Today was the day!!

Today was the day we found out about our embryos and transferred. It could not have gone more perfectly!! I hate to get my hopes up after so many months (actually an entire year) of disappointment but I really am excited. Our visit today started with a meeting with the embryologist. He went over the status of our 9 embryos and what their ratings are. Embryos are given a rating sorta like diamonds.

Here is a chart to help you out:

The Gardner blastocyst grading system assigns 3 separate quality scores to each blastocyst embryo:

1. Blastocyst development stage - expansion and hatching status
2. Inner cell mass (ICM) score, or quality
3. Trophectoderm (TE) score, or quality

Expansion grade	Blastocyst development and stage status
1	Blastocoel cavity less than half the volume of the embryo
2	Blastocoel cavity more than half the volume of the embryo
3	Full blastocyst, cavity completely filling the embryo
4	Expanded blastocyst, cavity larger than the embryo, with thinning of the shell
5	Hatching out of the shell
6	Hatched out of the shell

ICM grade	Inner cell mass quality
A	Many cells, tightly packed
B	Several cells, loosely grouped
C	Very few cells

TE grade	Trophectoderm quality
A	Many cells, forming a cohesive layer
B	Few cells, forming a loose epithelium
C	Very few large cells

The goal is to have embryos with a number of 3 or higher and B or higher for both letters.

The bad ones (well not the bad ones just the ones we can't use)

These are ones that we discarded. If you notice the rating on both day 3 and day 5 were the same. You want your embryos to grow between day 3 and 5 and these ones stayed the same and also have a not so good rating of 5C, 7C, and 2C. 

We had a maybe one:

This one is not above a 3 but the AB is excellent quality. The embryologist is going to watch this one and check it tomorrow. If it improves to a 3, 4, or 5 we will be able to freeze it.

Here are our good ones that we will freeze:

Each one of these have a 3 or better and also have a letter higher than a C in both places. Our hope is that if it does not work this time we will be able to thaw one out and try again. If it does work then we can thaw one (or two) out and have more children without having to go through the egg retrieval process again.

And here is the one we transferred:

The rating does not get any better than this. 5AA is a perfect embryo!!!! I would love to show this very first picture to our future child someday.

Like I said earlier, things could not have gone more perfectly. The transfer is really easy, except for the part where you have to have an extremely full bladder. We got there (after I already drank a ton of water) and we met with the embryologist and then they put us in a room to wait for our doctor to do the transfer. At this point I had also taken two Valium....so yes I'm high and trying not to pee everywhere. My nurse came in and said my doctor was stuck in surgery and it would be a few minutes so she let me go to the bathroom and then gave me another bottle of water to refill. A half hour after my scheduled appointment my doctor arrived and we were ready to go. She gets everything in place and then they call the lab to bring over the embryo in a catheter. She transfers the embryo into my uterus and then the lab guy takes the catheter back to the lab to check and make sure the embryo didn't get stuck. It was all clear so now I had to lay in the office for 20 minutes and then we could go home.

I am currently in bed for the next two days and will go back to work on Wednesday. I will have a pregnancy test next Wednesday to find out if I am pregnant!! It's gonna be a long 9 days.