Happy 7 months to our precious baby boy. Time flies! It really seems like yesterday that I gave birth to this little creature. Parenthood has been incredible so far, although it can be stressful sometimes.
If you asked me whether it’s worth going through IVF or not in order to be 95% sure that the baby isn’t affected by the genetic disorder that I have, the answer is, definitely! Pregnancy is supposed to be happy news for most couples. I could never ever imagine having to wait for weeks to get to know whether the fetus was affected or not through an invasive prenatal test. There is also a small chance that the test could lead to a miscarriage. What if the fetus was healthy and I ended up with a miscarriage after the test? On the other hand, in case the test result showed that the fetus was affected, would I really have an abortion that long into the pregnancy?
There are a number of factors which a couple needs to consider before going for IVF. First, costs. IVF treatments are expensive and the success rate isn’t as high as you think. It’s like a gamble. You may end up paying a fortune and not being able to go home with a healthy baby. I personally know a couple who has been through IUI and IVF for 5 years with no success. I wonder how much money they have spent to date.
Another factor to consider is time. IVF is very time consuming. You need to visit the doctor every few days before the egg retrieval and embryo transfer processes. It’s not easy to give an excuse to sneak out to the clinic that often during office hours. I doubt that anyone would ever say to her boss that, o I am doing IVF and so I need to go to the clinic every few days to monitor on xyz. O yes I could be pregnant soon and on maternity leave in 9 months’ time. To tackle this, you may need to find a clinic that is near your office and try to arrange an appointment during lunch hours.
As for the idea of having to inject yourself for around 10 days, I am sure you will overcome this if you know that the injections will bring you hopes of having your own child or children.
Despite all these positive thoughts about our IVF journey, there is only one thing that I wish I did very early on in my pregnancy. In Hong Kong, the chance of getting sperms, eggs or embryos mixed up is very very slim. I don’t know the exact probability but even if it’s a 0.00000001% chance, there is still a chance. I should have opted for a non-invasive prenatal DNA test to ensure that the fetus that I was carrying was indeed ours. The test is indeed costly compared with those postnatal DNA tests and may seem like a complete waste of money for outsiders. However, in my opinion, it’s better to know the bad news in early pregnancy so we could take action on this. I did think of going for a DNA test after the baby was born. However, my heart completely melted when I saw the baby. If we did consider adoption after a few rounds of failed IVF, does it really matter if the baby and I are blood related or not? What if we discovered that the lab did make a mistake? Would I really swap “our” baby with another couple? In a more complicated scenario, the baby could be blood related to me but not my husband, or vice versa. Perhaps it’s better not to know the answer.
Comments