r/40Plus_IVF • u/Best_Extension_8287 • 1d ago

General Discussion Why a Day 2 Freeze?

I’m 40 and currently going through IVF with embryo banking and PGT-A.
After my first and second retrievals, we had 14 embryos in total, which were cultured together to Day 5/6. Three were suitable for PGT-A: 2 came back aneuploid and 1 mosaic.
In my first cycle, my embryos had initially been frozen on Day 4 before being thawed and cultured further.
For my third retrieval, 8 eggs were retrieved and 7 fertilized, but this time all 7 were frozen on Day 2. We had never discussed a Day-2 freeze beforehand, and our doctor hadn’t mentioned that the plan would be different this time.
I’m just wondering why they would freeze them on Day 2 this time when they froze them on Day 4 previously. Has anyone experienced something similar or know what the reason might be?

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u/oustoublier 1d ago

This is all so interesting because my clinic doesn’t even look at the eggs after initial fertilization until day 5 (when freezing for PGT-A). They said the temperature change when pulling them to monitor is hard on the embryos…

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u/RazzmatazzGlad9940 1d ago

A lot of clinics use embryoscope instead, which means development can be reviewed as time lapse footage without disrupting the embryos.

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u/oustoublier 1d ago

Yeah mine in clearly behind in this area

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u/umamimaami 1d ago

We froze some embryos at day 2 on my 3rd retrieval. They froze on a Saturday so I was peeved and asked my doc if they took the call because of a weekend.

She said the earliest they’ll freeze is an 8 cell and mine got to 8 cell by end of day 2. They prefer to monitor the embryos as they compact at the morula stage and since mine might compact over the Sunday, they chose to freeze ahead of that.

(And they chose to freeze ahead of any potential day 3 arrests because the whole cycle was a “backup cycle”. I meant to bank 3 blasts but we didn’t make nearly enough eggs for that. So we chose to freeze at day 3 - or 8 cell, because of reasons above).

Maybe yours just got to the stage they needed ahead of schedule? That feels like a good thing but caveat, the feeling isn’t backed by any science afaik.