Adopting a Snowflake

[pbear19]

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.