embryo fragmentation and irregular cell division?

I had a similar result last week as I was also Very disappointed I did my first retrieval 2 weeks ago with 17 eggs, 12 matured and fertilized. However only 1 made it to day 7. My doctor said the egg quality was poor as it was dark and small. Honestly I have never heard of that before. Just waiting for the pgt result now for the one embryo. He recommended birds&be prenatal, coq10 and vitamin D for now

Pretty much my exact first cycle. 9 eggs, 4 mature, 2 fertilised but poorly. They were transferred on day 3 unfortunately it didn’t work. But my second cycle I got 8 eggs, all mature, 6 fertilised and 5 made it to blast. The second is my daughter and we have just had a consultation to transfer another. So whilst it is crap, it did give some insights into changing up my next cycle which got better results. We took a break after the cycle due to how emotional it had all been. And it was a huge gut wrench as I totally thought it would go way different to how it did, I thought I would get loads of eggs / embryos and for our cycle to be over so quickly it was hard. It definitely made me more realistic for the future cycle.

@Danielle so what did you do differently for the second cycle

@Danielle thanks so much for your reply. i definitely wasn’t prepared for how wrong it could go and how hard it would be, especially given all my fertility tests looked pretty good. i’m 37 now so i’m reluctant to take a break before we go for round 2, although i think i definitely would if time was not so much of the essence as it has been so hard! sorry you went through similar but congratulations on your daughter- that is lovely- and all the best on your next transfer. if you did have anything you felt comfortable sharing about what was done differently on your second round i would love to hear it, but appreciate you might not! x

@Kerry thanks so much for replying and i’m so sorry to hear you’ve also had this experience. it’s so hard isn’t it? especially when you don’t know what all the possible negative scenarios could be until they hit you. wishing you all the very best for your pgt result x

I understand not wanting to wait. And I don’t think you need to. I changed clinics, I did a short protocol vs a long protocol. They left me longer after the trigger to let the eggs mature. We had male factor for my husband also took Procieve supplements to improve his sperm which really help. And yes, I totally get the not being prepared for it going wrong, after waiting so long to start IVF I thought it would be the answer and had totally faith it would work and I would get loads of eggs. I have quite good AMH and follicle count.

Hi Katie, to answer your q on irregular cell division at the cleavage stage (before blastocyst). During my recent round, my only embryo (from my only egg) at day 3 had abnormal cell division but I went ahead with transfer anyway as the thinking was that if it was going to correct itself, the best place would be in my womb as opposed to being left in culture. The good news is it did correct itself in utero as it did implant with the pregnancy hormone being picked up, but I miscarried very early on. Embryologist confirmed correction and that it would have become a blastocyst otherwise it would never have been able to “implant”. I do know of another person from IVF circles whose abnormally cleaved embryo did become a healthy child. With my first round, I had 5 eggs collected, 3 stopped developing and 2 made it to blasts. Those 2 were very poorly graded (2BC & 4BC), however the latter is now my 18m old and he is a perfect little boy. Hope both my experiences can give you hope xx

@Danielle thank you for sharing. Do you mean in your second cycle you were on a short protocol, vs in the first cycle you were on a long protocol? Did they change your dosage and medication?

I had that same comment of "fragmentation" after day 1, it developed fine after that and I now have a toddler. I got 6 eggs and only one ended up making it

Embryologist here going through IVF process. 5 cells on d2 does not mean necessarily irregular division, it can be that the embryo is faster. That it looks "bad" today clearly has lower chance of blast, but we never know for sure. I had 15 follicles aspirated, 15 mature, only 9 fertilized. Crappy divisions, only got 3 biopsied on d6. One of them we were not expecting anything because was highly fragmented. That one got normal result from the biopsy. Mi profesional experience is that we don't really know what is going to happen until the last day. I know it's hard but you have to have a little bit of patience 🤞🤞🤞