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07/18/2006
I can disagree without being vicious, I swear it.
Victoria commented on a recent post:
To the commenter who said she'd sell her own mother to have 7 embryos in storage: Didn't that article make you question the morality of this IVF issue at ALL? Is our desire to have our own biological children THAT FIERCE that we'd happily have 7 frozen children indefinitely?...Don't you think it'd be better to adopt a child that is already born and orphaned?...There just seems to be something wrong here.
The most glaring fallacy I perceive in Victoria's line of thought is this: she's equating seven frozen embryos with seven frozen children, and, boy, howdy, hoo hoo hooooo, am I laughing at that.
Sorry; what I meant to say, because I'm playing it straight and high-toned and respectful here, is that I find that premise risible.
First of all, the success rates for frozen embryo transfers — FETs — are significantly lower than those for fresh cycles. Depending on the clinic and the state in which an embryo is frozen, the first danger is that the embryo may not survive the thaw; a common estimate for survival is about 50%.
So realistically speaking, let's assume that of those hypothetical seven, four will survive the thaw. Fine, four no-longer-frozen children to sell your mother for. But it's not over yet, because the most recent figures put the overall live birth rate per FET at 27%.
Stay with me here, okay? Now, the average number of frozen embryos transferred per FET cycle is between 2.7 and 3, depending on the woman's age. For the sake of argument, because you can't transfer a fraction of an embryo, no matter how carefully you slice 'em, let's stipulate that of those four adorable eight-celled icy moppets — whoops, five- or six-celled, because frozen embryos often lose cells in the thaw, possibly reducing their chance of implanting — two are transferred.
Two transferred, with the live birth rate per FET at 27% means...wait, carry the six, multiply by pi, train leaving Hamburg at 6 PM traveling at 50 MPH, if A = B and B = C, unladen swallow, aaaaaaand we have...crap, well, look, I'm not that great at math, what with all the ∝ and ∀ and ∫ and all, but I'm pretty sure you come up with not that many children at all. In two transfers — because, remember, only four survived the thaw, and you're transferring two each time — you'll be lucky to end up with even half a kid.
(I concede that my calculations might be a bit off.)
My point is that when we're considering seven frozen embryos, we're not talking about seven children, not by a long shot. Of course success rates will vary from woman to woman and embryo to embryo, but my educated guess is that we're talking four max, and probably fewer — possibly far fewer, because, well, we're infertile, and the reasons we're not getting pregnant naturally aren't always circumvented by IVF, no matter how good the lab, no matter how faultless the technique.
I've demonstrated that Victoria's numerical assumption is flawed, but there's much more to it than that. She speaks of seven children. Now, I can't speak for anyone but myself. Everyone who produces embryos has her own opinion on this matter, opinions that are deeply emotional and worthy of respect. But I can state unequivocally that I have never, ever considered any single one of our small handful of embryos a child.
The ones that implanted — malevolent #1, claustrophobic #2, and flukey #3 — had potential. They were potential. Even the losses didn't feel like children to me, though I know to many women they are. And until #3 was born, he wasn't truly Charlie, though if I'd lost him late in the game I'd likely feel quite different. As it stands, to me, they were all potential, pure and simple.
And how would I feel to have a freezer full of potential? Having a plan in place to help me avoid another fresh cycle? Being able to put off a decision about stopping treatment entirely? Keeping me, at least temporarily, from having to give up my hope for a child that's genetically my husband's and mine?
Even given the small chance of success, I'd feel perfectly matrimercantilic, I tell you.
(See? Not vicious in the slightest. I didn't even mention adopting orphans!)
Posted by Julie at 01:36 PM in I've learned a lot...but I'm not sure it's worth it. | Permalink
Comments (119)
There's an old saying about opinions. I'm sure you all know it. Everybody's got one and some are so inflammatory that they almost have hemorrhoids.
The whole "morality behind IVF" argument is one that's being used, politically, as a wedge issue in the stem cell debate in the US. The argument is just as invalid there as it is in the case for or against adoption or other family methods.
Speaking as someone who has seen several different family-making methods amongst friends and family, Embryos != Children. My whole take? If you find IVF reprehensible, don't do it. If you feel the need to voice your opinion in a persuasive argument with others, stand behind an asbestos curtain.
Posted by: Tina at Jul 18, 2006 1:48:39 PM
Amen! Shit, if I had 7 frozen embryos, I'd probably end up with negative 3 children. Or whatever.
Oh! Just remembered, I once had frozen embryos- from a 25 year old egg donor. Uh, we thawed the 5 frozen embryos, and TWO survived the thaw. Yes, a fertile 25 year old even can have non-viable embryos. Oh, and those two that we transferred to my uterus did not become children either. So that's 0-for-5.
I am not surprised that the majority of lucky bastards who are not infertile know nothing about IVF and success rates, etc., but I AM surprised that people who feel they have the right to make all these ridiculous assertions about embryos don't do a little research on the topic before they rant!
Posted by: erica at Jul 18, 2006 2:10:46 PM
I wish that I had had the good sense not to look at the little microscope pictures of the embryos as baby 1, 2, 3 & 4 that were transplanted during my IVF last month. Even knowing the odds, I still foolishly wondered what we would do with four kids if they all took? Well, none of them did and I felt like I had lost a pregnancy. Although, it was over much more quickly than the ill fated ectopic.
Bottom line, even with fresh embryos, there isn't a super duper wonderful chance of a baby in an IVF cycle. I would try a FET, but I wouldn't look at each embryo as a baby anymore. But, until one has been through it, it might be hard not to see things in black and white. Often, the shades of grey are thrust upon us unwittingly and unwillingly.
Posted by: at Jul 18, 2006 2:13:25 PM
As somebody who did decide that IVF didn't feel right (anymore) FOR ME (and me alone) and who then decided to run out and rescue a "poor little orphan" because that seemed so much better (FOR ME)....let me applaud your opinion. Am I allowed to do that? Given that after my noble choice was made, I found myself...maybe...that p word?
I just find that I am driven crazy by the cavalier way in which opinions can be strewn about willy nilly about issues that are so hard. Not that Victoria was necessarily being cavalier, more that I've heard it from people in my own life who seemed to have no idea of which they spoke.
Oh, and, ummmm....this is pretty back-of-the-envelope, but if the probabilities here are independent (they're not), then wouldn't the expected number of children generated by 7 frozen embryos be 7*.5*.27=.945? No. That can't be right. In my heart, I know that the answer is -31.
Posted by: Meredith at Jul 18, 2006 2:22:26 PM
Hmmm. Frozen children. Now THERE'S a threat I just might be able to follow through with.
Posted by: Paula at Jul 18, 2006 2:37:55 PM
> but I AM surprised that people who feel they
> have the right to make all these ridiculous
> assertions about embryos don't do a little
> research on the topic before they rant!
I, however, am not, because, you see, doing research and having facts at hand don't really have anything to do with, and can even contradict, faith. And we all know if you just have faith, you will be saved from eternity in hell, get knocked up, and get cookies for breakfast.
Facts require thinking. Faith does not, so faith is easier.
Posted by: RainbowW at Jul 18, 2006 2:43:13 PM
So I was watching this show on TLC called "sextuplets and twins" or something like that. And as they were going over their story (I'm sure I don't need to elaborate, what with the title and all) the mother said "well, you know, in every infertility cycle you have to expect multiples. there are almost always two or three." My first reaction was, "what the fuckity fuck?" And then I thought of you.
Posted by: shmutzy at Jul 18, 2006 2:51:47 PM
Since you're doing all that fancy math, could you calculate a reasonable selling price for my mother? I'd hate to ask too much because she is a bit high maintenance, but kidsicles aren't cheap! ;)
Posted by: jc at Jul 18, 2006 2:51:47 PM
But, Julie, you're talking about snowflake babies here!
Sorry. That was probably disrespectful of believers in snowflake babies.
Demonstrating the (lack of) depth of my intellectual life during my summer vacation, can I just use this opening about IVF morality issues to rant about Days of Our Lives?
I LOVED this show when I was in middle school in the early 80's. And now that I'm on summer vacation, nearly 25 years later, so many of the same characters are still there - Bo and Hope, Melissa and Jack and Frankie, Patch and, um, that woman he married that Jake raped but then forgave because Jack was insane or something....
Anyway, I digress. I tuned in today and yesterday, pleasantly shocked to see so many of the same characters from when I was a middle schooler, and was horrified to find that the show has basically become a vehicle for promoting the anti-abortion, anti-IVF fundie agenda.
Seems that Bo and Hope's son Sean (who's grown up to be quite the hottie) is married to a young woman who is RIDDLED with guilt about having had an elective abortion. To compound the horror of her "post-abortion trauma", it turns out the abortion made her INFERTILE.
(These two scenarios neatly fit in with the misinformation exposed in a study released by Rep. Henry Waxman's office yesterday saying that 87% of federally funded "crisis pregnancy centers" lie to patients, telling them that abortion causes breast cancer, infertility, and "post-abortion syndrome". I'm just waiting for this character to get breast cancer and the scenario will be complete.)
But it gets better. Seems that the character made infertile by her abortion really wants a child (even though she feels she doesn't deserve one because she "killed her baby") so she and Sean decide to do IVF with a gestational surrogate.
Only, guess what? Sean's sperm gets mixed up in the lab with his best friend's sperm, who just happens to be married to Belle (daughter of Marlena and Roman or John, I forget), who Sean really loves. The eggs of the women are fertilized by the wrong sperm. Belle and the surrogate have the embryo transfer on the same day.
Now, the evening of the transfer, both couples find out that the women are "pregnant" with embryos created by their eggs and the wrong man's sperm. Today's episode featured a long, drawn out debate about whether they should now get abortions (even though it's not even 12 hours since the transfer!)
Sean and Belle (who are fated to be together, of course) both protest that they would never "kill" their "innocent baby". The other two characters (including the woman who has already shown herself to be evil by having had an abortion) are portrayed as crassly willing to "kill" their "babies" in order to avoid the complications of this medical mishap.
It was like watching a train wreck or something -- I couldn't look away!
Have any of you seen this, too, and cringed? Or am I the only dolt in her mid-30's watching daytime TV in 100-degree heat?
Posted by: Maura at Jul 18, 2006 2:54:02 PM
Gosh, if embryos were considered children, over five (5)years of infertility treatments I've lost twenty+ children from my uterus!! I feel like Mother Goose -- she had so many children, she didn't know what to do!!!
I'm headed for a FET next month (we have 6 frozen 6-day blasts), so I really appreciate all that math, Julie. My clinic has a 65% rate, but I guess my real odds are for shit. Sigh.
Posted by: Stacey at Jul 18, 2006 2:57:21 PM
Ah, I don't put too much faith in numbers to begin with, having been on the remarkable side of them myself too many times to count. They don't apply to individuals, after all. Does it help if you think that your own personal chance is either 0 or 100%?
No, I thought not.
Best of luck to you.
Posted by: Julie at Jul 18, 2006 3:00:58 PM
No, Maura, you're not. In fact, this storyline has been going on for weeks -- Mimi and Shawn picked their surrogate IN THE HOSPITAL (where apparently they're just lining girls up to carry IVF babies!) and decided RIGHT THEN to use her. No discussion. No counseling.
God, don't you wish you lived in Salem? I was just wondering why it took so long for this ridiculous shit to reach the "infertile blogosphere."
Posted by: Lisa at Jul 18, 2006 3:02:16 PM
Dear Victoria,
Life's a bitch! I remember so well, being about 17 and (after secretly getting a prescription for the pill) telling my mom: "man if I found out I was infertile after years and years of paying for birth control, I'd be soooo mad."
HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH.
Then, I remember having an argument with a fellow 20-something friend that fertility treatments were stupid and indulgent and should never be paid for by insurance.
HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH.
Now, after a successful IVF and a gorgeous little girl I hope I've learned some humility. I doubt it. But I tend to think, "unless you've walked a mile in my shoes/ those shoes" you really don't know what you're talking about. In other words, until you've decided you want a child and then can't have one "easily" you don't know how you'll climb that mountain. I was suprised how much I wanted "my own" child when I'd always before thought I'd adopt.
And, now that I've shelled out all that money for infertility treatments, FROM MY OWN POCKET, I would like to talk more about insurance covering infertility treatments. What I thought the Mother Jones articles did so well was point out that in other countries, where insurance does cover some of the costs -- insurance companies (who I generally believe to be BIG EVIL..don't get me wrong) have a tremendous power to lower the overall price of treatments and then set some "limits" or "rules" for their coverage. In other words, an insurance company can say -- we'll pay for 3 IVF treatments but only if no more than 2 embryos are implanted. That way, they can dramatically reduce what they'll pay on the other end for NICU costs related to multiple births. I sure would like to see a healthy, polite discussion of this on a few blogs -- AND THEN IN A FEW CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS! Oh, but that's right, first we've got to get rid of those flag-burners and gay-lovers; they're dangerous you know!! Opps, I slipped in a rant there.
And one final thing -- could someone please talk about the fact that there ARE NOT A WHOLE LOT OF LITTLE ORPHANS OUT THERE WAITING TO BE ADOPTED. Adopting is a long process and these days you are damn lucky if you get to do it; certainly from your own country and it's getting harder and more expensive from other countries as well.
Posted by: JB at Jul 18, 2006 3:08:51 PM
I wondered when someone would bring up Days of our Lives. I figured it had to piss off some people. But you forgot to mention that the very first time Mimi got implanted (with 1 embryo) she got pregnant and had morning sickness in about a week and a half. She lost the baby about 3 (soap opera) days later.
Posted by: ktjrdn at Jul 18, 2006 3:09:01 PM
I imagine that the dilemma gets really difficult for many women once they've had IVF success and are living, day to day, with the wonderful potential of those 6-8 cells. The dilemma of what to do with these embryos seems to be to be one of the cruelest ironies of IVF. To add on top of that the fact that having this debate and dealing with this personal and private dilemma is being used as a weapon against women's rights to make their own reproductive choices makes me ill.
Posted by: Cat, Galloping at Jul 18, 2006 3:18:55 PM
JB, that was beautiful. My country (Canada) doesn't even cover IVF at all. Nothing. Nada, zilch, zippo. And neither do we have babies just hanging around waiting for someone to realize IVF is a stupid waste of money and that they should just adopt. Adopting from another country costs well over twice as much as IVF. Thankfully, IVF is much cheaper here than out-of-control US prices, but it's still too expensive for us now.
No IVF. No embryos. No adopting. No babies. And no one would buy my mother. She's too high-maintenance.
Posted by: projgen at Jul 18, 2006 3:28:26 PM
'the very first time Mimi got implanted (with 1 embryo) she got pregnant and had morning sickness in about a week and a half. She lost the baby about 3 (soap opera) days later'
Actually with all four of my confirmed pregnancies (I'm a serial early miscarrier) I swear I felt nauseous 24-48 hours after ovulation and with my last pregnancy had to miss a wedding 7 days after ovulation (and before any sort of positive test)because I felt so dreadful. Oh and I'd generally lose the baby about 21 after ovulation as well. Maybe I should be in a soap opera?
Posted by: Paola at Jul 18, 2006 3:30:45 PM
Shmutzy, I saw the "sextuplets and twins" show too. Actually what both the mother and father kept saying was, "Well, whenever you're dealing with infertility you're going to expect more than one." Not infertility *treatment*, just "infertility." That was what made *me* go "what the fuckity fuck?"
Also, you forgot to mention that the show was preceded last night by the Duggar special, "16 Kids and Moving In!" C'mon Julie, this Victoria business is positively civilized--I'm disappointed. Now, a good Duggar pile-on--nothing like it for getting the bloggity blood flowing.
Posted by: electriclady at Jul 18, 2006 4:03:47 PM
Ok now I'm feeling even worse about my lousy batch of frozen embryos. But they're there, so I feel I have to let them take their natural course. Natural. Ha! I crack myself up. Probably just setting myself up for x=2 rounds of heartache. Oh, I shouldn't talk about my frozen children that way.
Posted by: KathyH at Jul 18, 2006 4:08:46 PM
I am in Canada too, another "serial early miscarrier" and we have no money for IVF, even if I could find a dr that would help at my age, no money to adopt within or out of our country, no money for donor egg.
In fact, I recently looked into adopting a rescue Bichon (dog), and wondered if we even had enough money to adopt a dog at the moment - I was shocked at their prices! I wonder if they would think we were good enough "parents", or would we be turned down there too?
Posted by: Catherine at Jul 18, 2006 4:16:14 PM
I thought you were positively civilized, Julie. Victoria, sweet thing that she is, has somehow taken it into her head that seven cells doth a human make. Seven cells only doth make a human following some 30-some-odd weeks of gestation or so.
And, thanks to the person who brought up the DooL storyline. My father used to write for that show, and I stopped watching on the last day one of his shows aired. Every now and then, I think maybe I'm missing something -- what's the old gang up to? Maybe I should check in...
Don't have to. They're still stupid. Now I can move on without worry.
~C~
Posted by: Catharine at Jul 18, 2006 4:21:12 PM
Oh boy. See what I get for reacting off the cuff to an article, and not thinking it through very much, and not having gone through it myself, and not knowing my audience, and asking questions (that looked like assertions, but weren't really) online?
I would like to retract my comments - I am humbly sorry for the anger I've caused. I'm not even sure where I stand on this issue (not sure if I'm even pro-life/pro-choice or about the potentiality of being or when life begins...), so I shouldn't have "said" anything at all. I should have merely done more research and read more on the subject and come up with my own opinions on the matter. I haven't gone through infertility or had to seriously ask myself about IVF, though I have friends who have, so I had no right (or did I as a woman who may potentially have to go down this road?) to make the comments I did.
I'm sorry. Truly, sorry.
I am so glad for each and every one of you who have had successful IVF treatments - a close girlfriend of mine has and her little boy is precious to her and her husband.
Posted by: Victoria Winters at Jul 18, 2006 4:21:48 PM
Actually, those who consider embryos to be children are also concerned about freezing them in the first place, for the exact reasons you outline here. The fact that a person has a slim chance of survival doesn't make them less a person. Although questioning the ethics of IVF may seem threatening to those who are undergoing treatments, it could also be beneficial to everyone. If you take the position that insurance should cover IVF (which it really should), and you take the financial pressure off of the couples paying for the procedure, and also have some sort of regulation and control in place, you suddenly have the opportunity to both limit how many embryos are put back at one time, and also no need to freeze embryos. Unless the insurance companies push for it. But then you can blame the INSURANCE companies for pushing cost-saving procedures that put your *children* at risk. IVF can be carried out without generating a large number of excess embryos and freezing them. Fresh cycles have better success, and usually it's only the economies of scale that lead to women having triplets or more. It's a nontrivial problem that millions of embryos are in storage and no one knows what to do with them. Even if you don't credit that they are people, it's a waste of money and resources.
I think we could do better with IVF--have more respect for life, and have healthier outcomes for babies and mothers. I think the IVF clinics are acting like any other business that has a lot of desperate customers and few pesky government regulations.
Posted by: Ersza at Jul 18, 2006 4:30:41 PM
*sigh* All that math you're doing isn't really encouraging... I was kind of proud of the two little kidsicles we have waiting for us in the freezer of our clinic. But with THOSE succes rates we might end up with 0.27 baby. That's only a head and half a shoulder... Or is it 0.27 pregnancy? Would that mean we'd miscarry at 10.8 weeks?
Do we now have to continue doing "fresh" IVF-cycles untill we collect a total of 7.4 kidsicles so we can finally end up with one ferfect little baby? That's 2.7 fresh cycles to go, with our current 2-transferred-2-kidsicles-no-baby-per-cycle rate...
And no, it's not advisable to look at and/or name the cute little balls of cells they transfer and then give you a picture of. Getting the "I'm sorry, but..." call from the clinic today felt more like losing two children than I'd care to admit. Even though I absolutely agree with the notion that anything that small (and possibly even frozen) is a child yet. But hey, tell that to my imagination, which showed me I would soon be bouncing the two cutest little kids in the whole wide world on my very own lap...
Posted by: Mijke at Jul 18, 2006 4:49:36 PM
Victoria--Yeah, the article left a few things out, that many of us who've traveled the IVF road know by heart. In particular, that 8-celled embryos, no matter how pretty they are (Louie, our one and only embryo, was mighty pretty), don't turn into babies. I just hacked at some figures from the CDC's 2003 SART report, and figured out that only 11% of all embryos made it to babyhood. So we're not talking 500,000 little chilluns sitting on ice, we're talking more like 27,500 (half don't thaw, 11% [generous] make it to babyhood).
Biology is pretty ruthless. I came across a study of blood taken from nursing students that someone analyzed many years later to check for traces of pregnancy; the researchers came up with a HUGE figure of pregnancies that never made it past one week, before the woman even knew she was pregnant.
Posted by: OmegaMom at Jul 18, 2006 4:50:24 PM
Well...I come with a different view, I guess. I grieved the loss of every single one of my embryos. I even paid good money to have 7 dead and near dead embryos put back into my uterus b/c I'd rather my body dispose of them naturally. I couldn't bare the thought of them being washed down a sink.
Go ahead, call me sentimental. Call me unrealistic. call me foolish what have you. Trust me, my clinics have already covered the name calling. and I had a freezer full of 13 embryos from a successful cycle...none of them made it.
Posted by: Ktcakes at Jul 18, 2006 4:53:14 PM
Ersza--The problem I have with that line of thought is that--as with so many things--you don't know if you're going to have excess embryos. In my case, we had 9 embryos (after an initial retrieval of 18 eggs); we transferred 3; 1 implanted and grew into my son; 6 (which we hoped to freeze) stopped dividing of their own accord and (thus being unfit for freezing) were donated for research.
9 embryos sure sounded excessive, but in hindsight, of course, it doesn't.
Posted by: BrooklynGirl at Jul 18, 2006 4:53:53 PM
Umm...I'm pretty attached to my mom, but how much do you think I could get for a mother in LAW? Or maybe a bitchy, racist aunt? Anyone?
Posted by: LMM at Jul 18, 2006 5:16:18 PM
My insurance policy at work has automatic life insurance for my dependents. If my embryos would be considered children I wonder if I would be able to collect life insurance on the four pregnancies I lost. Somehow, I doubt it.
This reminds me of the ethical debate going on here in Canada about using stem cells harvested from fresh embryos for medical research. All I could think about was who in their right mind would pay full freight for an IVF and then donate leftover embryos before they even knew if it took?
Posted by: Elle at Jul 18, 2006 5:30:02 PM
Nothing about infertility is easy. The most difficult thing for me thus far is the hope that I have started with that has been completely stomped on time and again with each new test, or "option".
I know it works for some people. I KNOW it can happen, but it's reading things like this that provide the truth behind the false hope that doctors give us that makes me feel better and worse at the same time.
As for Victoria, I do not have the strength to argue morality with people like her anymore.
Posted by: TB at Jul 18, 2006 5:30:36 PM
Julie,
I always liked your riff on Donne.
I found it one day whilst tearfully googling, "just adopt?" after my very very pregnant best friend asked why I wasn't going that route. So many unwanted kids! So few homes!
Thanks,
Szaszy.
Posted by: Szaszy at Jul 18, 2006 5:42:05 PM
I've always liked you Julie, but today you gave me two more reasons to do so... your math abilities far outweigh mine and more importantly you see the frozen embryo situation for what it truly is... potential with no guarantees. Love you for that... I cringe every time someone insinuates frozen embryos are children because I know damn well they have no life outside my uterus and even inside there is no guarantee they will either. Thanks for making me, a mathematically challenged soul, laugh at your calculations...which by the way is how I perceive even the simplest math problems... err, I mean "equations." (Flashback to the math prof who said math would make sense if i thought about it in more positive terms... betcha he'd tell infertiles to "just relax" too. :)
Posted by: kristin at Jul 18, 2006 5:43:18 PM
Whoa, ktcakes, no one's calling names here unless it's me calling Tertia an asshole.
It is a thorny ethical problem, no doubt, and one that the Mother Jones piece covered pretty responsibly, I think. I also think Ersza has a good point, that it's not inherently harmful to anyone to consider the ethical side of what we're doing. I think each of us makes peace with our own conscience as best we can hence those who stop treatment before undergoing IVF, those who adopt before starting treatment at all, and those who transfer only as many embryos as they'd be willing to bear if all implanted.
Posted by: Julie at Jul 18, 2006 6:17:20 PM
Out of my 7 embryos, 5 were thawed for this last FET, three survived. Out of those three, we have one potential child and "it" according to my own neurotic, glass half empty mind, is probably dead already.
Could you imagine if I referred to my actual child like that?
Posted by: statia at Jul 18, 2006 7:44:59 PM
Not to mention the fact that the "embryos" in question aren't actually embryos... they are blastocysts, ie: a conglomeration of cells which has yet to develop into an embryo. I guess someone, somewhere, figured "embryo" was catchier than "blastocyst" and had no clue what they were getting us all into.
Posted by: JoAnna at Jul 18, 2006 8:25:46 PM
Can I be the first to ask the question, what the heck does matrimercantilic mean anyway?? I asked my husband before posting here because he has a degree in English, and Google doesn't have a single hit for that word?!? I'm very impressed that you could even make up a word that Google can't find a hit for.
On topic, I haven't had to cycle yet, but I can't think of embryos as children, especially with my track record of "dispatching" them at about 5.5 weeks.
Posted by: Michelle at Jul 18, 2006 8:30:14 PM
Wouldn't it be nice if they all turned into Children one day. Last cycle it took me 5 embies to get 2 to transfer and none of them made it sadly.
Posted by: Soralis at Jul 18, 2006 8:53:03 PM
I posted on the last thread about having 7 embryos on ice and then felt bad, as if I had sounded flip and smug. By saying we were unsure what to do with them I meant we couldn't decide whether to discard of them upfront or pay large amounts of money to have painful, invasive and intrusive treatment which would almost certainly have the same result. I still remember my first IVF consult when I asked my RE "so what can you tell me about FETs?" and he replied "Well, they don't work". Sadly my experience so far backs that up.
Posted by: gkk at Jul 18, 2006 8:53:32 PM
If unadopted kids impose a moral burden on anyone, it's a burden we *all* share, not just the infertile among us. If you (like some moral philosophers, such as Peter Singer) think that disposeable income money should be spent to create the most benefit where it's most needed, then we should *all* be donating most of our income to Darfur or Sudan etc. instead of driving cars or indulging in luxuries such as air conditioning, television, automobiles, or other modern Western technologies, including ART. But again, if it is a moral imperative to donate money to charity instead of spending it on discretionary goods or services that enhance one's own life, that moral imperative applies equally to all persons with discretionary income, not just infertiles.
Posted by: victoria at Jul 18, 2006 8:54:22 PM
There are women who "adopt/rescue" frozen embryos, with the intention of undergoing IVF themselves. One almost lost an embryo to thawing because she had it shipped FedEx. She had had IVF a few times without success.
Posted by: ~Macarena~ at Jul 18, 2006 9:20:59 PM
Matrimercantilic--willing to sell your mother.
Also, as an adopted person, I try to discourage people from referring to me a "poor little orphan."
Victoria, you raise an interesting point about sharing the moral burden of unadopted children, but most children available for adoption are not orphans but rather children with birthparents who are unable or unwilling to care for them adequately. Also, many people have raised moral questions about adoption, including issues around trans-racial adoption, closed or open adoption, and international adoption. I'm not saying people shouldn't adopt because we're not sure of all of the ramifications of these issues, or that it doesn't work out wonderfully well for most people (including me), just that it seems to be too easy to view adoption as this wonderful thing where every party benefits. Everyone gains something, but everyone also loses something. It has its own set of moral ambiguities.
On another topic, I'm concerned, too, about letting my insurance company make decisions about how many blastocycts can be used at a time. I played the 25% odds: 16 eggs, 4 fertilized and put in, one child. I worry that if we'd only put two in I wouldn't have a chlld given the FET odds. Oh, and I live in Massachusetts where insurance did cover all of my infertility treatments including IVF.
Posted by: Jo in Boston at Jul 18, 2006 9:33:36 PM
Thanks, Julie, for raising this issue. I was just ranting to my family in a similar fashion.
What really upsets me in this whole political debate is how we, as parents of these embryos, are not considered fit to decide what we want done with any extras. Very few people seem to note that, thus far, no one is stealing anybody else's embryos--all of those being used for stem cell research have been donated, presumably by people who have already come to their own peace about what exactly an embryo represents. It is a deeply personal decision, but once the decision to donate has been made, shouldn't we honor that? (Sorry, just went off on my own soapbox tangent...)
Posted by: Jen at Jul 19, 2006 1:18:57 AM
this message is for victoria and anyone else who cares to read.
i had 21 embryos of which 19 were frozen. of those 19 only 3 never made the thaw. so i could have had 16 children. but because my body didn't seem to know how to keep a pregnancy, three of those 16 were miscarried.
out of those 19 frozen, i ended up with one child but had to wait for the very last embryo to be transferred back to get him.
Posted by: marisa at Jul 19, 2006 1:23:29 AM
Frozen Children?
Hmmm!! They sound delicious!
Posted by: Simone at Jul 19, 2006 2:08:52 AM
Julie;
I have been an avid reader of your blog for quite some time now. I have to admit...I am young(er) and naive so most of what I have known of infertility and IVF started here. Reading your writings actually encouraged me to begin to learn so much more as my heart goes out to any/all facing these unfair situations. Now-not to remove the heat/attention from the current topic, but I have a question for you and your readers that has been weighing heavily on my mind.
Once again, I want anyone reading this to understand that I am still naive about infertility and IVF. I am in my very early 20s and have not yet had to experience finding out if everything will work out for me to have children in the future. With that being said, here goes.....
I have never had the experience of witnessing firsthand the effects that infertility can have on a person. Until recently. About 2 years ago my husband and I purchased a home in an allotment filled with young couples our age (me of course being the youngest but I say our because my hubby is 9 years my senior) anyways, the couple that befriended us right off the bat just so happen to live directly accross the street from us. Naturally we became very close to them. I learned through (we'll call her Mary) "Mary's" openess that at that time she was dealing with infertility due to extreme endometriosis and was currently taking going thru the process of giving herself shots and so on and so forth. She also explained to me that this was the last time she would be doing this before deciding to do IVF.
Skip ahead a short period of time and she finds herself pregnant only to ending up miscarrying. So now they have saved up the money by refinancing their house to pay for everything. We live in OH and she finds a clinic in WA that for $20,000 you get 6 chances at IVF (shared risk program) and if you do not give birth to a baby within those 6 trys, you get your money back. She actually is in WA as we speak (and will be there this entire month-she left on the 5th and returns on the 26th). Now that you have the background here is my question....
What I failed to mention is that "Mary" is bipolar. Extreme bipolar. She is on very high doses of medication ALL the time, even on her medication she has extreme mood swings, and even on her medication is very difficult to be around. I can't even begin to describe some of the things I've experienced with her especially lately. She tells me that her and her husband fight constantly because everything he does upsets her-even something like putting the mustard in the wrong spot in the fridge, or the way he folds his shirts. Everything. She has been especially difficult being off her medication(as she has been off for the past few months due to trying to get pregnant). She informed me a few weeks ago that she had spoken with her doctor and he told her that if she has a daughter, her daughter has a 99.9999% (you get the point) that she WILL be bipolar. If she has a son, he will most definately be ADD or ADHD, along with the possibility of being bipolar.
It hurts me so badly but in a way it has put some thoughts and feelings in me about IVF. Why wouldn't she want to realize the horrile life she's had (HER words not mine!) and still pass that on to someone else just so she can have children? I guess I just want to hear what others have to say on this. As I mentioned, this is really my only experience with this whole situation and I guess I really feel guilty more than anything because it's hard to know how to feel for her. Hopefully others opinions and reasonings on this matter can help me to feel differently.
Once again I apologize for how naive I am when I come to this topic, and I hope I don't come accross in the wrong way. I read your blog daily along with several others. I pray for those of you going thru these hard times. I feel for you-I really do. Please don't be too hard on me. I guess I just need to hear what others have to say.
*Kelly*
Posted by: Kelly at Jul 19, 2006 8:48:47 AM
Victoria comments on a few blogs, and this comment doesn't surprise me.
Posted by: Jodie at Jul 19, 2006 9:24:41 AM
Those numbers are correct....EXCEPT where a woman has become pregnant with embryos from the same batch. In which case, succes rates are much, much better. Also, there isn't any evidence that the amount of cells, or the apparent quality, of embryos makes any difference at all. All of us walking around could be made of the crapiest embryos imaginable, and we'll never know. Out of 8 embryos that I had transferred over 4 cycles, 5 were "picture perfect" 8 cell beauties, one was a so-so with fragnentation (frozen), and two were questionable at best...one 4 cell with fragmentation, and one garbage looking 6 cell, both frozen and thawed. Guess which ones become my twin boys? You betcha!
The statistics are skewed in this way. Embryos are stored in straws of two. If you are transferring two, your clinic will only thaw enough to make two good ones to transfer. In every straw you have either a chance of %100 succes, %50 succes, or a big whopping goose egg. All the national statistics aside, these are the only statistics that matter to YOU. Of course, a woman with 7 embryos could go through all 3 1/2 straws and not get a single one to transfer, as Julie pointed out...OR you could have 4 in storage and get two passable enough to transfer embryos at the first go, leaving the rest still in storage, as is the case with me.
I would love to thaw those two embryos and try for a third child, if my husband will let me. I have fairly middling confidence that at least one will survive the thaw. Of course, with my luck, since I would just want ONE more, both embryos will survive, and they will both split, giving us quadruplets...ALL boys, of course....Which I'm sure someone out there would kill their own mother to have.
Posted by: Chickenpig at Jul 19, 2006 9:31:27 AM
I haven't read the above comments, so bear with me if I ask a repeat question.
1. Does dear, misguided Victoria have children? Did she bear them the "regular" way?
2. How can anyone preach, all pointy-fingered and self-righteous, how another woman, another family, should choose to bear children? JUST ADOPT! JUST RELAX!
Just gag me.
No one should have to suffer to bear a child.
Posted by: Heels at Jul 19, 2006 10:23:28 AM
This is such a difficult topic. I respect that it's off limits most of the time in Julie's blog.
I'm pro-life. It is really hard. Why do I even conceive if most of those little morulic slivers of life are going to die? I grieve less for a chemical pregnancy than I did for a 20-week stillbirth. Would I grieve less for a 30-week stillbirth than I would for the death of a toddler? Is it emotional attachment that makes the difference, or is there some primal, objective difference in "life worthiness" between the blastocyst and the embryo and the fetus and the newborn and the preschooler?
I can't convince myself to believe that there's some magical number of cells that suddenly transforms a fetus into a human being. I know that a 21-weeker has no life outside of my uterus. I know that I've seen a 23-weeker lying in NICU, suddenly a baby rather than a potential baby. What changed in those two weeks?
If I conceive quadruplets (ha ha ha ha ha ha ha), and I know very well that (probably) the only way to give two of those babies a fighting chance at live birth is to reduce the other two, aren't I choosing death both ways? If I don't reduce, aren't I making a conscious decision that causes them ALL to die? And if the Morally Upright Decision is to choose only fresh transfers with only two embryos at a time, what's the frigging point?
It is really hard. If you believe that a pregnant woman is carrying a real live baby in her womb, not just some collection of cells that doesn't become a human baby until the moment of birth, you are trapped in this world of ugly realities and wrenchingly difficult choices. I truly, deeply, sincerely believe that at 7dpo, 3 months, 8.5 months, and on the day before and the day after birth, that an unborn zygotemorulablastocystembryofetus is an honest piece of life, of baby, of human being. And it really, really sucks.
Posted by: Marie at Jul 19, 2006 10:23:47 AM
You girls are making this hard for me. I've got 6 frozen embryo's (which I need, no baby yet) but I am also in need of a really kick ass mom. Honestly though, I am surprised at how many people (including my GP) think that 6 frozen embryo's means I am "guarenteed" to have a baby from this cycle. Bullshit! My clinic has a 15% live birth rate with FET's. With 6 embryo's, 4 should survive which gives us one 15% chance. Although, I'd do it even if it had a 1% chance - that's more than I have any normal month. I'm grateful for my six embryo's but they have a long way to go before I'd call any of them children.
Posted by: jenny at Jul 19, 2006 10:24:30 AM
