Jezebel 
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New York, 7:14 PM
Sun Nov 22
23 posts in the last 24 hours
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08/19/09
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Of course, the ones who lie about being pregnant at all are a completely different story.
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Now, everyone forget that I just admitted to knowing all this. Ooh, look! A chicken!
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Doping is encouraged - nay, necessary.
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Maybe it's a good thing Mary didn't have more than one kid, if this is how the first one turned out.
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But, anyway, I was saying: media circus over large multiples is not a new path to dubious fame. See also: Dionne quintuplets.
Me, I think my fiancé and I are planning to have two kids. And a cat. And that's more than enough liveliness in my household for me.
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I wonder if they're the basis for the Simpsons episode(s) about multiple births.
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Interestingly enough, and very pertinently to the post, some Googling after I made my initial comment also brought me to this: [gosselinswithoutpity.blogspot.com]
08/19/09
Now fast forward and women are trying to have 12, 13 babies. It's kinda shocking. And now I feel even less special.
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She had twin boys.
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08/19/09
Um, you already interfered with God's will. By, you know, getting a doctor to fertilize you when God and the sperm couldn't get the job done on their own. But now, NOW, you're gonna go all "let nature take its course" like this is all somehow from GOD??
Sorry. Illogic really burns me.
08/19/09
Although I find it HILARIOUS when pro-lifers get IVF. Oh, so we can't play God with taking away life, but creating it? Totally kosher.
08/19/09
Doctors have done a good job of significantly decreasing the rate of high-order multiples in the last 15 years, without legislation.
The vast majority of doctors do a good job of policing themselves - one of the stats they have to report if they belong to SART (Soceity for Assisted Repro. Technology) is the percentage of high-order multiples. A high percentage is bad.
The outliers like Suleman's doc need to have their licenses stripped by state medical boards. In addition to punishing wrongdoers like him, it would serve as a deterrent to the docs that seek to boost their success rates at the expense of their patients' and their patients' children's health and lives.
08/19/09
If he had been stripped of his license, I'd feel differently.
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After she became famous, Georgia introduced legislation to limit the number of embryos transferred. Problem was, it introduced by a pro-life group. Who TOTALLY has my best interests in mind, I'm sure.
I agree there should be a limit on how many embryos can be transferred, I just don't want it to come from state legislatures, who can clearly not be trusted. Are they ALL going to base their limit on solid medical evidence, or are they just going to pick a number? Whose number?
ETA: The bill sought to define an IVF embryo as a "biological human being." It also imposed totally arbitrary limits, like limiting transfer to two embryos if they were donated or made from donated eggs, regardless of the woman's age.
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My second transfer (of a frozen embryo) was successful, and I had one baby. We have to pay for our next one, but I'm doing a single-embryo transfer because I really really don't want twins. I'm lucky that I can afford to make that gamble.
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I transferred two, both times - but I also think I was generally more aware of the serious problems of high-order multiples. And I had a clinic that strongly impresses on patients how much they DON'T want triplets+. My clinic made us go to an information session at which they tell you the goal is one baby - and they show you pretty scary stats on multiples (average weeks at birth, weight, likelihood of problems). Doctors who don't do this and don't limit the numbers they transfer are in my opinion committing medical malpractice.
08/19/09
I have really mixed feelings on IVF anyhow (not for everyone...just me personally), and this does nothing to help it. People make everyone look bad.
08/19/09
I remember my doctor telling me that many of the higher-order multiple situations came from a combo of IUI and patients who didn't follow doctor's orders closely, hoping to up their chances - since the amounts of sperm and eggs involved were not so closely monitored as with IVF. She said it was a shame that the public would use those outliers as reasons to judge those of us who use ART safely and responsibly...
08/19/09
Most clinics - those that belong to SART or ASRM - transfer 2 if you're under 35-37, and may transfer three if you're over that. I know a shitload of people who've done IVF and no one has triplets. Of course they happen - sometimes a single embryo splits - but it really is rare.
The trend in reproductive medicine is toward single-embryo transfers, though they are still a small percentage of all transfers. As science gets better they will become more common. But the cost factor will always be an issue.
08/19/09
Granted, I don't go around saying this, especially to my friends who have had children via IVF. I recognise it's a minority opinion, and I try not to be judge-y. But my sister, who is pregnant via IVF, knows how I feel, and sometimes it's tough for me to be sympathetic when she goes on and on about her morning sickness. I am thankful every day for my adoptive daughter.
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I empathize with your sister, having such a judgmental person in her life. Hopefully you were able to at least keep your opinions to yourself while she was going through fertility treatments.
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Is inability to conceive "naturally" a medical condition? I never thought of it as such; I just kinda figured it was on a par with, say, being four foot ten: Yeah, I always thought I'd be over five foot like most other people, but hey, I'm not. I can't conceive? Jeez, that sucks--but I can still become a parent without using medical resources that might be put to use on other things? Whoo-hoo.
And as I said, I don't go around telling people, because I try not to be judgemental. I figure if I think it but don't say or act upon it, life's cool. I did think, hey, surely i can "come out" here and expect some reasonable discourse. But I forgot how easily some people toss around words like "asshole".
08/19/09
But, to address your statements--
1) I highly doubt that any significant amount of money being used to fund fertility treatments would be redirected to improve the lives of children if it were suddenly banned.
2) I agree with you that IVF/conception is not on par with cancer treatments or insulin, which save your life, but it's definitely, imo, on par with "life-improving" surgery like rhinoplasty... actually, I think this goes above and beyond sheer vanity.
3) If you have an organ, say a uterus, fallopian tubes, ovaries, etc. that are in your body and aren't functioning as they are designed to function: yeah, that's a medical issue.
4) I may be misconstruing this, so feel free to correct me, but you seem to place undue "responsibility" on infertile couples by saying THEY are the ones who should adopt. If there are enough children who need homes already, why don't FERTILE couples go this route as well?
Adoption is an amazing option. My life has been made the richer by adopted children coming into my family and I cannot imagine life without them. However, adoption, for reasons of money, time, or a slew of other things, isn't the best choice for everyone.
08/19/09
I have PCOS. It most certainly IS a medical problem, of which infertility, or reduced fertility, is one symptom. Kudos for bringing up the tired old "medical resources" chestnut - as if my IVF prevented someone else's leukemia from being cured.
I'm all for adoption. As someone who's done it surely you know that the problem is not the "supply" (to put it crudely) of children who need homes, but rather the problem of getting those children, who may be in countries that don't even ALLOW international adoption. Not to mention that people are often turned down based on arbitrary criteria.
While domestic adoption is a good option for some, many people are not equipped to take on a child with often severe medical or emotional problems, or an older child - i.e., the children that comprise about 95% of the available children in the U.S.
It's tough to have a reasonable discourse when your entire viewpoint is "I don't like IVF so I think no one should have it." That's not an opening for discourse. That's a diktat. So don't act so aggrieved.
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08/20/09
No, my entire discourse is not "I don't like IVF so I don't think anyone should have it". If you're really interested in my polemic--which as I said relies on what I said was my perfect world, which is the same world where all individuals have health insurance and puppies and pandas frolic freely--I'd be happy to share it.
But in a nutshell: 1) regulatory lines have to be drawn somewhere. That's why, say, alcohol is legal albeit regulated but heroin is illegal--even though many would argue that if addicts had relatively simple access to H, crime would decline and there would actually be less crime and violence, on a percentage basis, than among alcohol abusers.
2) medicine follows money. If investing in and advancing IVF et al were less profitable than developing so-called orphan drugs, then there's be fewer resources directed to IVF and more toward developing orphan drugs. Globally speaking, if profitability were reprioritised, and given that resources are finite, one could follow your argument (which I didn't make) that having IVF equates to someone else not having leukemia treatment.
3) if adoption were also made more of a priority (we're back in my perfect world, remember), then more resources and assistance could be directed to making it simpler, less expensive, and more accessible.
I could go on in more detail, connecting the dots, providing supporting data, but I suspect that's not what anyone wants to read. It's much more fun to toss out phrases andy hyperbole (as if I'd wish HG or even nonlife-threatening morning sickness of one of the dearest people to me in the world--crikey).
As for your dig at rhinoplasty: I know one person who, if he hadn't had it, would most likely not have been healthy enough to subsequently father a child. And his nose, for the record, is just as large and lumpy as it was before the surgery, which was done to correct blockages and internal scarring. So you might just want want to avoid jumping to conclusions about "fucking nose jobs" and calling the opinions of others "diktats". Don't act so aggrieved.
08/19/09
Maybe that's just vanity, though.
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I feel like that should be a new sport in the X games.
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The McCaughey's for some reason always irritated me when they were in the spotlight, though I know that's unfair and I could never put my finger on why.