Former Egg Donor Who Underwent IVF, Pregnant With Twins!: Post Egg Retrieval: Quality and Number of Eggs Frozen

On day 5 (Tuesday), I received news from the office that only four out of the eight embryos made it to freeze. I felt the blood drain from my face when she told me the news. My thoughts raced back to the day of the retrieval when 14 eggs were retrieved. On Sunday, I was told that 11 had matured, but only 8 were fertilized. I'm still confused why it matters how many I know matured, if they never become fertilized? Is it supposed to make the smaller number that were fertilized sound better? From Sunday, to Tuesday, four out of the eight eggs became blastocysts, and were subsequently able to be frozen. The nurse told me though that the other four were so close to being fertilized that the embryologist would watch them ("babysit") them for a day or two longer to see if they developed into blastocysts. Remember, blastocysts have a stronger chance of implanting because it is a superior, healthy embryo. Impantation is the process of the human blastocyst attachment to the uterus within six to eight days after fertilization.

I got another call on Wednesday from the clinic telling me two more had developed into blastocysts. Even though we had less than half of what we started with, I was grateful that we had two more embryos to potentially work with. Originally, I had 3 excellent eggs, 4 good eggs, and 1 fair egg. On day 5, the embryologist gives them a letter grade. The letter grades are a way of describing the potential an embryo has to implant. Their letter grades are as follows:
4BA, 4BB, 4BC, 4CB, 3AB, 3BB.

Grading System:
The number explains the degree of embryo expansion of the blastocyst cavity and its progress in hatching out of the zona pellucida on a scale from 1-6. As the embryo expands, the degree of expansion increases.

The first letter indicates on a scale from A to C (A being the highest) the quality of the inner cell mass, which potentially becomes the cells that form the body of the embryo after implantation.

The second letter, also from A to C (A being the highest), indicates the quality of the Trophectoderm. The Trophectoderm are the cells that give rise to the placenta and extra-embryonic tissues after implantation

Thank goodness for my undergraduate bachelor's degree in biology. At least these cellular terms are at least familiar to me.

An update on my pain from egg retrieval on Thursday (one week ago). I woke up this morning FINALLY feeling a little better. I was in so much pain before to the point I could not get out of bed. I didn't request pain medications after my retrieval, and the doctor didn't offer them either. Out of the four donations I did prior, I received pain medications after the retrieval two or three of the four times. I guess it's the doctor's preference, but I know if a man had to go through everything the woman had to with the injections, bloating, and pain after retrieval, they would be thrown pain medications for their endeavors with IVF.