Blastocyst culture involves growing the embryo in the lab for two or more days until it reaches the blastocyst stage. The frozen blastocyst transfer occurs on the fifth day, marking the final stage of embryo development before it hatches from the egg, breaks the Zona Pellucida, and implants itself in the uterine wall.
Let's start by having a chat with a fertility/IVF specialist to go over your medical history. IVF isn't a guaranteed success, so it's really important to understand the risks and side effects.
Next, we'll do some blood tests and scans to check hormone levels in females and do ultrasounds to see how many eggs are left. We'll also check for any existing conditions like diabetes or high blood pressure in both partners.
Once we have the results, we'll have another meeting with the specialist at Orchid IVF. We'll talk about the treatment plan, get your consent, and do some more screening tests.
We'll test the male partner's sperm to check the count, shape, and movement.
After the baseline scan, we'll give hormonal injections to get the ovaries to produce multiple eggs.
We'll keep a close eye on things with regular scans and blood tests to see how you're responding to the medication.
When your hormone levels are just right, we'll give you a trigger injection to make the eggs mature.
We'll collect the eggs through a needle passed through the vagina while you're sedated. And we'll also collect a semen sample on the same day.
We'll do either IVF or ICSI, depending on what's best for you. The embryos will be grown in an incubator with all the nutrients they need.
We'll watch the embryos grow from one cell to two, then four, then eight, and finally to a stage called blastocyst on the 5th or 6th day.
We'll do a test at this stage to check for any genetic issues with the blastocysts.
An embryologist will grade the blastocysts by checking different parts of them. These days, we also use artificial intelligence and machine learning to make sure there are no mistakes.
The best blastocyst will be transferred into your uterus using a catheter guided by ultrasound.
Any remaining good quality blastocysts will be frozen for later use. This is called a frozen embryo transfer and means we won't have to start the whole process over again.
We'll do a pregnancy test about 12 days after the blastocyst transfer to see if it worked.