About Those Octuplets

I resisted reading the stories after it came out that Nadya Suleman, the mother of the octuplets who are in the news daily these days, had other children and had used IVF. This was in part because I really hate how sensationalistic the news is (yeah a weird sentiment coming from a former reporter) and I hate how so many important or worthwhile subjects get buried under trite garbage. But more than all that I didn't want to read articles bashing fertility treatments or ones that offered anything less than all the facts about IVF.

It's strange because IVF is one of the things I'm totally open about with friends and strangers alike but it's also a subject that I'm extra sensitive to. Both of my living children were conceived via in-vetro fertilization. I am beyond grateful to the technology and to the people who helped us bring our son and daughter to life.

IVF is not something people undertake lightly. It can't be. It involves weeks of injections. After your body is regulated on a cycle of birth control pills, you first take hormones to put you into a chemical menopause and then you start taking hormones to hype your ovaries up into overdrive. Then you go through the retrieval process where all the eggs that appear ready to go are extracted. After that you wait a few days to see how many played well with the sperm and fertilized and then how many of those are growing. If you're lucky you go back and get one or two placed into your uterus. Then if you're super lucky after a nail biting two weeks you find out that at least one embryo implanted itself in the uterine wall and is growing. Four more weeks will pass (which often include Progesterone injections - so not fun) before you go in and see how the embryo(s) are doing and if there is a heartbeat(s).

Throughout this entire process you are driving to the clinic several times a week, if not daily, to get your blood drawn. One of my worst days during this entire cycle was the day it took 8 tries for the lab techs to get the vial of blood they needed. My arms were black and blue and green and yellow from all the bruising by the time our retrieval day arrived.

I haven't even mentioned all the testing, some of it quite painful, that takes place prior to reaching the decision to do IVF in the first place. For those who don't have a clearcut need to go straight to IVF there may also have been months of trying to concieve via injectable hormones that stimulate the ovaries or insemination.

Nothing about the fertility route to pregnancy is easy or cheap. It costs thousands of dollars for a single IVF cycle (10 to 12 usually).

There is also the fact, usually unspoken, that what is one of the most intimate and loving acts is now a group project between you, your mate (if you have one) and a bunch of strangers. You are exposed not only physically but also emotionally to a fair number of people throughout this process. I always thought of myself as a strong person but I found that notion both challenged and then ultimately reinforced after my experiences with infertility.

Reading the stories about Ms. Suleman has left me disturbed. Nothing in my experience as a fertility patient lets me just believe the story as it's being presented. It just doesn't ring true. It doesn't ring true that any reproductive endocrinologist (an IVF doctor) would put so many embryos back into such a young woman; especially a woman who already has children and who seems pretty upfront about not being willing to abort fetuses. Maybe she lied. It seems like someone is lying. Or maybe in the rush to push a sensational story nobody is taking the time to research fertility treatments well.