The call!

The headline news is that 1 embryo is ready to freeze today, and 2 may be ready tomorrow.

So far, so good. Then I asked how they compared to day 3. Apparently on day 3 I had:

Two 9-celled embryos.
Two 6-celled embryos.
One 5-celled embryo.

He said that one of the 9 cells is the one that is good to go today. The other 9-cell is a non-expanded grade 2 blastocyst and is one of the ones that may be good to go tomorrow. I guess once it expands. (?) Then he said that the one that was 5 cells is the other one that may be good tomorrow, and is a compacting embryo so isn't quite to blast yet. So I said "oh, so the 5-celled one is doing better than the 6-celled ones?" But he said that the 6-celled embryos are both blastocysts but are non-expanded grade 3's.

I guess a grade 3 isn't good enough for freezing. (?) But if we're doing CGH why not freeze everything that isn't clearly dead and see what comes out with the test results? Of course, I didn't ask him that point, as I was a bit confused by then. He said they'll keep them all in culture medium for another day and watch them in case they improve. It would be nice if they did improve. I think I'll have to go off and see if I can find out their freezing criteria.

My guess is that I'm going to end up with two - both of the 9-celled guys from day 3, although I hope my little compacting embryo puts on a growth spurt and catches up. But at least the one that is good to go today sounds healthy. I only hope that it really IS healthy.

At least they're all still alive today, so that's one good thing!

ETA: It seems like they only freeze expanded blastocysts. I found this on their website, so they seem pretty rigid on this and presumably won't freeze an embryo that isn't expanded. I guess that's more important than the grade:

Unexpanded blastocyst: A fully "competent" blastocyst, given enough time (an extra day) to develop in culture, will always expand due to the formation of a fluid filled center (blastocele). Failure to expand indicates "incompetence".