Low Birthweight Tied to Infertility, Not Treatments
Posted on August 7, 2008
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I’m assuming that if you travel through the Internet for information about infertility you’ve run across the recent articles that tie infertility, the medical issue, to low birthweight, i.e., premature births. I find myself sitting smack dab in the middle on how I feel about prematurity stemming more from infertility, the disease, than from fertility treatments.
On one hand, I feel like the infertile community has another darn hill to climb. It’s not bad enough we were stuck with medical conditions that impact our ability to get pregnant, but now we find out that because of our infertility, we are at risk for delivering a low birthweight baby (or babies). Thanks for the double whammy! I rather enjoyed the experience and hope that some day women will not have to endure what I did to make it to the other side.
On the other, I am thankful that the resulting low birthweight babies are not CAUSED by fertility treatments. If that had been the case any potential future coverage by insurance companies would be nil. However, now with low birthweight being tied to “infertility” I’m curious as to how this may impact “existing condition” clauses.
It appears that the study had a few flaws (based on other new research) in that “fertile” women seem to be those that have already had a child (at least that is what I gleamed out of the articles). According to a different study, if a woman has had a previous pregnancy (single baby) she is less likely to deliver her second child (or twins) prematurely (IVF or not). One article on this topic of low birthweight specifically mentioned it was the “woman’s” infertility while another stated “couple’s” infertility. A little consistency would be nice.
So, even though I keep up hope that someday insurance will cover fertility treatments, I think more detailed studies are still necessary. What are your thoughts?
» Filed Under Infertility, Premature Births, pregnancy
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