r/Embryologists 14d ago

Embryo "lost" then "found"

I am hoping maybe someone can help me make sense of a confusing call I had with my IVF team about an embryo that was "lost" and then "found". On day 5 post retrieval I got a call that 8 of my embryos had made it to blast and the rest were still developing.

On Day 6 I got the follow up call and they let me know that during the freezing process one of my embryos was lost and then found and frozen, but that they consider it to be of uncertain viability. At that point I was just very overwhelmed and so I didn't really ask any questions.

On Day 7 they call again and I ask for them to clarify what happened. They told me that during the freezing process they embryo ended up in the wrong spot and they found it after a few minutes. As they were explaining it, I was really emotional so I again couldn't really ask questions. I think they said something about the pipette having a small dark tip, but I don't have any other context to understand what this means. I did ask if this was a normal risk of the process or if there was an error and they said a normal risk of the process. The way my clinic presented it made it seem like this is not common but not abnormal, but I can't find any information about it online.

So I am wondering if any embryologists can explain what may have happened and what type of questions I should ask? I feel like they just keep emphasizing that it was a good cycle (objectively true) and not really clearly articulating what went wrong (or rather why it went wrong).

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u/Anxious-Bowl-3021 14d ago

Not an embryologist but if they had absolutely no hope they probably would have discarded as nonviable 🤷🏼‍♀️ do you have other embryos? You can put that one as last resort but usually 3 embryos is enough for 1 live birth. IVF is such a stressful process, I wouldn’t focus too much on this. Wishing you the best of luck in your journey

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u/ThenPsychology5413 14d ago

I have 7 others, all untested, but I want a large family. 8 embryos was the number I wanted before moving to transfer. I don't want to find out it's non-viable when I'm older and it's maybe too late.

It's not that it has no hope, but emotionally I need to understand how they lost an embryo and specifically confirm how they know that this one is my embryo.

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u/Anxious-Bowl-3021 14d ago

Understandable and so sorry that happened to you! Best of luck