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