Day 3: Quality Over Quantity

Every time I get the morning update I'm floored by how lucky we're getting with our two little embryos. Amazingly, here we are at day 3, and both little fighters look perfect. They are 8 cells each and according to the embryologist, are the highest quality possible. This means that their cells are even and regular, all the same size, and that they have no fragmentation. In short, they look like this:

High Quality Day 3 Embryo

I'm really starting to feel hopeful that these could be our babies. On day 3 last cycle we had 7 embryos - our 4 strong ones that became our frosties, 2 weaker ones that eventually didn't make it and one super slow grower that fizzled out. At this point, those two weaker ones and the tiny one lagging were already noticeably behind the main 4, not so behind as to count them out completely, but not looking fabulous. It gives me hope that our 4 that were growing well continued to grow well, we just need these two to follow suit.

Just twoish more days to go now. Days 4 and 5/6 are the hardest for the embryos, they need to make the big leap from simple cell division to compacting and differentiating. I know this has been a really disheartening and crummy cycle, but these little fighters are strong and I feel like they're going to make it. Come on babies, grow, grow, grow!