What to do with our Frozen Embryos

A certified envelope came in the mail yesterday from our fertility clinic.  And here I had assumed that our business with them was long finished.  I hadn't forgotten about our frozen embryos, but thought that since July 2011 had come and gone (1 year since our IVF treatment), our contract to cryopreserve them for a year had ended and they had most certainly disposed of them already, which made me really sad to think about.  How wrong I was.  The clinic wants to know what we intend on doing with our 5 remaining frozen embryos.  They say we have 4 options to chose from, and 30 days to decide and respond--before they do what, I don't know.  Maybe the embryos will self destruct or something?

Our options are as follows:

-Continue storage for one additional year at the rate of $1500.00, after which time you will need to make arrangements for long term storage through an outside agency.

-Dispose of your embryos (We will need your signed & notarized consent before proceeding)

-Transfer your embryos to an outside agency.

-Donate to Science.

So, here's our dilemma.  Since we miraculously conceived a baby while making plans to use those frozen embryos for another IVF round, both of us immediately wished a 5th option was available to donate to another infertile couple.  We've looked it up and although it is a more or less new idea, it does exist, and it comes in two forms.  One is called Embryo Donation, which is simply an anonymous donation to infertile couples, all parental rights to the embryos are waved.  The other is unofficially called Embryo Adoption, which is basically the same thing except that you get to chose the recipient couple that you want to "adopt" your embryos, and then chose the level of "adoption" you are comfortable with, just as in a legal adoption (closed, semi or open).  The reason that "embryo adoption" is not a legal term is because right now, the only thing you can adopt are children who have already been born.  Besides, once a woman is impregnated with the embryos, they belong to her.  She will not have to legally adopt them once she gives birth because they came from her body.  It's like in a surrogate mother's case, even though she carries and gives birth to a baby that is not genetically hers in any way, it is automatically assumed hers at birth and the biological parents must actually legally adopt the baby back in order for it to belong to them again.

Anyway, it's hard to think about what to do with the embryos.  Even though your body goes through disposing of genetic material monthly (and a lot more often for men), this seems different somehow because of the fact that they are actual embryos (little fetuses), not just separate eggs or sperm.  They are actual babies!  Now for those anti-abortionists, the answer is simple; keep storing the embryos, no matter what the cost.  Mike & I are not total pro-live activists or anything, but we sure do have a conscience about it.  If given the choice without consequence, there is no question we would keep them forever.  But there are realities to face. Fact of the matter is, when we were undergoing IVF, we had to sign a contract that said we would consider "selective reduction" for the safety and health of me and my remaining babies if I so happened to become pregnant with more than 3 babies.  Selective reduction, in case you haven't guessed, is just a fancy term for abortion of multiple fetuses.  In my head, I decided to just stash that away for when I was actually faced with that situation, because no way could I know what to do until then. 

So other than the emotional connection to these embryos that makes this such a hard thing to deal with, we have the financial side of it.  It won't be too soon before we forget how much it cost us to go through IVF, and the fact that we had remaining embryos was our ticket to getting up to 5 more IVF treatments at a discounted price.  Because doing a frozen embryo transfer is probably a quarter the cost of an entire IVF cycle.  Should we discover that our daughter was a fluke and we are still unable to get pregnant on our own without help, it would be great to know we still have those 5 embryos waiting.  

However, $1500 is a crap load of money (even though that is still far less to pay than an entire new IVF cycle), we still can't afford it.  The best thing we can think of right now--because we can't bring ourselves to just dispose of that much money (especially since our IVF was unsuccessful, and we'd like to think a future one will actually work and pay off)--is to research other cryopreservation banks to see if the cost is less than $1500 bucks a year!  If so, we can transfer them and keep saving for another year when we can once again consider all these options... 

I'm telling you, it's hard.  I've been having a tough enough time trying to figure out what to do with all my frozen pumped breast milk!  I mean, I don't want to waste it, but when am I ever going to use it?  My baby gets all she needs directly from the breast.  Oh well, that's a topic for another time I guess...

My Fear of Vaccinating Baby

Well, my daughter is 2 months old already, and today was the day for her first vaccines!  I am scared...

Before you assume I'm one of those anti-vaccine extremists, be assured I am not.  However, neither am I an all out pro-vaccine activist or one of the many blind followers of them.  I find that I fall somewhere in the middle in the cautious parent category, I suppose. I try to educate myself in all things at least as much as I can, and when it comes to people jabbing my baby daughter with needles filled with diseases (dead or alive), you can bet I'm gonna do my research!

Immunizations have always been scary to me, and not always for the same reason, but when you look at the nature of what they are, it really ties it in to the same perspective.  When I was 6 years old, I can still remember getting my immunizations for school.  I remember the huge needle going into my arm, I remember crying, and then I can remember the little round band-aid the nurse put on me that she drew a smiley face on.  It was scary back then because my young mind knew there was something very unnatural about stabbing people with needles.  Today, my more developed mind knows I was right way back then, and still agrees.  But now I know the reasons behind immunizations, and understand why we do them.

My mother caught the devastating Polio virus when she was all of 4 years old.  Though she was lucky enough to have survived it, she has been crippled ever since, especially now that she is in her 60's and experiencing what all Polio survivors know as Post-Polio Syndrome (PPS), or a return of their childhood Polio symptoms.  My mom now has to walk with a cane or walker and use a wheelchair when she needs to get somewhere that is too far to walk, and she is plagued with chronic fatigue and weak muscles.  Unfortunately, it will never get better for her as she ages, only worse.  So, it was a blessing in her eyes that the Polio vaccine was developed.  That way, she could be assured that her children would be spared such a devastating and often fatal disease.

There's another side to vaccines, though.  A scary, unknown side that makes many people weary of them nowadays.  The fear is that they could be the cause of any number of serious health conditions that plague the population today.  But how would we know?  How could we know unless science proved it?  The fact is, no one has proved anything, so all we can do is trust the doctor.  It is terrifying to think that I could unknowingly be injecting my daughter with something that could potentially harm her health.  But, on the other hand, no one wants their child to catch the horrible diseases that vaccines prevent.  And one thing's for sure, I'm not blind to the fact that vaccines definitely prevent diseases.

Though I am not against children receiving immunizations, when my daughter was born, we were asked whether or not we wanted her to receive the routine Hep B vaccine before she left the hospital, and we declined.  They didn't ask why, but for the benefit of this blog, I will tell you we did so for several reasons.  First of all, what kind of message are we giving our brand new baby by inflicting instant pain on them?  Welcome to the world, baby!  Don't worry, we're you're Mommy & Daddy and we're going to protect you--JAB!!! Trust me, if I'd had any control over my baby getting the PKU test and random blood sugar tests (both of which require pricking of their tiny newborn feet to get blood) I would have declined that too.  And yes, if my baby was a boy, we would have declined circumcision for that same reason (among others, but that's another story). The second reason we opted not to get the Hep B vaccine at birth is because what newborn infant's immune system is so well developed that they can immediately receive a fat dose of disease to fight off? Especially when you learn that a baby's immune system isn't even fully developed until sometime in their 2nd month!  

What happens when you get a vaccine is the same thing that happens whenever your body comes across bacteria, viruses or another foreign invader.  It fights to kill it, and while it is doing this, the immune system is compromised (or more understandably, preoccupied).  When your immune system is compromised, that's when you get sick.  So, I wasn't all that keen on making my baby sick the second she made her debut.  And considering (reason #3) what the Hep B vaccine actually is (a sexually transmitted disease) gave me confidence that she wouldn't likely be catching it in her infancy anyway, so it was probably safe to wait.

My husband brought home several books on children vaccines to read before our baby was even born.  One of them I liked in particular because it was unbiased, siding on neither pro-vaccine or anti-vaccine.  Written by a doctor, it merely stated the facts. In explaining what the Hep B vaccine is for, I will quote him: 

"Hep B is a sexually transmitted virus that causes liver damage and sometimes liver failure.  It can be fatal.  Besides being transmitted through unprotected sex, hep B can also be passed on by the sharing of IV drug needles, the use of improperly sterilized tattoo needles, or an accidental stick with an infected needle.  So any baby who participates in one of the above-mentioned risky activities could catch hepatitis B." -Robert W. Sears, M.D. in The Vaccine Book

So there it is.  Those were our reasons not to vaccinate her at birth.  That didn't mean, however, that we were never going to give her the Hep B vaccine.  I am aware of it's severity.  If she were to catch it, it would be devastating, so that is the reason they offer it at birth.  Because if any mother had Hep B, she would almost certainly pass it on to her baby unless that baby was immediately immunized.  Since I know I don't have hep B, and have been vaccinated against it several times, I felt we were safe.

This morning, our poor little girl received 3 injections and 1 oral vaccine.  DTaP (Diptheria, Tetanus & Pertussis), PCV13 (Pneumococcal Conjugate), HBV (Hepatitis B) & Rotavirus Vaccine.  She screamed her little lungs out and made Mommy & Daddy almost cry ourselves!  She was a brave little girl, though, because she stopped crying almost immediately after the nurse was done.  She did, however, become fussy after we brought her home, so as recommended by our pediatrician, we gave her baby Tylenol for pain/fever that could develop following the vaccines.  She has been fussy and quite sleepy all day so far.  A new feeling I hadn't felt before for my little girl has emerged.  It's one of empathy and protectiveness and makes me love her even more.  What all this really boils down to is that I just don't want anything to hurt my little girl.  For sure, this experience has brought me closer to my baby and showed me that I have what it takes to be her mommy.  This was only my first experience with her getting hurt and not feeling well.  There will be many more in the course of her childhood, and I know now that I'll handle it.