(November 6, 2016 at 7:58 am)LadyForCamus Wrote: Well...that is KIND of what they do. The process of harvesting the eggs takes months and months, involving almost daily doctor's appointments, hormone replacements, and daily shots in order to stimulate the ovaries to produce a large enough number of eggs for potential conception. (My girlfriend got 16 eggs out of her first round, and those 16 eggs only yielded 5 viable embryos for transfer in the end.
And then they do it at a clip of like, 1-2 embryos per IVF transfer. So, my friend did 2, 2, and then 1, for a total of all five embryos over the course of three transfers. The nice thing is, the embryos are frozen so she could choose to do a transfer whenever she had the time. She is a school teacher and it was hard to get the time off of work for so many doc appts, so she did her transfers over the summer. And of course, just like any other pregnancy, you have to wait 3-4 weeks after each transfer to see if the embryo implanted, and if it didn't, you have to wait to get your period before moving on to the next one.
But as I said, the embryos are frozen and can be used at a woman's discretion, so I don't think as many embryos are typically getting "wasted" or "discarded" as you think. And a woman can always choose to donate her embryos if she decides she doesn't want to try anymore. My girlfriend considered using donor eggs after 3 failed IVF's. So, maybe it's not as wasteful of a process as you had thought?
P.s. I am not a fertility doctor. I am only relaying the experience of my friend. If I said anything factually or scientifically incorrect, please, someone with more knowledge on the subject, go ahead and correct me! [emoji39]
No, that's precisely how it works. Sam and I went through the ICSI procedure and were preparing to undergo it again after the first round failed to take. And that's the point; the doctors harvested a whole clutch of eggs, plus my sperm, in order to get two textbook embryos with the highest chance of viability. And they didn't take. The rest would have had even less of a chance by comparison - as in "no good". I'm not even factoring in the sheer waste of all those potential embryos that likely self-aborted or otherwise failed to implant during the natural course of our relationship.
And please don't anybody hint at "God's will" or "not meant to be" or some such ignorant platitude. Not unless you want to see me get violent. This is not a preaching opportunity.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
