Day 6 unexpanded blastocyst-is this as bad as I think?

Ok day 1 of my tww and going craaaaazy already ;)

FET today, have already used 3 day 5 blasties this year and now feel like I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel with my 2 leftover day 6 blasties.
The scientist came in and told us this blasty survived thawing ( good), 70% survived (?? not so good??, last time was 100%), and it hadn't expended ( pretty sure thats not good at all), the nurse said- 'oh thats ok they're funny little things'- oh dear. Got that sinking feeling, then while waiting for FS i was freaking out to DH who was telling me to be positive. Nope, no can do sorry.

Questions-
-Is 70% thawing survival rate ok or cr@p? Obviously 100% is better but I don't know what the bottom limit is.

-If it hasn't expanded now, what chance is there that it will if it is already day 6?

-Has anyone gotton pregnant from a similar situation?

-why didn't I insist on transferring both the day 6ers?

I didn't want to ask the scientist these questions in case the answers made me more depressed. I hate being so negative and writing this cycle off and i know you can never tell what will work and what won't but I'm not feeling good about it.

Saffy - I can't give you advice that will tell you this is the one - but I CAN say that it isn't an exact science, which is why it takes some of us longer to get pregnant than others via IVF. My blastos never expanded, and I think from memory at my clinic if less than 60% survivied the thaw then they wouldn't put it back. That means for you that it was considered a good enough chance to put it back!

As my FS told me, some of the ugliest (to quote him) embryos turn into beautiful babies. My DS was my third blasto we tried, others were better looking, but clearly for some reason he infact was the best one. It's hard to be positive, but try and remember that they want you to succeed to - if they didn't think it was worth putting back in, they would have said so.

GL and FX for some positive news in time for Christmas :)

On paper, maybe it isn't so good, but there's obviously still a chance so you just can't know till it's back - it might be the one. :goodluck:

Hi Saffy, so sorry you have to worry about this on top of the stress of the TWW. I did some research on this myself as before doing assisted hatching I had never had an expanded or hatching blast. This info is both good and bad, good in that blasts expand and compact, bad in that expansion is a good sign after being frozen.

There’s another interesting feature of blastocysts and that is their ability to expand- and contract. Expanded blastocysts may “collapse” in culture and look unexpanded. With time, the blastocyst will re-pump the fluid and “re-expand”.* A “compacted” blastocyst is likely a transient condition in which the fully pumped up blastocyst has “deflated’. As long as the blastocyst is capable of expansion, this temporary deflation is not a problem. In fact, prior to vitrification, many programs routinely deflate their blastocysts to optimize the vitrification procedure. After freezing and thawing, a sign of recovery is re-inflation or re-expansion of the blastocyst, showing that the embryo is alive and pumping- literally.". Not sure of this helps, I hope some.

But in saying that some one just told me after my recent transfer that all FSs and labs want good stats, if they did not think your embie had a good chance they would not transfer and would have thawed your other one. Don't give up hope before it is over. Wishing you all the best. Xx