Microarray results are back

My husband, Will, and I were out walking little Ms. Moxie yesterday evening down by the Hudson River when Will's Blackberry rang. It was Danielle, the genetics counselor in Denver, calling to say that our microarray chromosomal testing results were in.

Will told me later that his heart leapt into his throat as soon as she identified herself, but that his apprehension eased a bit when she said to put her on speaker phone (I guess Will thinks you can't tell people devastating news via speaker phone?). Since too much ambient noise makes outdoor speaker phone usage infeasible in Manhattan, Will graciously handed the phone to me and we strained to listen together to the news.

Can't believe the results are back this fast.

The samples shipped to the lab on March 23 (so 15 days from shipping to results - amazing). Heck, the egg retrieval was less than a month ago, on March 12.

And the news? The news is good, folks. Can you believe it? Mo and Will get some actual good news for once! Hallelujah!

Three of our four remaining blastocysts came back as euploid. Euploid! All 23 pairs of chromosomes normal! Who would ever have thought?!!!!

You want to know what is the wildest thing? All three of our normals are embryos that never would have been considered contenders (and actually never would have even existed) at our New York clinic - #2 in the country.

That's because one of our normal embryos was harvested immature and matured in vitro, which my New York clinic doesn't do. And the other two normals are our day 7 blastocysts. Usually, you want to have your embryo develop into a blastocyst by day 5, day 6 tops. Day 7 is sort of unheard of, so these embryos in almost any other situation would have been discarded as nonviable. But they are chromsomally a-ok. We are considering these three our darkhorse embryos, because without a lot of finessing (and patience) in the lab, they would never even be here.

And all the rest of our blastocysts? The ones that developed appropriately, on time, and in the usual way? ALL ABNORMAL.

Huh.

So we are thrilled. Super thrilled. Cautious at the same time, because this still feels a million miles away from an actual dirty diaper. But rejoicing nonetheless.

At the same time, we are beginning to try to figure out what to make of the fact that all of our outliers are normal whereas all of the typical front runners are aneuploid. And trying to suss out what in vitro maturation or Day 7 blast status might mean in terms of implantation potential.

But this is undeniably, unbelievably good news!!

We are capable of making normal embryos!!! What an amazing thing!

We are so grateful we finally took the plunge and trekked out to Denver.

Is it possible that our lives could change?

That we could actually be parents?

One step at a time, but also completely...

Mindblowing.

Mo

P.S. See below for the the obsessive version, if it is of interest.

Embryo #03

Day 6 blastocyst, grade 4AA

Was immature when retrieved and fertilized with Day 2 ICSI after in vitro maturation:

FISH testing: No diagnosis

Microarray testing: NORMAL!!!

Embryo #05

Day 7 blastocyst (very unusual to culture this far), grade 4AB

FISH testing: Normal

Microarray testing: NORMAL!!!

Embryo #06

Another miracle Day 7 blastocyst, grade 6BB

FISH testing: Normal

Microarray testing: NORMAL!!!

Embryo #07

Day 6 blastocyst, grade 4BB

FISH Testing: Normal
Microarray testing: Monosomy 13

Embryo #10

Day 6 blast, grade 3BB

FISH Testing: XXX

Microarray testing: Monosomy 15 and Monosomy 21
(interestingly, the XXX didn't show up on the microarray, which means that either the FISH test was in error, OR that this one is triploid in addition to the two monosomies)

Embryo #15

Day 6 blastocyst, grade 4BB

FISH testing: XXY

Microarray testing: XXY

Embryo #18

Day 6 blastocyst, grade 3AB

FISH testing: Mosaic (6 cells normal, 1 cell XYY, 1 cell XXY). Two mitotic errors

Microarray testing: Monosomy 13