Blastocyst grading-how relevant do you think it is??

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Hi all,
I have recently had a freeze all egg collection-I’m lucky to have blasts to freeze and really do appreciate that-but I can’t help feeling a little niggle that I don’t have any top grade AAs. Do people have any success stories with lower graded blasts?? I do have some front runners at B+B+ and AB- Thanks for reading.

Hi see attached photo.....
From what I've read the grading is more for the clinic to determine which should be frozen more than anything else. It is very subjective - one embryologist could have a completely different view to another and they also tend to be more cautious and grade lower than what they actually might be

I've had a 3BA failed cycle and have another 3BA and a 5BC frozen. But I've read lots of posts online about people who have had failure after failure with top grade AA blasts but had success with a lower grade one x

My 3 year old son was a BC grade, and he's incredible.
Good luck

My friend’s twin pregnancy came from C grade collapsing blastocysts. Basically as long as the blastocyst is formed the clinic will consider transferring it provided there isn’t a better quality one available.

My 4 AA blasto didn’t stick and my 3 AB mc’d. One of my two 3BBs is a 9 w.o. Sleep thief and the other is still on ice.

My clinic wouldn’t freeze anything below a BB as they said chance of thawing ok was so low. My understanding is anything above that has a much better chance regardless of grade / agree that if you look into grading it’s incredibky subjective and one paper I read hardly any embryologists gave the same embryo the same rating!

I have a day 5 BB on ice and a day 6 AA - interestingly they said they’d use the day 5 first even though it’s lower quality as “it did what it was meant to in the correct time frame” whilst the day 6 was a “bit slow!”

Got pregnant with two day 3’s though - (one baby) they said should be 8 cells on day 3 and neither were but were transferred anyway!!

I try not to focus too much on the grading. I miscarried a top grade at 8 weeks.

I did mild ivf so never had enough embies to go to blast, but my A grade day three embie miscarried. My 5 cell slowcoach that looked like a no hoper is now a lively four year old. The embie looked so poor that after transfer the embryologist came out and chatted to me about moving to donor eggs. I left sobbing but the cycle worked.

It is quite superficial. I had 5 great embryos. I miscarried one at 8 weeks, the genetic testing on the others showed complex abnormalities so we're back to square one again.

They'll soon be focussing in chromosonally normal embryos rather than current grading systems as tbh it's a load of tosh. You can have AA embryos and they can be chromosonally rubbish.

@losingfaith so sorry to hear that. I recently miscarried an all As embryo and then had 3 more on ice which after pgs all had abnormalities so back to square one too

@PenguNoodle sorry you're in the same boat. We had to pay for the pgs and will do again. I think it is far more reliable than the grading system. It's a shame pgs isn't done as standard here (believe it is in the usa), but it is obviously expensive, although worth it in my opinion - had not had it done, I could have potentially had another 4 miscarriages (I've already had 3 including a loss at 5 months and an ectopic last year).

@losingfaith oh no so sorry, I also lost my baby girl at 21 weeks and it was the hardest time. Then another loss at 8 weeks, then went for the PGS because I couldn't face another heart break. I really thought I would have at least one normal embryo from PGS, but yet again very unlucky. It's just so hard! The doctors have said we have been incredibly unlucky. Hopefully next time luck will be on both of our sides.

What are your next steps? I'm waiting for my period to come back before Stimming again, but it's mild Stimming so doing 3 cycles