Adopting a Snowflake
 

(I know what you're thinking and it has nothing to do with that.)

"Snowflakes" is a term for embryos who were conceived by IVF but for whatever reason, their biological parents aren't interested in carrying them to term. Some people allow them to be adopted and carried by other couples. I've seen the websites..you can even choose by physical characteristics, then you get a homestudy and when approved, you arrange for the medical part. Some couples who aren't infertile are adopting snowflakes.

Would you adopt a snowflake?

Isn't making the baby supposed to be the fun part???

I'm not interested in having children, but if I were, this would be a great situation if I couldn't do it the old fashioned way. But in general I'm all for recycling those embryos in all methods available, including stem cell research and usage. I would hope that parents that have these snowflakes produced think in advance what they're going to do with them, whether it's discard them, donate them to another couple or use them for research. But just putting them in the bank for 100 years seems illogical. And if you've chosen this method of reproduction (IMHO of course) you don't get to call religion. You've already bypassed God by turning to science.

I would have to say that all depends on who you're making the baby with! :eek:

On a serious note, if fertility is a struggle, the making it part can be less fun because you're so focused on getting pregnant.

I think adopting a snowflake is a very wonderful thing to do, and I might consider it.

The name makes me cringe.

Ditto. Even without GC it conjures up very negative images in my head.

I keep thinking "Alien."

Why adopt a snowflake when there are so many children out there waiting to be adopted.

Five of ours are adopted but there are several reasons why many people don't adopt. For starters, a lot of the kids (international and domestic) are badly damaged emotionally--even by very young ages--and lots of people don't have it in them to rescue them. I can not blame them...plus some of these kids would tear your family apart. You can't always know if the social workers are telling you the truth about the kids either; some don't because they want the children placed.

Also, some adopters want infants and in this country, it's costing $25-$40K now. International adoption can be cheaper but the kids are rarely young babies anymore. And that's if you get one; there are many scammers out there who'll fake a pregnancy or create an imaginary child and take your money and run.

State governments will tell you about the thousands of children who are available. I read a paper this week on one state that claimed that-- but once you subtracted all the kids whose relatives were fostering them, those who couldn't be adopted because of extenuating circumstances, yadda yadda, the number of actual available children was 313. And who knows what condition those children were in?

We have not regretted adoption for one second and I would do it again in a blink. However, we have also been through adoption hell with lying agencies, scammers, people who jacked up prices, etc. I can see exactly why potential adopters would choose adopting a snowflake over adoption.

Oh, I get it - so they do IVF and instead of only one egg fertilizing, they get half a dozen?

Yes, this is a lovely idea (although I agree w/ the Doc about the name being icky) because apparently the original parents are too big of dumbasses to think about what the friggin' consequences might be.

If that's not the deal, let me know, but shit, the parents should know that when they go into it.

From what I know, couples using IVF get many eggs during the egg retrieval and try to fertilize as many as possible to increase their chances that at least 2 will fertilize. The best two (or one or three) are then used in IVF. Couples must sign forms prior to starting the process to decide what to do with the leftover embryos. Couples can store them to use in the future (sparing the entire IVF process next time), donate them, or destroy them.

On the one hand, it would give the adoptive parents the experience of getting to be pregnant which I know a lot of them must really wish they could have. But something about it (including the name) gives me a creepy feeling. It's such a beautiful and awesome thing if I look at it one way, but I can't shake the feeling (and I've been trying for several minutes to focus on the positive). I don't think I would do this--I would rather just adopt a child.

A bit about the logistics of IVF, since not a lot of people are familiar with it.

When you do a traditional IVF cycle, you don't get to choose how many follicles are stimulated. You take meds to recruit as many as possible, however many your body can produce. That may be 5, it may be 30. Every woman produces a certain number of follicles that recruit eggs each month. Usually only one matures enough to release the egg (sometimes 2 - fraternal twins), and the rest die off. The idea with IVF is to mature all of them.

Why so many? Because the odds aren't great.

I've done two IVF cycles, and am currently 16 weeks pregnant as a result of the second. The first cycle, my doctor retrieved 16 eggs. 11 of them were mature and fertilized as of the next day. 10 were still growing as of day 3. We transferred the 2 best on the 5th day, and none of the rest were viable to freeze. Neither of the 2 that we transferred implanted, thus, no baby.

That was 16 eggs and zero baby.

My second cycle, my doctor retrieved 20 eggs. 14 were mature and fertilized as of the next day. 13 were growing day 3. We transferred the 2 best on the 5th day. 2 were viable to freeze. I am pregnant with a single baby.

20 eggs, 1 baby, 2 frozen embryos.

You can bet that I'll use those frozen embryos someday. In the mean time, I'll be paying $610 a year to keep them on ice. If someone wanted to adopt them, the chances would still not be stellar that they would produce a baby. (Note that of 4 good 5-day blastocysts transferred into me, only 1 is on its way to be a baby, and I'm only 33, a young age for IVF.)

If I wanted to adopt an embryo, it's rarely free. But, assuming someone donated one, I'd still be paying $5k-8k+ for meds and the medical procedure to transfer it into me, with no guarantee that it would ever become a baby.

IVF is tough tough tough. It's not irresponsibility that leads to unused frozen embryos. It's the statistics of the process, the need to have as many to work with to give you some chance of success. A huge percentage of those frozen embryos are not genetically normal and will never be viable. (Testing to determine if they are genetically normal is another several thousand.)

I'm not sure where I'm going with all this, but mostly I wanted to put some perspective into the situation. I think anyone who adopts an embryo when they don't have to is amazing, given the expense and the chance of success. But I would NEVER fault someone for having frozen embryos that they cannot use, and that they cannot afford to keep on ice until some kind soul comes along and chooses to adopt.

I'm hoping that's more the case and that this really is something all IVF couples plan for and think about. The way it was put in the original post was more like the couples were all "We got 20 fertilized kids! Oopsie poo! Who knew? Golly whiz, we're gonna need a bigger house."

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