the quality.  Excellent embryos can be anywhere from 2-6, with a fully expanded embryo being a 5, and a hatched embryo being a 6.  
• The first letter is the intercell mass which becomes the baby, and excellent quality are A & B, and then the letter goes down from there (C, D, etc.)
• The second letter is the trophectoderm which becomes the placenta and again A & B are excellent quality.
• From our first donor, the five embryos are graded at 3AA, 3AA, 3AA, 6AA and 4AA (all excellent quality embryos according to the embryologist).  The embryos are frozen in three vials - 2 vials with 2 embryos each, and one vial with one embryo.
• From our second donor, all three embryos are graded at 4AA (again all excellent quality embryos according to the embryologist).  The embryos are frozen individually, one embryo per straw.

Because our embryos are all at the blastocyst stage, we will not need to do assisted hatching, which would have cost us an additional $525.  Also, all our embryos are already at NEDC so we do not need to pay any additional cost for shipping.  Yay!