What's considered a "good" quality embryo?

[Anonymous]

I know about the classes but what about cell numbers? Is there anywhere I can look to read about this?

[Anonymous]

I'm no expert, but I've read various medical journals throughout my "fertility journey". From what I've read, a good embryo will have minimal fragmentation, and that it will be 7 or 8 cells by day 3. I've read that embryos that are growing too slowly or too quickly are not necessarily "good". That said, I have several friends who have gotten pregnant with embryos that weren't the "ideal" number of cells on day 3. I think that they expect the embryo to be a blastocyst, and starting to break out of the outer shell by day 5. Once blastocyst, there are too many cells to count. Wish I could direct you to a specific article, but look in pubmed for information. HTH.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for replying. I did find a useful link about fragmentation but I didn't know as much about rate/number of cells. I had just had a transfer that day and the doc I was dealing with (first time I had met that one) did not offer a lot of information about what made an embryo good yet expected me to look at a chart and pick the ones that would get transferred. Although I'm generally a person who researches things to death I let go with this and just trusted the docs to give me info (to a large extent, not completely) and was somewhat surprised by this guy's demeanor.

[Anonymous]

You mean the doc wanted you to choose which of the potential embryos would be transferred out of a larger number? It's my understanding that the policy (at least at SG, and I wuold imagine elsewhere) is that you transfer the best embryo(s) and freeze the rest, if there are any remaining that would survive the freeze. Did he want you to choose the number of embyros?

I can see a scenario (and I was a little upset this option wasn't gievn to me) in whcih case the qusetion is what do you want to use now vs. what do you want to freeze. For instance, doyou want to giev yuorself the best chance of prengnacy now or do you want to giev yourself an okay shot at pregnancy how and an okay shot later- so cumulatievly, you have the best shot of a child (or children).