IVF egg collection results

[SoManyMs]

Hello! First time posting here.
So I’m in a same-sex couple and have just had my first round of egg collection on Friday, had 22 eggs collected of which 17 fertilised. By day 3 I was told 16 of those were ‘top quality’ embryos so I was feeling really hopeful for today’s day 5 update. Got the call and was told that only 5 of the 16 had made it to blastocyst, and none had particular good grades based on what I’ve seen online (5BB, 3BB, 4BC, 4CB-x2). They also said that the other 11 were early blastocyst so have left them to see if they’ll grow any more by tomorrow and will update, fingers crossed for some more. I just feel a little bit baffled as to how so many of these ‘top quality’ embryos at day 3 can only result in relatively quite few blastocysts and none of them being top quality at that stage? I wonder if anything went wrong, something was wrong with my eggs or they just weren’t destined to be. Any advice would be greatly appreciated because I didn’t really get much from the clinic!
Thanks 😊

22 is an enormous number. Anything over 15 puts you at risk of OHSS. Are you in the UK? The reason I ask is because the UK approach seems to think it’s better to have quality over quantity. So next round (if this one isn’t successful) they may change the protocol or meds slightly to get fewer but better eggs (and if they don’t suggest this I’d really question why). In my experience larger numbers tend to drop more.

Hi, can I ask your age? I went through similar, the thing you have to remember is it literally only takes one. When they take them out they are not all at the right stage to make it to blastocyst stage, so some could have needed a bit longer in you to develop.

I had a similar amount taken out, then ended up with only 3 that made it being good enough to implant. One of those being my child.

It really does depend on so many variables and can change at any point. I would say that's a good result so far so please try not to overthink it. Our clinic were really good at giving us updates that made a lot of sense.

Good luck.

The drop off rate is horrifying isn’t it? Even though you know it’s going to happen.

5 Blastocysts is actually still a really reasonable haul, and embryo grading is very subjective. They don’t go implanting ones with little hope generally.

For comparison I had 12 eggs, 9 were mature, 5 fertilised and got 1 day 5 blastocyst, grade 5BC. That one is now my DS. I really hope this works out for you.

Thanks for such quick replies everybody! I am in the UK and I’m 35 as of Sunday. The plan was to have a fresh transfer but by my 3rd scan they saw how many follicles that were growing so advised it would be frozen because of the OHSS risk. My nurse who did the scans did advise that there was a good few smaller follicles there so I actually couldn’t believe it that so many were described as top quality embryos at day 3! Think that’s the main reason I’ve felt so disappointed in today’s result because that earlier one had been so surprisingly promising.
It’s reassuring to see that 5 still seems to be a good number though 😊

I had

15 eggs
13 mature - ICSI
12 embryos.
Three 5 day blastocysts and one 6 day blastocyst

Pregnant from first frozen transfer

I’m afraid that they do, I was told swconds before mine was implanted that my blastocyst had “almost no chance bug we’ll go ahead as it’s all we’ve got.”

No it did not work.

Anyway OP that’s a fantastic response to the drugs, I only had 3 eggs collected and 1 fertilised which failed.

Fingers crossed for you but whatever happens this cycle it is great news that your body responds to the drugs so well.

Little update: another little blast sneakily made it through yesterday and 3 more today! The new ones were a 4CB and the others were CCs but that makes 9 in total so I’m pleased with that!! 😊😊