{"id":535,"date":"2024-02-28T11:48:21","date_gmt":"2024-02-28T11:48:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/28\/what-an-ivf-doctor-whos-undergone-the-process-wants-you-to-understand\/"},"modified":"2024-02-28T11:48:21","modified_gmt":"2024-02-28T11:48:21","slug":"what-an-ivf-doctor-whos-undergone-the-process-wants-you-to-understand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/28\/what-an-ivf-doctor-whos-undergone-the-process-wants-you-to-understand\/","title":{"rendered":"What an IVF doctor who\u2019s undergone the process wants you to\u00a0understand"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Editor\u2019s note: <\/em><\/strong>This special episode of \u201cChasing Life: Paging Dr. Gupta\u201d is about In vitro fertilization (IVF) and what you need to know about the Alabama ruling. We\u2019ll return next week to the \u201cChasing Life with Dr. Sanjay Gupta\u201d podcast series on weight loss to explore whether menopause causes weight gain. You can listen to other episodes,\u00a0about weight and health, <\/em>here<\/em>.<\/em> <\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look collectively at the population of the US just over time, in the 40 years since Louise Brown\u00a0was born, about 2% of the current population has been conceived with IVF,\u201d she said of the first \u201ctest tube baby,\u201d who was born in 1978. <\/p>\n

But for people experiencing infertility, hope is one hill on the rollercoaster. Undergoing in vitro fertilization is extremely challenging \u2014 it is often a long, physically demanding and financially draining undertaking \u2014 and there is no guarantee of a baby at the end. <\/p>\n

Feinberg knows this all too well. She has gone through the process multiple times. <\/p>\n

Now, there\u2019s a new challenge for some people relying on IVF: The Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are children and protected under the state\u2019s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. <\/p>\n

The ruling has alarmed patients, health care providers and reproductive rights advocates in the state and beyond. A number of clinics in Alabama have already paused treatment, and patients\u2019 lives have been thrown into uncertainty. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think it most seriously impacts those who are most vulnerable. We have patients who want to go through IVF, who save up for years to go through it. We have patients who mortgage their houses because their desire to build their family is so profound,\u201d said Feinberg, a practicing reproductive endocrinologist.<\/strong> <\/p>\n

Alabama resident Gabrielle Goidel, 26, has had three miscarriages and was a few days away from having her eggs retrieved at an Alabama fertility clinic when the ruling came down. She and her husband have spent more than two years and $20,000 trying to get pregnant. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very scary to think how much I\u2019ve invested into this, how close I am to the end of this procedure,\u201d she said.<\/strong> <\/p>\n

During an IVF cycle, eggs are retrieved from a patient\u2019s body, combined with sperm in a laboratory and then transferred back into the patient\u2019s uterus in the hopes of establishing a pregnancy. But because only some of the eggs exposed to sperm will become fertilized, and not all of those embryos will be viable, doctors give patients hormones to stimulate the ovaries to produce multiple eggs, and then fertilize them all. <\/p>\n

Typically, only one or two resulting embryos are transferred to the uterus at a time; the rest are frozen for later. This lowers the cost and the inconvenience of the procedure. Freezing embryos also allows patients to test them for genetic abnormalities or preserve fertility if they are undergoing certain treatments, like chemotherapy for cancer. <\/p>\n

In a move that added more financial and emotional strain to an already stressful process, Goidel and her husband have decamped to Texas to continue their fertility journey. <\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, if they tell me to stop now, I genuinely don\u2019t know what I would do. I\u2019ve been waiting over two years to be pregnant,\u201d she said. \u201cThere is no world where I could see me stopping this process right now.\u201d<\/strong> <\/p>\n

Feinberg was 34 when she underwent an IVF cycle and became \u201cfairly sick\u201d with ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, an excessive response to the hormones used to stimulate the development of eggs in the ovaries, creating build-up of fluids in her abdomen and bad pain. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe had transferred one embryo, and we cryopreserved the remaining nine,\u201d she recalled. \u201cAnd that one pregnancy was not growing normally.\u201d <\/p>\n

She said the embryo had a heartbeat, but it wasn\u2019t measuring properly. A few weeks went by, yet Feinberg didn\u2019t miscarry, as unviable embryos naturally do, and continuing the pregnancy was causing her \u201cterrible\u201d health problems.<\/strong> <\/p>\n

\u201cI elected to terminate the pregnancy. It was a highly, highly desired pregnancy after two years of infertility and three miscarriages,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

She later went through the procedure again and now has healthy teenage twins. <\/p>\n

Saying embryos are babies is an \u201coverstretch of what the science tells us,\u201d Feinberg says. <\/p>\n

\u201cI like to think of it as something that has the potential to become a human life, and in most circumstances, the overwhelming majority [of embryos], <\/strong>depending on the age of the woman, will not actually grow to become a human.\u201d <\/p>\n

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    <\/ul>\n<\/div>\n

    In general, Feinberg says, IVF typically takes a number of embryo transfers before resulting in a pregnancy. And she thinks difficult medical situations that crop up unexpectedly \u2014 but not infrequently \u2014 are better left to the doctor and patient to resolve. <\/p>\n

    The consequences of the Alabama decision are only just beginning to be felt. <\/p>\n

    \u201cI have found, when speaking with legislators, that they don\u2019t really understand the science,\u201d Feinberg said. \u201cAnd I think that in the Alabama case, they probably didn\u2019t quite understand the implications of what their ruling is now going to do for those families that so desperately want children.\u201d <\/p>\n

    Families like hers 15 years ago and Goidel\u2019s today. <\/p>\n

    To listen to more the conversation between Feinberg and Gupta, click <\/em>here<\/em>.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

    This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Editor\u2019s note: This special episode of \u201cChasing Life: Paging Dr. Gupta\u201d is about In vitro fertilization (IVF) and what you need to know about the Alabama ruling. We\u2019ll return next week to the \u201cChasing Life with Dr. Sanjay Gupta\u201d podcast series on weight loss to explore whether menopause causes weight gain. You can listen to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":536,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"loftocean_post_primary_category":0,"loftocean_post_format_gallery":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_ids":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_urls":"","loftocean_post_format_video_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_video_url":"","loftocean_post_format_video_type":"","loftocean_post_format_video":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_type":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_url":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_audio":"","loftocean-featured-post":"","loftocean-like-count":0,"loftocean-view-count":543,"tinysalt_single_post_intro_label":"","tinysalt_single_post_intro_description":"","tinysalt_hide_post_featured_image":"","tinysalt_post_featured_media_position":"","tinysalt_single_site_header_source":"","tinysalt_single_custom_site_header":"0","tinysalt_single_custom_sticky_site_header":"0","tinysalt_single_custom_sticky_site_header_style":"sticky-scroll-up","tinysalt_single_site_footer_source":"","tinysalt_single_custom_site_footer":"0","footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}