Adopting a Snowflake

pbear19 · #1 10-13-2011, 08:59 PM

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.

33girl · #2 10-13-2011, 11:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pbear19

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.

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."

pbear19 · #3 10-14-2011, 03:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 33girl

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."

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.

carnation · #4 10-14-2011, 07:04 AM

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.