BOO YA!

That's what my husband yelled out after I got off the phone with the IVF lab this morning. He insisted that I make it my blog headline. I totally agree! (He also told our first donor cycle to suck it....but as a headline, not so good.)

A major shoutout is in order to The Universe for coming through today. I didn't have to make any hard decisions. That's right, we had FIVE, count 'em FIVE 8-celled embryos, 3-7 cells, 1-5 cell and 1-10 cell. Boo ya!!! Damn straight! We're going to a 5 day blastocyst transfer!

This is the kind of response I expected in our last donor cycle. The benefit of using a donor is that their eggs are much higher quality (because the donor and the eggs are younger). During the last donor cycle we had 18 fertilized embryos. We immediately froze 1/2 of them. Of the remaining 9, "the best" embryos on day 3 were 1-8 cell and 1-7 cell. I knew that something was up right then. Of course, after using all 18 of those embryos and having none of them stick, we learned it the hard way.

But we're moving on from that. And I'm so excited!!! REALLY EXCITED!!!!

There's just one thing I should mention. During my research last night I read that transferring 2 at the blastocyst stage means a 73% of having twins. Could that possibly be true? Oh boy!

Aw Snap!!!!

I set my alarm for 7am since the drs office was calling between 7-7:30. I then proceeded to torture D out of his dream state. Apparently, if you make little noises in someone's ear it is very, very loud to them. Who knew????? ;P

They called around 8 so by then we were totally awake. We couldn't believe the news.

Now let me preface by saying that in the last 2 cycles the best results we had was 1-8 cell embryo and a couple 5 and 6's and the rest were all 4s. Today, we have SIX - 8 cells, 1- 6cell, 2-5cell and 7-4cell. The criteria for going to blastocyst at my clinic is 5- 8 cells so we are officially going to a 5 day transfer.

I am so stunned at the difference the co-culture has made. I wish they suggested it sooner. (Oh wait, I was the one who suggested it..but I digress.) We only expect to get 2 or 3 blasts to transfer, but the idea is that those will be the strong ones with no age-related abnormalities. Think lots of healthy growing embryonic thoughts will ya?