ivf

August, 2019 – Deciding to try IVF

We did a lot of research before starting the IVF process. The difficulty of adoption in the US in this era is comparable to or worse than IVF, and it’s almost as expensive, so we didn’t go that route — and besides, no one in my family is carrying on the family name, so we’d prefer to have my ancestor’s genetic threads continue.

We searched online for an egg donor. This is still an unregulated business, with some effort made to provide a code of conduct from a nonprofit organization of donation agents, but couples looking for Only The Best eggs clamor for Ivy League, Asian, accomplished concert pianist donors; which means a donor with those desirable characteristics can charge far more for her donation. Some agencies advertise “$50-100 thousand dollars for your eggs,” which is well beyond the guidelines.

We found a great donor but at one of the more mercenary agencies; she’s a graduate of a great but not Ivy League science-oriented college, she has a high IQ, and she was not that expensive as a first-time donor. “Proven” donors (after at least one successful donation) can charge more, but this was her first time. We had the agency’s help and did Skype calls to see if we liked her and vice-versa. Contracts had to be drawn up (there are lawyers for both sides at every stage of the process!) and signed.

Recognize that this isn’t easy for donors — they have to put up with medical, psychological, and genetic screening, making many visits to clinics, taking precisely-timed drugs to mature their egg follicles in abnormal numbers for a carefully-timed harvest. Our donor had to fly cross-country twice. The harvesting procedure can be painful and the wrenching-around of body chemistry can result in bad reactions. Fortunately, none of that happened and she was very successful. (And we had to have her back for a second donation when only one embryo came of the first, for reasons that I’ll describe in a later post.)

Our IVF doctor is semi-famous: “IVF doctor to the Stars,” kinda, with past clients like [redacted] and numerous Hollywood types. His office is in West LA on Wilshire, almost to the Santa Monica border, so we visited several times.

Genetic screening is a big part of the matching process. Both egg donor and sperm donor are screened for genetic abnormalities; many people harbor genes that can produce syndromes or diseases that would cause miscarriage if combined with similar genes from the other parent.

My Counsyl gene tests showed three more-or-less damaging flaws; fortunately, none of these overlapped with similar flaws in the egg donor, so we were cleared. I had two recessive conditions, plus a third which apparently is held back from the report for laypeople because it’s too diffuse a danger (sufferers live long enough to reproduce but are extra-susceptible to emphysema and liver failure.) I carry one copy of the good gene and one half-good gene (S) which means it would be wise to avoid hooking up with another carrier (and even wiser to splice it out for good, but we don’t do that yet.) https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/…/alpha-1-antitrypsin…

Then I got my first sperm count of zero! That will be the subject of a later post — male factor infertility and remedies.

Downtown LA as seen from highway

Having Children – Progress Report

I generally write on attachment theory and relationship topics to report on research results and the personal experiences of others. I try not to let my own personal experiences show too much because I’m trying for a neutral, nonjudgmental view. I have been too busy with other projects to keep up the writing and reporting here — but in a few years there will be enough new research to do another book on attachment. But for now I have more important projects!

It’s perhaps slightly embarrassing that I have weighed in on child-rearing topics but never had children until now. So we’re almost too old to undertake such a project, but we have the time and the space for it now.

The first few minutes of Idiocracy humorously cover the modern issue of long-delayed (and often foregone) children amongst the highly-educated, well-off young people of today, who may well stay in academia and avoid commitment until they are in their 30s and 40s, thinking “we must have stable jobs and resources before we have a child.” This is biologically risky since women’s eggs begin to slowly decline in quality after 25, and drastically after 40. Males, too, decline in sperm quality with age, though not as quickly (since sperm are generated from stem cells on demand, rather than being stored as buds from birth as eggs are.) Couples who want to have children but find their fertility has waned sometimes use IVF. A would-be mother whose eggs are too dicey can use a donated egg, and if unable to carry, a gestational carrier (the modern term for surrogate.) Anonymous male sperm donations are (compared to eggs) relatively cheap if it’s the male who has the issue with fertility. IVF procedures have improved greatly in this decade, and it’s a good thing because women are tending to postpone children for careers and men’s sperm is rapidly declining in potency. In a few generations perhaps most children will be IVF babies — presuming the price declines from the current $40-100K per child.

So I’m going to write more about these much more personal topics. We have (as mentioned elsewhere) embarked on our first child; we started in August of 2019, and our first is due in April of 2021 (21 months after our decision, delayed by COVID-19 shutdowns and other snags.) We found a great egg donor and have a second (and perhaps third) frozen embryo ready to start this month. The embryos have been screened and graded, and PGT-A genetic tests (not completely reliable) say they are all healthy boys.

Ultrasound at 20 weeks

We moved from a comfortable home on a golf course in the Palm Springs area because public schools weren’t very good there, and since there were no children in miles (the average age of our neighbors being 70), we moved to Carmel Valley in San Diego, which has fantastic schools and a neighborhood that will have hundreds of children within walking distance. We want them to grow up like we did, free to roam the suburban area by bike and walking, to build peer relationships with a wide variety of other children.

I’m planning to post the history of our IVF experience before the first baby arrives. The initial 6 months of caring for an infant are pretty much all-absorbing, so I won’t have time to post much until after that.

Thanksgiving Note: Out of Action, Health Scare

US Thanksgiving Day is being celebrated. The turkey’s in the oven, it’s cold and raining, the game is on, and we have much to be thankful for.

If you’re a regular reader, you’ve noticed I’ve posted rarely in the past six months. Lots of projects away from writing, family issues, distractions.

On Nov. 1st, we were in Austria a few days into a lengthy itinerary which was to include a Danube cruise, a Nile cruise, and visits to Petra in Jordan, then Jerusalem. On a bus tour to Salzburg, Austria, we stopped at a rest stop and on returning from the bathroom, I had a grand mal seizure in the parking lot. I woke up in the ambulance to the regional hospital, the Salzkammergut Klinikum Vöcklabruck. I was seen in the ER and had a workup before having another seizure an hour after the first. I woke up the next day in the stroke intensive care unit, not because I had a stroke (no evidence of anything at all unusual in MRIs or EEG) but because monitoring and care was continuous so if there had been any further activity they’d know immediately and be able to do scans and tests as it was happening.

Nothing more happened, but because it was now an Austrian holiday coming into a weekend, I had to stay three more days so the MRIs could be done when staff returned. Our holiday terminated there and we spent a few days in Vienna waiting for clearance to travel. Our travel insurance company, Allianz, was incredibly helpful and booked flights back on Air France (which I couldn’t recommend, but it was the first available flight.) The river tour company, Tauck, also went above and beyond, and this week refunded the entire cruise fee. I highly commend them for Americans touring overseas.

Having a grand mal seizure is similar to ECT (Electro-Convulsive Therapy, aka “shock treatment.”) Both hemispheres are involved in a storm of neural activity, wiping all memory of the event and time around it. I was mentally fuzzy afterwards and nothing was quite where it had been in my head. I did notice in Vienna that colors were more vivid and experiences less filtered; it could well be that the scrambling of normal neural activity is in some ways good for you, as when it relieves an obsessive depression by simply hammering the negative thought loops and memories that reinforce them.

It happens that we are also deep into the IVF process, aiming for two children, and today we heard that at least three embryos have matured on Day 5, with two more developing still. That’s something to be thankful for. The IVF effort and the new house we’re building in a more appropriate neighborhood for children has taken up most of my time for many months. So I have been less available to update here and supervise the Jeb Kinnison Forum, which luckily is mostly self-policing. Some of the participants there are at least as good as I am in handing out advice on attachment issues, though of course there is a lot of personal experience chit-chat and people with chips on their shoulders from their relationship breakups.

So Happy Thanksgiving for those who are celebrating it today!