I’m a curious person. (Can you tell?) So I called the embryologist today to ask some questions about my recently transferred B3. She confirmed what I thought I heard while relaxing on Vicodin—the “hatching” B3 was actually a “hatched” B3. In other words, it had completely escaped from its zona pellucida and was ready to implant. The embryologist confirmed that it would have likely implanted the day of my transfer, if it was going to happen.
I asked her opinion of how often they see a “hatched” blastocyst. She said maybe 1/50. (So like I was told on transfer day, rare but not super rare.) She also told me that if it was hatched when it was thawed, then it had frozen hatched. I asked what she thought about that—i.e., was it better or worse to freeze it after it hatched. She said it was rare enough that she had no idea, but if it thawed and survived, it’s probably fine. I pressed for her opinion of whether it was more likely to be successful because it completely hatched, but she had no opinion. She did tell me that they re-rated it after it thawed, and it was still a B3. I pressed her—was it rough looking?—but her patience with me was waning, so all I got was, it had a lot of fragmentation (unclean division of the cells, not good), so it was a B3. Here are some random links to info about rating blastocysts:
I tell you what, I’m looking at his/her picture right now, and he/she looks pretty darn good. Round little ball with some small masses (cells?) around the edges and a very loose clump on the right side. Not like the sad smashed butterfly we used last time! Of course, it looks like a bit chaotic in there, hence the B3 rating. (I think the more orderly things look, the higher the rating.)
Anyway, I’m taking the fact that it completely hatched as a good sign. Every step further along the path is a good one! And science is on my side!
The authors of the linked article claim, “This is the first ever study involving exclusive transfer of spontaneously hatching/hatched blastocyst/s. Our results demonstrate that SHBT [spontaneously hatching/hatched blastocyst transfer] gives a distinct and significantly higher clinical pregnancy, embryo implantation, and live birth rate compared with EBT [expanded blastocyst transfer].” Of course they found the pregnancy rates to be especially striking with the highest quality blastocysts. (They called it “An extremely strong correlation of IR [implantation rate] with top-quality blastocysts in SHBT [spontaneously hatching/hatched blastocyst transfer] group….”) So not super helpful to me. Another interesting finding is that slightly higher than ¼ of day 5 blastocysts hatch on day 6. The authors speculate that the blastocysts that fail to hatch by day 6 may also fail to hatch if implanted, which is obviously incompatible with pregnancy.
So, where does this leave us? Who the hell knows? I have some positive symptoms. Namely really sore boobs. Of course sore boobs are caused by elevated estrogen levels, which I am taking in pill form three times a day. So it’s hard to read too much into that. (Another reason IVF is a bitch—the drugs you take can make you feel pregnant even if you’re not.)
What I WILL get excited about is implantation bleeding. Sweet, sweet implantation bleeding. Interestingly, there’s an implantation bleeding prediction calculator:
(What will they think of next?) It says my most likely day for implantation bleeding is today. Hmm…. Cross your fingers!
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