Huffington Magazine Issue 17 | Page 39

HUFFINGTON 10.07.12 MIRACLE BABIES tubes, no sperm — as long as you have some chance each month, then statistically you will find that some couples will get pregnant on their own,” said Dr. Robert Oates, president of the Society for Male Reproduction and Urology. “We have to hold back our enthusiasm for getting to interventions like IVF too quickly and need to give biology some time to work when there’s a sense that it might.” Nearly 12 percent of American women between the ages of 15 and 44 have sought some form of fertility assistance and, though only a small percent pursue the most aggressive options, more than 146,000 cycles of assisted reproductive technology — namely IVF — were performed in the U.S. in 2010. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 1 percent of babies born each year are now conceived using some form of assisted reproductive technology. “Because IVF is so successful now, I think some people are probably getting it who don’t really need it,” said Courtney Lynch, an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology, epidemiology and pediatrics at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Cen- “WITH MY BOY, IT’S LIKE I HAD ONE GOLDEN EGG IN THERE.” ter, whose research centers on risk factors for fertility problems. Lynch said there is something of a don’t ask, don’t tell policy with reproductive endocrinologists and their patients. Rather than pressing for details on how often they have been having intercourse and how carefully they have been timing it, doctors take their patients at their word that they are good candidates for fertility treatment. But IVF is a grueling, logistically challenging process, not a quick fix. Women are given drugs to boost their egg production, often hormones that must be injected daily. During that time, patients must undergo pelvic ultrasounds and blood tests to check their ovaries and hormone levels. Next their eggs are retrieved, an outpatient procedure that usually involves some form of sedation. That is followed by insemination, or the mixing of the sperm and egg in a