Saturday, June 19, 2010

Day 4

Tomorrow will be Day 4. A lot will happen in the Petri dish, but nothing will happen in the Hopkins House.  That is, we will not get a call from the embryologist, and will not learn anything new about the status of the embryos.  In fact, as I understand it she won't even take the embryos out of their incubator.

Now, I know what you're thinking, but this has nothing to do with the fact that tomorrow's Sunday.  Apparently cell division accelerates rapidly from here on out; where as we were seeing 1 to 2 division per day, the cells will undergo a number of cell divisions on Day 4 as they transition from an undifferentiated blob of 8 cells on Day 3 to a structured, 250+ cell blastocyst on Day 5.  All this rapid change makes it difficult to make any assessments of their quality on Day 4.

On Monday, our transfer is scheduled for 9:15.  We're supposed to be there at the clinic at 7:50, so that they can draw blood and do other prep in advance of the transfer.  The transfer itself only lasts a few moments, so if everything goes off as scheduled we should be on the road home by 10.  More on this as it happens.

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