Wonderful that all of yours are still growing today! Good luck during this process! It's a long wait till the transfer, but you'll get there.

11:29. First, wonderful news on your own pregnancy!!

Second, thanks for the recommendation. I fear being a high maintenance patient but after getting today's call did decide to send him a note. We are on day 2 and all my fertilized 2 cell embryos from yesterday are still going but the nurse was only able to tell me that they range from 2-6 cells. As you said it, expecatation management is really helpful so if Dr. Sacks can tell me that those still at 2 cells are likely not going anywhere or if the 6 cells are too big already, at least I'll get myself ready for that kind of news on day 5.

Best of luck to you going forward.

If you want reassurance, please do not hesitate to email Dr. Sacks, no matter how much you emailed him previously. I emailed him every single day between my egg retrieval and my 5-day transfer. He was always fast to respond, and he had such a warm welcome to me on the day of my transfer. It might be too early now to tell about egg quality, and he may give you answers like, "well, this is why we want to wait to do a 5-day transfer to see more about quality," but you might get a little insight. One of my embryos was growing faster than others, which to me seemed like a super-baby in the making. But, as he explained, the fast growth was likely a sign that it wasn't going to be high quality, that there'd be a lot of fragmentation. He was right. That embryo did make it to the 5 day stage, but it had a lot of fragmentation, so we didn't choose it for implantation, and it did not survive another day to be able to freeze. So he set my expectations for the process. I'm in my second trimester now, for what it's worth.

Hmm. Interesting 16:33 and 10:07. It turned out I missed a call on my cell phone yesterday (usually called at work) and there was a message from a nurse with my numbers and general reassurance (i.e., just where they should be). I didn't realize there might be more quality related info. this early in the game.

I emailed Dr. Sacks so much during the process with concerns and questions that I don't want to bother him while we are at the stage where there isn't much anyone can do (i.e., no changes to meds or protocol tweaks possible) but of course it would be good to know now if they already know we have some egg quality concerns (just to avoid more devastation later).

I didn't bother with the nurses. I just emailed Dr. Sacks directly, and he provided the information.

When I received information from my CFA nurse, the information was very basic and not particularly useful. She would just say how many made it and give sizes. It turns out that they were not of great quality. We ended up having success with the one good one, but I was really surprised and upset the morning of ET to find out that most of my embies were awful and wouldn't make it to freeze. In hindsight, I should have asked Dr. Sacks to interpret the results for me between ER and ET.

From GW, I got a call from the doctor, but only to tell me the fertilization rate, and then updates as to whether we'd be a 3 or 5 day transfer. I did not receive an update on day 4. My calls were in the morning from the doctor. Whenever I get a call from the nurse, it was always around 1:30/2, after they meet to discuss patients.

I'm not at CFA, but did ICSI, and the eggs are fertilized the day after retrieval. I got a call in the morning to say all was ok. After that, no news is good news.

Thanks so much for that very helpful reply. I didn't know if my monitoring nurse would call (whom I actually got to know much less than Signey and Kim after all the IUI and Clomid cycles leading to IVF) or if one of the lab techs would call.

I am quite sure they told me only how many eggs were retrieved and so hearing how many were mature will be important news.

(And yes, Dr. Sacks is great with email and has always answered my questions. Of which, I've had many!)

My calls from CFA varied, but they were usually somewhere between 11:30 - 2:30. The nurses who make the calls are tied up in the mornings with morning monitoring sessions, so please do not even think about a call before 10/10:30. Remember also that CFA stops answering incoming phone calls at 4pm, so if you're butting up against that time frame, go ahead and call them. On days when I was particularly anxious, I'd call around 1ish or so and ask directly for one of my nurses (Venecia or Wendy, at the time) for an update.

As for ICSI, yes, you'd know by now. That would have been performed yesterday if they did it. Basically your husband should have left his sample yesterday right around the time that your eggs were retrieved, and then shortly after that, same day, the eggs would have been injected with the sperm (for ICSI) or just left to marinate with the sperm (without ICSI).

You'll find out today a couple things - if you didn't already already learn how many of the retrieved eggs were mature, they should be able to tell you that. Not all retrieved are mature and capable of being fertilized. And, then you should find out how many of the mature eggs were successfully fertilized. You can then expect calls every day over the next few days with updates about how your fertilized embryos are progressing - number of cells per day, basically.

It can be a bit overwhelming, but I found it was reassuring to email my doctor (Dr. Sacks) there after hearing about the updates and getting his take on it. He was always, always happy to respond to emails. Very nice man.

Good luck!

I'm used to waiting for calls from my nurse with lab results but now don't know what to expect in terms of embryo updates.

I am only slightly sure I know how many eggs were retrieved and so am anxious to hear confirmation and then, more importantly I guess, get the news for maturity and fertilization. When have other at CFA been called and by whom? Also, if retrieval was yesterday morning, would we know by now if ICSI was needed? (My husband has always had great counts so it isn't expected but I didn't know if they were able to step in after watching for a few hours if nothing wsa happening "naturally"?