Embryo Progress

My doctors were able to retrieve 16 eggs during the egg retrieval on Friday. We were obviously thrilled! On Saturday morning they called to let us know the results of the fertilization. Only one of the eggs was immature so they did not attempt to fertilize that one. They performed ICSI, intracytoplasmic sperm injection (they pretty much just inject a single sperm into each egg) on 15 of the eggs and one of them was not successfully fertilized. 14 embryos! Thrilled again!

Brian spoke with a nurse, Sandy, today and got an update on the embryos. We were prepared for a few of them to stop growing or not develop properly as this often happens. To our surprise all 14 of the embryos have continued to grow! The majority of the embryos are grade 1 and 2, which Sandy said was "excellent!" 2 or 3 of them are grade 3 which is "fair" according to their standards. The grading scale is just a way to numerically determine which embryos are most likely to result in successful pregnancy. The grade 3 embryos could result in a pregnancy as healthy and successful as a grade 1. The scale is just a way to measure probability, I guess. Sandy did say one of the embryos was "compacted" but she didn't really explain that to Brian. From what I have found online that is just another stage of embryo development. 

In regards to my healing from the egg retrieval, that procedure is no joke! It was a lot more invasive than I had anticipated. My stomach has hurt since the procedure and there's still a lot of pressure in my abdomen. I woke up around 4 AM on sunday morning in excruciating pain. I thought my abdomen was about to rupture it hurt so bad. Brian woke up to me screaming and was obviously pretty freaked out. He had to help me sit up due to increased pain whenever I tried to do so on my own. I never realized how much you use your core muscles just to sit up in bed. It turned out my bladder was just extremely full and on top of the swelling from the procedure it was putting a lot of pressure on my abdomen. 

The embryologist from RGI will be coming tomorrow to take biopsies from each of the embryos. Once the biopsies are retrieved they will freeze the embryos. They will then take the biopsies back to chicago and run the DNA tests to determine which ones have Brian's mutation. In a couple weeks we will know the results and will be ready to prep for the embryo transfer. 

-Emily