So we were expecting the results of our Preimplantation Genetic Testing (PGT) this week, but I wasn’t expecting to receive them today. We both woke up this morning to emails from the embryologist at RMA of Philadelphia saying that our results had been returned to them.
Just to recap, when our embryos were created last week, a biopsy was taken from all seven and sent to the Foundation for Embryonic Competence in New Jersey for our PGT to be completed. This testing allows us to see how many of the embryos are euploid (have a full set of chromosomes, no more or no less than what is required.) When the embryos have more or less, most times the chances of birth defects increase and the chance of a live birth decreases. In the email we received, they informed us that six of our seven embryos are euploid and one came back positive for aneuploidy. Aneuploidy is either the absence of one chromosome or the addition of one chromosome. In our case, this embryo is missing one chromosome. Based on the one chromosome that it is missing, the lab has determined that the likelihood of a pregnancy and live birth from this embryo are so low that they do not recommend utilizing this one for implantation. We are not yet sure what this means for that one embryo, but we are going to ask the question the next time that we meet with our doctor.
The email that we received did not include the full report. This is due to the fact that the full report includes the 23rd set of chromosomes (the sex chromosomes) and the embryologist wanted to make sure we wanted to know all of the sexes before she sent it across. Since this is one of the reasons we did the testing, we eagerly asked her to send the full reports to us.
We have talked about the ability to choose the sex of our children several times, and we came to the conclusion that we wanted one of each: a boy first, followed by a girl. Andrew got his full report from the embryologist a few hours before I did. His report showed that all three of his embryos are male. We were pretty excited to see this, as now we knew that we would be able to have a boy!
We anxiously awaited my report to come back so we would know the sex of the rest of our embryos. I got my report back at around 9:30am our time, and was surprised to see that all four of my embryos are also male. We were so worried about being able to have a boy that we clearly weren’t worried enough about having a girl!!
I honestly didn’t know what to think. I couldn’t help but laugh because every single embryo turned out to be male. I never once thought that we would end up in this situation, and I don’t believe that the chances of this happening are very high. Either way, we are thrilled that we have been blessed with six healthy embryos that are ready for transfer. Maybe we will just have all six and start our own football team.
So, what’s next? The embryos remain frozen at RMA of Philadelphia. We are finalizing our contract with Courtney and Zack, and once that is complete, we will be ready to move forward with her medication and the embryo transfer. We will likely be calling in the help of CryoStork again to move our embryos from Pennsylvania to Hawaii, so that should be another fun journey that I can stress about. CryoStork did a wonderful job transferring our sperm from Hawaii to Pennsylvania, so I expect nothing less for the journey of our embryos.
We also don't know yet which embryo we will transfer. Now that we know that they are all male, it doesn't really matter to us which one we transfer. No matter who's embryo gets transferred, this will be our child. We don't care whose child it is biologically; we just want him to be healthy.
Courtney and Zack are coming over for dinner tonight, so we’re excited to talk to them about all of this. We haven’t seen them in a few weeks, so we all have lots to catch each other up on. We’re so excited that yet another milestone in this adventure is complete, and we look forward to being boy dads!
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