jindc wrote:My first cycle, 5 mature, 4 fertilized with ICSI, by day 5 there were 3 blasts - two of which were higher quality - and one morula. We transferred the two high quality blasts and the other two weren't freezable. Not sure of outcome, antagonist protocol with lupron trigger.

I felt better about the lack of freezable embryos by reading on a clinic's web site (not mine, judt in a general search) that only 20% of all embryos are truly freezable quality (can survive freeze and thaw). Good luck!!

Anonymous wrote:
That's not true about embryo survival--if the clinic uses vitrification, 80% +, and at some clinics, 90% + survive the thaw. I don't believe that they have to be of a certain "quality" to survive. I had two frozen at day 2, both survived the thaw and divided afterward--and I'm AMA, and didn't get pregnant, so they weren't super embryos.

I think clinics like SG put "stringent" quality requirements on freezing embryos because they'd rather have repeat business. Despite being so "stringent", SG has a very low FET success rate. Other clinics have a much higher rate and I'll bet it's because they're 1) better labs with better freezing and thaw and 2) they freeze more embryos, giving more of them a chance, as how they look does not seem to be a good reflection on their chromosomal normality/abnormality, which is the only important thing as far as whether it's a viable embryo.

jindc wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
That's not true about embryo survival--if the clinic uses vitrification, 80% +, and at some clinics, 90% + survive the thaw. I don't believe that they have to be of a certain "quality" to survive. I had two frozen at day 2, both survived the thaw and divided afterward--and I'm AMA, and didn't get pregnant, so they weren't super embryos.

I think clinics like SG put "stringent" quality requirements on freezing embryos because they'd rather have repeat business. Despite being so "stringent", SG has a very low FET success rate. Other clinics have a much higher rate and I'll bet it's because they're 1) better labs with better freezing and thaw and 2) they freeze more embryos, giving more of them a chance, as how they look does not seem to be a good reflection on their chromosomal normality/abnormality, which is the only important thing as far as whether it's a viable embryo.

Wouldn't the embry still have to be high quality for it to be worth freezing? Either way, ours were considered high quality enough to freeze. Ours were one not great quality 5 day and one that stopped developing at day 4.

Anonymous wrote:

jindc wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
That's not true about embryo survival--if the clinic uses vitrification, 80% +, and at some clinics, 90% + survive the thaw. I don't believe that they have to be of a certain "quality" to survive. I had two frozen at day 2, both survived the thaw and divided afterward--and I'm AMA, and didn't get pregnant, so they weren't super embryos.

I think clinics like SG put "stringent" quality requirements on freezing embryos because they'd rather have repeat business. Despite being so "stringent", SG has a very low FET success rate. Other clinics have a much higher rate and I'll bet it's because they're 1) better labs with better freezing and thaw and 2) they freeze more embryos, giving more of them a chance, as how they look does not seem to be a good reflection on their chromosomal normality/abnormality, which is the only important thing as far as whether it's a viable embryo.

Wouldn't the embry still have to be high quality for it to be worth freezing? Either way, ours were considered high quality enough to freeze. Ours were one not great quality 5 day and one that stopped developing at day 4.

"High quality" without genetic testing doesn't mean much--if you are on the forums for CCRM, for example, lots of the women do testing, and often their worst looking embryos are normal, the best looking abnormal--my friend there, as just one example, had three embryos, the BEST looking one was chromosomally abnormal, the other two were fine. They were frozen at Day 3, she is now pregnant from that FET.

I also believe that embryos do better in you than in a lab, so some that they trash may have survived inside you, had they frozen them for use in an earlier (2 day or 3 day) transfer.

A friend has a niece that they affectionately refer to when discussing their fertility journey as "C-", because that's the grade of the embryo that led to her. She would have been tossed by Shady Grove had she been one of the "leftovers" from a cycle. Meanwhile, as we know, great-looking A embryos fail to produce pregnancies all the time. So I don't believe the "high quality" thing is a legit reason to toss embryos. You cannot know which are high quality truly, without genetic testing.

Shady Grove is really about playing the odds and cashing in on them, there is nothing personalized or compassionate about their practice. There, I feel like there may be the odd doctor that cares if you get pregnant but overall, it's pretty much, in their minds, your fault (your eggs) if you don't--they rarely examine their practices to improve them, unless it improves their profits or stats, or after some new approach has been proven somewhere else.

It's all cost-benefit to them, not about helping any particular patient get pregnant.