This morning I went to HRC for my transfer - if there was going to be one! The results from GSN testing come in early on day 5, so there's no way of knowing whether you'll have a transfer before you walk in the door. I then had to wait a while before they brought me back. Dr. Potter came in and told me the results and showed me the photos. To recap, I had 13 eggs retrieved. 8 fertilized normally. 7 were biopsied and the cells sent to GSN. Of the 7, THREE were normal. One XX blast (starting to hatch, but not fully "hatching" - he rated it a "B or B minus"), one XX compacting morula, and one XY compacting morula that was grainy (we did Microsort but knew an opposite could pop in). Oh the agony of what to do. I called DH (he was at the park with our boys) and we talked and talked and in the end we decided to stick with our original plan and transfer 1. The two morulas may not make it to freeze. They will watch them one more day and see. I was really hoping for 1 to transfer and 1 to freeze . . .

I am so glad we stuck to our guns and went with GSN. When it looked like we weren't going to be producing a ton of eggs we briefly discussed dropping down to 2-probe, but we are sure glad we didn't. I'll explain why, but first here are our GSN results:

Embryo # GSN Result Status on morning of Day 5

4 46; XX compacting morula

2 46; XX Blastocyst

6 46; XY compacting morula, grainy

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3 47; XX; Tri/polysomy 8 compacting morula

1 30; XX; Nullisomy 1, 18, Monosomy 5,6,7,8,9,10,12,13,14,15,17,21; Del/Dup 4 Not developing

5 53; XX; Tri/polysomy 2, 8, 9, 10, 13, 16, 22 Blastocyst

7 53; XXX; Tri/polysomy 3, 4, 8, 14, 16, 21, Sex-Chr; Del/Dup 7 Blastocyst



If we had done the 2 probe, then we would have had 6 normals out of 7. With one being XY we would have had 5 to choose from. One was obviously not developing so you'd not pick that one. That would have left us with 4 to choose from. The very best looking blast was #5, which has many problems. The next best looking blast was #2, which we transferred. So if we had been willing to transfer 2 then we'd have ended up where we are. But we felt very strongly about only transferring 1, and if we'd just done 2 probe we would have transferred the bad one and frozen the good one. So for us GSN was the right way to go all the way.

FYI, they are going to watch embryo #3. If by tomorrow it has developed into a blast they will re-biopsy it and freeze it. The cell will be sent to GSN to be tested to see if perhaps the one chromosomal error was a result of mosaicism, meaning that the other cells are normal and this one just had the one error. Dr. Potter explained that this was the only embryo that may be a candidate for re-testing since it only had one error as opposed to multiple errors. So we will see, but he didn't sound terribly optimistic about it. FYI, the "confidance level" that the error is indeed correct is 82%. Confidance levels for most all the other errors were equal to or greater than 99%. Confidance levels for all the "euploid" chromosomes was equal to or greater than 99%.

With regard to the origin of the problems, for embryo #1 it was mixed (both paternal and maternal, but Dr. P said most of the problems were paternal), for #3 and #7 it was maternal, and for #5 it was mixed.

I have to say, I was completely happy with the care I was provided by HRC. Dr. Potter, Lori, and the other staff are all really nice people and I couldn't have asked for more. I also feel that with regard to outcome, they did an awesome job managing and maximizing my cycle.

Now I'm just resting and hoping this one sticks! And I'm really looking forward to going HOME, though it has been a really fun vacation with my husband and boys.