Like I said in the Egg Retrieval blog, our appointment with the embryologist arrived exactly 2 weeks after the retrieval day. This hospital has kept its word once again.
We arrive at the hospital, following Covid secure rules, we take off our personal face masks and replace them with hospital surgical ones, we sanitise our hands and are directed upstairs to the same corridor we went to for our consents appointment. We do not get chance to take seat in the waiting area as the embryologist comes to met us. He escorts us to his room. They are very efficient here - impressive at every turn.
He explains the thawing of and culture process of the rhe embryos, shows us lots of diagrams of different embryos and how they will develop in the lab. He explains that ideally all our embryos will be taken out of the deep freeze, then be thawed and then cultivated in the embryology lab. Best case scenario would be all of our Pro-Nucleate embryos would cultivate into blastocyst embryos (the best type where the cells double, double and then double again.) However sometimes this won't happen and those embryos would be better in the womb (prime environment for embryos). Worst case scenario all embryos would thaw, but none of them would cultivate.
None of this would be known however, until we request treatment and my womb is ready to receive an embryo. We also have a big decision to make - How many embryos would we like to be transferred at a time. The maximum is 2. However this comes with warnings and we both have to agree with our decision. The embryologist explains that the human body is genetically designed to carry one baby at a time, natural multiple births happen and mothers are fine. However in this case, as it is being scientifically assisted, adding extra risk to the mother is inadvisable. He also told us that blastocyst embryos have a high chance of splitting into identical twins, so a multiple pregnancy is a risk anyway. If we made the decision for a two embryos transfer it would one blastocyst and one none that isn't cultivating well (like I described earlier).
We both decided that one blastocyst embryo would be best. That way we would have the best chance of success, as blastocyst embryos have the highest rate of success. If we ended up having twins, then double the blessing, there are twins in the family already and another set would fit in perfectly.
The next stage could begin, like all others, at the arrival of my next period. I would need to call again to request treatment and would get confirmation, or not, that afternoon. Until then we can go back to our 'normal way of life. (Whatever normal is in 2020).
We sign all the paperwork and we are told that they can store our embryos until December 2030. He also explained that there was a slight risk that all our embryos could thaw and none of them would be viable, there is a low risk of this, but a risk he was duty bound to make us aware of. A couple of our age and with our healthy lifestyle have a 30-40% chance of success and we accept that.
We have God on our side!
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