embryo grading

I had my embryo transfer yesterday. I just had a Birthday and turned 27 and due to my age and my medical record my RE adviced do a single transfer. I am a regular and have no obveious infertility problems however my husband has low sperm count and low morphology (something like 1%) We had 19 eggs, 16 were mature, only 8 were fertelized with ICSI. The day of transfer, didn't know exact number or grading of all the embryos but we had few with 8 cells and grade c(25-50% fragmentation). The one was transfered is an 8 cells grade C and fair.
Was told that most likely there will be nothing to freeze because grade C rarely survive freezing and thawing. My question is how true is that? they said they will keep an eye on them and if they were able to freeze any of them, they would let us know. why don't they just freeze them anyway and hope for them to survive thawing?
My other questions is, what is our chance with a grade C single embryo transfer?

[Elaine Brown, MD]

Hi!
It is true that grade C embryos are not considered viable enough to freeze, and would probably not survive the thaw.  I suppose you could insist that they freeze and thaw the eggs, but imagine going through all the shots in preparation for a frozen cycle and having nothing to transfer.  I can't give you a definite percentage that your single embryo will implant.  Certainly the number of pregnancies resulting from grade A embryos is higher than the number from grade C embryos.  I am sure that it must be disappointing to have so many eggs with so few resultant embryos.  Keep your hopes up because there IS a chance that the embryo will become a baby!
Good luck!
Dr B

[Rose33]

Could you please be kind enough to explain more about freezing embryos. What makes the embryo viable for freezing? Does the embryo have to make it to blastocyst stage in order to be considered viable for freezing?
I did not get pregnant on this cycle and I am wondering now if the embryo that was transferred have ever made it to blastocyst stage or not in my uterus.
I do not think it did because it was also grade c
Do you think we should change our protocol for our next ivf cycle?
Should we do a 5 day transfer instead of 3rd, that is assuming we will have anything left on day 5