Egg Retrieval to 'Blast' Stage

I'm sorry if this has been raised before, but i had my egg retrieval on wednesday where they took 31 eggs - this is too many apparently and i need to have them frozen and have a FET in a couple of cycles time when my bodies hormones stabilise. So yesterday we get the call to say out of the 31 eggs, 25 were suitable for fertilisation and out of the 25, 20 were still going strong. Today we got the call to say that they had frozen 4 and that the other 16 were a tad underdeveloped so they are going to take them to 'blast' stage, and monitor them over the next 6 days and see how they are going then before making a decision whether they will freeze or not. My question is - what the HELL does this mean??????? Is this normal? I just thought after the 2 days they froze what was left? i am meeting with the FS next week to discuss our treatment and outcomes but i'd like to go armed with the knowledge of what he is talking about before i walk in the room!

Thanks Ladies!!!!!

Hi Charlee, congrats on getting at least four embryos to freeze!! Thats great. I am just starting my second round of stim cycle ivf/icsi. First time got 12 eggs, and 2 made to blast- apparently thats "fantastic" even though it doesnt seem like much to me. I think what the scientists want to do with your other 16 is just to give them another chance, a few more days to see if they develop further. Chances are if they are underdeveloped now, and then they freeze them, then they prob wouldnt survive the thaw later on down the track. Just think that by giving them the extra few days (rather than freeze or just discarding them now), you may be lucky and end up with a blast or two...which will give you better odds in the long run. I hope maybe this may have helped a little bit. Extra good luck with your embryos, i really hope things go well for you.:crossfingers:

goodluck on your next FET CYCLE. That is a great egg haul.

what Mel said is correct... going to blasts is better in my opinion because they sort out the embryos that are the strongest and also they can tell which ones are more likely to develop into baby. Slightly better odds.

I ended up with 5 blasts on day 6 (from 17 fertlised eggs) only 2 were deemed suitable to transfer and other 3 they didn't think were okay to freeze (cell structure or ?).

There is a big difference between day 2 and day 5. A lot of embryos die after 3 -4 days through natural attrition so very few end up getting to blastocyst stage anyway. If these day 2 embryos were transferred in either fresh cycle or frozen enbryo cycle - you wouldn't know otherwise.

Previously I had 4 @ 2 day old embryos transferred = BFN - my two blasties are now one year old.

Not many clinics will let transfer more thna one blastocyst but they will day 2-3 embryos.
Blasts have a slightly higher success rate.

Though some clinics won't always let all emrbryos grow to blast stage in case you end up with none ! better to freeze them at day 2 - so there is 'chance' and a transfer IYKWIM .