We received a surprise call from the embryology lab this morning. They've kept an eye on our five "immature" oocytes, hoping to mature them in the lab. Turns out three of them matured and when they attempted day 2 ICSI on those, all three fertilized!!!!
In vitro maturation is something our NYC lab doesn't offer and was one of many draws for trekking out to Colorado.
So the total yield stands as follows:
19 eggs retrieved
14 mature
13 fertilized with ICSI
3 more matured in vitro overnight
and all three of those fertilized with day 2 ICSI!
So the grand total is 16 embryos culturing at the Denver lab right now.
Wahooo!
We are hoping hoping hoping that we'll get a good number of blastocysts out of this that can be biopsied using microarray and that maybe, just maybe there is at least one chromosomally normal one in there. Please!
Amidst this fantastic news, we are faced with one remaining decision, and it is a doozy.
We are trying to decide whether to send the frozen embryos we have in NYC to Denver to culture and biopsy as well. We have six embryos slow frozen at the 2pn stage (so very, very early Day 1 embryos). We have been strongly considering sending them to the Denver clinic, thawing, culturing to blast, and adding whatever we get to the blasts we have from this fresh IVF cycle for biopsy. That way, we will know if we have any normal embryos, rather than just taking the risk and transferring a bunch of unknowns.
Will is more in favor of sending the embryos to Denver than I am. I worry about the potential damage of transporting them, thawing and then culturing to blast and then biopsying and then refreezing (with vitrification) and thawing them again later (assuming there is a normal one or two). We could alternately just throw them all in in an FET in NYC in the future and see what happens. Will, justifiably so, doesn't want to sign up for any more miscarriages. I don't either, but am afraid of losing a normal embryo to attrition due to all this monkeying around. These embryos, by the way, are from IVF #2, when I was 36. Not that I had a great track record at that point either, but it's worth noting. We have to decide in the next day or so so that the NY six could join the Denver 16. If we do them separately, we'll owe an additional $6,000 for separate microarray and PGS. No thank you to that!
So the question of the day is, what would you do? A blind FET in NYC or sending the six to Denver to be added to the microarray pot?
Mo
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