You have to plan for it and you have to think about it as part of the process, whether you want to or not. At my clinic we had to fill out forms saying whether we wanted to freeze embryos or not, and if we chose to freeze, we had to decide what would happen if one of us dies or if we get a divorce. Plus we had to acknowledge the cost of storage. This was required before i popped a single pill or stuck myself with a single shot. Plus, as you can see from my example, it's pretty rare to have a lot of frozen embryos. It does happen, but not often.

No one just does IVF like it's no big deal. It's huge. It's a shit ton of drugs, a surgical procedure, and a shit ton of money. I could have bought a nice car for what we spent on infertility treatments, with no guarantee of success. There's no such thing as a sentiment that boils down to "golly whiz" when it comes to procedures of this magnitude.

My husband's cousin did IVF several times. Each time they'd harvest a lot of eggs but only have a couple to implant and they wouldn't make it. About ten years ago, they finally had a baby girl! They decided to try once more with their remaining 3 eggs--their little girl was so hoping for a sister--and they had, haha!-triplet boys.:)

Really? You're going to attack the adoptive mother of FIVE children for pointing out that not every set of potential parents is ready/able to adopt an emotionally troubled child?

I think it was more that the phrasing makes them sound like they were used cars rather than children.

Depending on the costs, absolutely. The old-fashioned way isn't working, I can't take the drugs required for IVF, and the nest egg we've saved to care for a child would be decimated by traditional adoption. I don't care for the term "snowflake" either, though.

Re: terminology...I can't think of how else it could be phrased and I don't really care if someone thinks that wasn't PC. For a child to be taken from his or her parents, something horrible has almost always happened that has very often impacted that child emotionally...I mean, it is HARD to have a child TPRed in most states. Some children are resilient, others are not and so often, love is not enough to undo what's been done.

I would venture to say that after almost 30 years of being involved in the adoption world, I know whereof I speak. People can and do argue nonstop about the correct terminology to use in adoption but the fact remains and we have personal knowledge of this both for us and other couples we know well: the emotional and other damage done to adopted children while they were with their first families can be *massive*, even though it may not show up at first. Not all families can or should try to deal with it.

That's a super defensive post to something that actually just made me giggle.

Should've asked for the CarFax.

It's not defensive. It's the pure, unvarnished truth and people need to know about it.

"And sometimes those children are too physically, mentally or emotionally damaged for even the most caring and loving and financially stable of possible parents to deal with."

I thought of that and I'm not even really awake yet.

If you want to rip on the state for lying about conditions or inflating figures, then do that, but don't make the children sound like 1997 Impalas. It's not their fault.

Same here. This is a great option for people with a history of genetic disease in the family. They can have a child that is biologically, but not genetically, theirs.

I hate the name, though -- they are embryos or zygotes.

No, it's not, and I'd like to rip on some birthparents for damaging them. I want to rip on some workers for lying to so many fine families that I know of who were victimized and then blamed because they tried their best but couldn't do it.

Adoption, particularly of an older child, is not for some people. Demand all the paperwork you can get and talk to the former foster parents.

That said, your child can end up with problems, whether he/she is biological, adopted, "snowflake", you name it, and you may or may not be responsible for those.

And--the terminology I used, including "damaged", is frequently used in the adoption world. Not in places where the children can see it, of course, but in literature, research, and in frank talking in the adoption world. It is needed to convey the seriousness of what has happened to certain children, and "flossing it up" helps no one.

Well, "PC" is more for things like "differently abled." My mom (who was in a wheelchair) heard that once and basically said "That's stupid. I'm in a f'ing wheelchair."

I don't think "PC" applies to the comment we are discussing at all, whether you like the term PC or not.

Yes and I knew what you meant. Perhaps your explanation for your use of that terminology should be that it is commonly used terminology. Of course that doesn't mean that everyone in the adoption world agrees with that terminology. However, saying "I don't care if some folks don't consider it PC" gives it a particular tone and is almost like saying "I said it, what are you gonna do about it."

I still hate the use of "snowflake" so of course I'm not going to be a fan of some of the commonly used terminology. :)

So, your definition of "attack" has really gone downhill, huh?

...

Oh no I attacked you.

...
...
...

I'm a horrible, horrible person for ellipsising you.

lol

This.

And mostly I think adopting an embryo is value neutral, it's as good or bad as having IVF oneself or having a child in vivo. But it's not at all like adopting an actual child, infant or otherwise. I guess if you see embryo as 'person' you're saving a life.... maybe. There's no guarantee that the embryo would 'take' after all. Which is why IVF parents fertilize so many in the first place, and implant more than one. This shit's expensive and multiple procedures increase the cost significantly.

But 'snowflake' is stupid as is whining about being "PC" when this was nothing of the sort.

agzg nailed it, you said "Who knows what condition those children are in," as if you should have gotten a Carfax report.

And since those children will be able to find all that frank talk by about age 13 or so thanks to the internet, they're the ones who can provide further objection.

There's also a weird dichotomy in talking about people as objects in a thread that talks about embryos as people.