Reducing IVF multiples
Posted on January 24, 2008
Welcome to the Twin Peas Blog and Podcast! If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my updates by RSS feed or you can have new posts and episodes sent right to your Email. Thanks for visiting!
When my husband and I discussed our life together we talked about how many kids we desired and when we thought would be a good time to add children to create our family. Never did we consider that we’d have problems becoming pregnant. Infertility was not a topic we discussed before we were married. But when my husband was diagnosed as “infertile” it changed our marriage. Marriage vows are strong, such as “for better or for worse” (although ours were slightly different), but so was my desire to be a mom. But, for me, becoming a mom came at many costs. My marriage suffered because my husband and I had different ideas of how to deal with our infertile condition.
I pushed my husband toward In Vitro-Fertilization (IVF) as it was our only real option based on his “infertility” problem (something he thanks me for now, but at the time cause a lot of fights and hard feelings toward each other). Although it worked and we became pregnant; our journey to parenthood was one I would not wish upon anyone. Our twins were born 10 weeks early, both weighing about 2 ½ pounds. Hence, the reason for this blog and my desire to bring awareness about infertility and premature births.
Many women going through infertility don’t think premature birth is a big deal; it won’t happen to them even if they become pregnant with twins. I didn’t believe it would happen to me and I was ignorant as to what premature birth really was and how it would impact me, my husband, and our children. However, the chances of having a baby born premature does increase slightly even when carrying only one baby if a woman has undergone infertility treatments (stats I’ll prove at another time). But the reality is that multiple gestation pregnancies caused by IVF are impacting the increasing occurrence of premature birth. Fertility clinics recognize this problem and some of them are doing something about it. The clinic we used to become pregnant has found a new method for identifying the best embryos to transfer into women to achieve the goal of “one IVF cycle, one egg, one embryo” and in turn, one healthy baby (www.haveababy.com). There are many good clinics, so I’m not advocating you change doctors, rather check out this link and this one too for more information because information is power in the world of infertility:
Ask your clinic if they use a similar procedure to maximize your ability to become pregnant as well as reduce your chances for a multiple birth. My twins are a gift and I am truly grateful for my blessings. However, knowing what I know now and having experienced premature birth, I recommend trying for only one baby.
» Filed Under Infertility
Comments
One Response to “Reducing IVF multiples”
Leave a Reply
[…] fairly new program at SIRM hopes to minimize multiples. It’s nice to see a clinic taking an active role trying to reduce […]