Showing posts with label PGD. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PGD. Show all posts

Sunday, August 22, 2010

IVF with PGD?

**Due to popular demand, I added a few definitions down at the bottom for some of the random acronyms in this post!**

With IVF #2 slowly quickly approaching (UGH, 4 more months) I have gotten back into doing "baby research". For most people this entails looking at the newest carseats and cribs but for us it means scouring the internet for the newest advances in reproductive technologies. When we got pregnant with London we did IVF with ICSI and AH.  This time I am thinking of throwing PGD into the mix. My RE has not recommended this to us yet but we haven't really discussed next cycle yet either. I had an initial consultation and she added me to the January IVF schedule, but we haven't discuss actual protocol.

The reason I would like to add PGD to this cycle to because of our recurrent miscarriages. We had 3 miscarriages before getting pregnant with London and then we lost his twin at 11 weeks.  I would LOVE to somehow cheat the odds and escape from IVF #2 without another miscarriage.

Here are my reservations about PGD though. I have heard that it can sometimes damage the embryo thus making it stop grow. Even the idea of this breaks my heart. There is nothing I can do if some of the embryos that we create from IVF stop growing.  But to think that WE caused it to stop growing breaks my heart. I know this may sound silly to some because I know we are doing it for the greater good of the healthy embryos but I can't help feel bad for the ones who won't pass. The ones who are never going to get a shot at implanting in the uterus. The ones who will begin and end in a petri dish.

So I have a questions for people who have done PGD.  They don't give me details about the embryos do they? They just get a pass/fail grade right? I have this huge fear that they are going to show me this chart on ET day with the embryo's picture/gender/hair color/birth weight/shoe size/and an age progression photo of when the embryo is 21. (TOTALLY KIDDING) I just fear that I will be given too much info thus making me feel even more guilty about the embryos that did not make it. Basically I just want to make sure they don't tell me gender. While I am aching for a little girl, I do think some things should be left up to chance. I want to use the most healthy embryos regardless of gender. I can't imagine if we chose to not use  "embryo London" based solely on his gender. We would have missed so much. Every baby regardless of gender has a place in our family, we just don't know it yet. When we showed up to our ET the Dr used his medical expertise and chose which little guys were getting put back. Knowing personal information about them (like gender) would have always made me feel guilty for the ones we didn't put back. Does this make sense? I apologize if not, this has sort of become a 'random stream of consciousness' post for me. For that I apologize to you, but just writing all of this down has been very therapeutic for me.

Anyway... I think I am going to talk to my RE about doing PGD during our next IVF cycle. Basically I just want to make sure that we have the healthiest embryos transfered at ET. I want to minimize my time at the Dr's office and away from London. I want to minimize the already difficult emotional times that come with infertility and IVF. I want to have a baby with the least amount of heartache. I want to be fertile and get pregnant when my husband bumps into me in the hallway. Since that is not going to happen PGD might just be our next best option.

**Definitions:
RE:  Reproductive Endocrinologist (Infertility Specialist) 
IVF: Invitro Fertilization
ICSI:  Intracytoplasmic sperm injection, a technique where they take one sperm and inject it directly into the egg. Mainly used when there in a issue with the males sperm. 
AH: Assisted Hatching, used to basically crack the shell of an embryo before it is transfered back. It aids in implantation
PGD: P reimplantation genetic diagnosis, genetic testing to make sure the embryo is chromosomally normal before transferring.
ET: Embryo Transfer. The procedure where they put the embryos back inside of you.