Six is a Magic Number

It's a numbers game.  IVF is all about the numbers.  At first it's about how many drugs and how many of vials to take.  Then it's about retrieval.  We retrieved 15 eggs.  13 of those were mature/viable enough to ICSI.  Out of the 13, seven did not fertilize.  If you can do the math, that leaves us with 6 fertilized eggs.  I was initially disappointed by this result.  I mean, we started with FIFTEEN...and only 1/3 are still around...ack!  But, putting it into perspective and repeating the ol' mantra of "it only takes one" over and over in my head, I have to realize that 6 isn't too bad.  Especially considering the first round of IVF, we only had 2 by Day 3 (after starting with 12) and the second time we only had 2 also (after starting with 6).  Of course, they all stopped growing after Day 3.

So here we are on Day One.  Waiting again.  The nurse plans on calling us on Saturday (Day 3) to update us.

That brings us to the 3-day vs. 5-day transfer debate.  Our old clinic seemed to only do Day 5 transfers.  Day 3 wasn't really an option.  Our new clinic is different.  They will do a Day 3 transfer if there is 5 or less embryos to choose from.  6 or more and they will do a Day 5 to increase the odds of picking out the best of the best embryos.  So, that puts us in the Day 5 category based upon numbers.  However, we opted to do a special biopsy of our embryos on Day 3, which will necessitate a Day 5 transfer anyway.

We have opted to dish out the additional dough to do PGS (Preimplantation Genetic Screening) of Chromosomes.  This biopsy of one cell of each embryo on Day 3 will help determine the best embryos for transfer.  It also may give us answers as to why our embryos don't seem to survive after Day 3.  The consent paperwork indicates that at least 50% of fertilizations have the wrong number of chromosomes.  Based upon that, we may have an ok chance of having 3 good embryos.  This test will help determine those.  Again, it's all about the numbers.