FET success - day 3 or day 5

badrianne · March 2014

Poll from IF, hope you don't mind.
I am wondering if you had success after a FET cycle were your embryos frozen on day 3 or day 5 of the fresh cycle?

PennyLane26 · March 2014

Ours were frozen on Day 6 after both of our 2 fresh cycles (1 frozen after IVF#1, 6 frozen after IVF #2). To clarify, we haven't had an FET yet, it is scheduled for 3/18.

PurpleIris30 · March 2014

I'm surprised if there are lots of clinics freezing at day 3, rather than growing to blast, unless they don't have the lab quality to grow to blast (?).

badrianne · March 2014

PurpleIris30 I had just read that day 3 embryos survive the freeze/thaw better than the blastocysts... but this may be old info.

Thanks for your responses. We are day 3 and won't know if transfer is today or Monday. Just wondering if we have multiple good embryos if it would be good to have some frozen early to ensure frosties.

ccam · March 2014

My clinic only freezes blasts so I'm no help but good luck to you!!

Ruthie04 · March 2014

PurpleIris30 said:
I'm surprised if there are lots of clinics freezing at day 3, rather than growing to blast, unless they don't have the lab quality to grow to blast (?).

This surprises me as well. My clinic only freezes day 5/6 blasts and they must be the top two grades. Our blasts always look awful, so we never had any frosties. It's interesting about day 3s surviving the thaw- I'd never heard that.

Good luck!

PurpleIris30 · March 2014

badrianne said:
PurpleIris30 I had just read that day 3 embryos survive the freeze/thaw better than the blastocysts... but this may be old info.

Thanks for your responses. We are day 3 and won't know if transfer is today or Monday. Just wondering if we have multiple good embryos if it would be good to have some frozen early to ensure frosties.

My clinic says the opposite is true - that the top quality day 5/6 blasts survive the freeze and thaw process the best, because they have more cells and are not as fragile or otherwise susceptible to trauma as an embryo that is only 6-10 cells total. I don't know the answer, but that makes sense to me.

PurpleIris30 · March 2014

Also, one reason clinics like to grow to blast if it is possible is that it helps weed out embryos with abnormal chromosomes.

We did a day 3 PGD biopsy with day 5 transfer, and the embryos with triploidy of the chromosome at issue for us didn't survive until day 5, although they looked fine on day 3. I would rather wait to day 5 or 6 for the strongest embryos rather than go to the expense of freezing and doing a FET on embryos that were never going to survive anyway. So I wouldn't push to freeze on day 3 just so you can have frozen embryos.

badrianne · March 2014

Thanks for setting me straight. Fingers crossed we make it to day 5.

CarrieB. · March 2014

Our successful FET was a day 6 blast. Good luck!

itsmevkb · March 2014

Right when we did our IVF our RE had just switched from slow freezing to quick freezing and has told us that the quick freeze seems to work much better in terms of the embryos making it through the thawing process. Our one little frostie was frozen I believe on day 5. Our clinic does day 3 transfers for some women (me) but then they only freeze if the embryos make it and still look good come day 5.

badrianne · March 2014

Just like you all explained, I had a day 3 transfer and my 1 embryo of best quality was frozen on day 5. Thanks again

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