#IVF (In Vitro Fertilization)

[mysharona1987]

Hey, at least she’s upfront about her hypocrisy.

[hjellacott]

Women reduced to baby making ovens. Babies reduced to shopping orders. And they call this progress.

Thanks for the judge though.

These fucking men I swear.

[hello-there]

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[odinsblog]

This is what taking Alabama’s asinine ruling on embryos to its natural conclusion looks like

[mindblowingscience]

Exposure to fine particulate matter, a common air pollutant, can significantly decrease the odds of a successful in vitro fertilization (IVF) cycle, even in areas with good air quality, a new study found. The Australian study published Sunday in the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology found that exposure to pollution before the retrieval of eggs during IVF can reduce the odds of achieving a live birth by almost 40 per cent. “Climate change and pollution remain the greatest threats to human health, and human reproduction is not immune to this,” said Dr. Sebastian Leathersich, lead author of the study and a fertility specialist based in Australia.

Continue Reading.

[thingstrumperssay]

They claim to be pro-life though.

[allthegeopolitics]

Senate Republicans blocked passage on Tuesday of a Democratic bill that would federally protect access to in vitro fertilization and require public and private insurance coverage of IVF and other fertility treatments. Just as they did when they voted down the same bill earlier this year, Republicans argued the measure was both unnecessary and problematically broad, and dismissed it as a political stunt they felt no pressure to endorse.

Continue Reading.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Chris Geidner at Law Dork:

A federal judge in North Dakota issued an injunction on Monday blocking the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from protecting any employees of any members of a nationwide Catholic association who are seeking time off or other accommodations under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act for an abortion or in vitro fertilization treatment.

U.S. District Judge Daniel Traynor, a Trump appointee to the federal court in North Dakota, issued the religion-infused preliminary injunction to partially block enforcement of an EEOC rule implementing the 2022 law, along with related implementation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as to the Catholic Benefits Association and its members — current or future — nationwide. The order covers more than 8,000 employers — including thousands of churches — across the country. The PWFA was passed in December 2022 and is supposed to protect covered workers from discrimination on the basis of “pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions” by, in part, requiring employers to provide employees with reasonable accommodations. The EEOC proposed its implementing rule for the PWFA in August 2023, stating in part that abortion and fertility treatment, including IVF, are covered by the law’s protections. That rule, which does not relate to insurance coverage, went into effect in June.

“It is a precarious time for people of religious faith in America,” Traynor declared in the introduction to his 21-page opinion, criticizing “the repeated illegal and unconstitutional administrative actions against one of the founding principles of our country, the free exercise of religion.” Ultimately, Traynor concluded that happened again here, finding that the CBA is likely to succeed in its challenge to the rule and related Title VII enforcement guidance under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Any appeal would go to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, which only has one Democratic appointee among its 11 judges.

[...] Traynor sided with the Catholic employees — rejecting the EEOC’s arguments — on virtually all points, from standing to the underlying religious freedom claims to the scope of his eventual injunction. (Notably, Traynor gave little credit to the EEOC’s argument that “the Final Rule and Guidance acknowledge that employers may have RFRA defenses and commit to a fact-sensitive, case-by-case analysis.” Instead, he found that such an approach is not likely sufficient because the “burden of investigation and possible litigation” would remain.) The injunction is extremely broad, barring the EEOC from enforcing accommodations required under the PWFA rule relating to “abortion or infertility treatments,” along with guidance relating to “abortion, fertility treatments, or gender transition“ under Title VII, including recent workplace harassment guidance.

Trump-appointed judicial activist Daniel Traynor issued a nationwide injunction in Catholic Benefits Association v. Burrows that blocks the EEOC from protecting any employees of any Catholic Benefits Association members who are seeking time off or accommodations for abortion or IVF services.

[tomorrowusa]

^^^ Be careful how you word things in Alabama!

Be even more careful how you vote. The only way to protect reproductive freedom is to Vote Democratic.

Spending all your rent money at a casino is a better bet than voting for a third party. At least at the casino you have a remote chance of success.

[oatmilk-vampire]

Hey Alabama, if frozen embryos are considered human lives then the mother should be able to claim them as dependants on their taxes, yes?

While we're at it let's start making father's pay child support from the moment of conception, because that makes sense too, right?

[thepastisalreadywritten]

By Dina Fine Maron

January 24, 2024

Scientists have cleared a significant hurdle in the years-long effort to save Africa’s northern white rhinoceros from extinction with the first-ever rhino pregnancy using in vitro fertilization.

The lab-assisted pregnancy, which researchers will announce today, involved implanting a southern white rhino embryo in a surrogate mother named Curra.

The advance provides the essential “proof of concept” that this strategy could help other rhinos, says Jan Stejskal of the BioRescue project, the international group of scientists leading this research.

Curra died just a couple months into her 16-month pregnancy from an unrelated bacterial infection, Stejskal says.

However, the successful embryo transfer and early stages of pregnancy pave the way for next applying the technique to the critically endangered northern white rhino.

The process was documented exclusively by National Geographic for an upcoming Explorer special currently slated to air in 2025 on Nat Geo and Disney+.

BioRescue expects to soon implant a northern white rhino embryo into a southern white rhino surrogate mother.

The two subspecies are similar enough, according to the researchers, that the embryo will be likely to develop.

Eventually, this approach may also help other critically endangered rhinos, including the Asian Javan rhinoceros and the Sumatran rhinoceros, which each now number under 100 individuals, Stejskal says.

But the northern white rhino’s current situation is the most pressing by far.

There are no males left, and the only two remaining animals are both elderly females that live under armed guard on a reserve in a 700-acre enclosure in Kenya called Ol Pejeta Conservancy.

The boxy-jawed animals once roamed across central Africa, but in recent decades, their numbers have plummeted due to the overwhelming international demand for their horn, a substance used for unproved medicinal applications and carvings.

Made from the same substance as fingernails, rhino horn is in demand from all species, yet the northern white rhino has been particularly hard-hit.

"These rhinos look prehistoric, and they had survived for millions of years, but they couldn’t survive us,” says Ami Vitale, a National Geographic Explorer and photographer who has been documenting scientists’ efforts to help the animals since 2009.

“If there is some hope of recovery within the northern white rhino gene pool — even though it’s a substantially smaller sample of what there was — we haven’t lost them,” says conservation ecologist David Balfour, who chairs the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s African rhino specialist group.

Blueprints for rhino babies

To stave off the animal’s disappearance, BioRescue has used preserved sperm from northern white rhinos and eggs removed from the younger of the two remaining females.

So far, they’ve created about 30 preserved embryos, says Thomas Hildebrandt, the head scientist of BioRescue and an expert in wildlife reproduction based at the Leibniz-Institute of Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin.

Eventually, the team plans to reintroduce northern white rhinos into the wild within their range countries.

“That’d be fantastic, but really, really far from now—decades from now,” says Stejskal.

Worldwide, there are five species of rhinoceros, and many are in trouble.

Across all of Africa, there are now only about 23,000 of the animals, and almost 17,000 of them are southern whites.

Then there are more than 6,000 black rhinos, which are slightly smaller animals whose three subspecies are critically endangered.

In Asia, beyond the critically endangered Javan and Sumatran rhinos, there’s also the greater one-horned rhino, whose numbers are increasing and currently are estimated to be around 2,000.

The BioRescue effort has experienced many setbacks, and even though the team now has frozen embryos, the clock is ticking.

The researchers intend to use southern white rhinos as surrogate moms for the northern white rhino embryos.

However, scientists want any northern white rhino calves to meet and learn from others of their kind, which means they need to be born before the two remaining females die.

“These animals learn behaviors — they don’t have them genetically hard-wired,” says Balfour, who’s not involved with the BioRescue work.

But birthing new animals in time will be a challenge.

“We’re really skating on the edge of what’s possible,” he says, “but it’s worth trying.”

Najin, the older female, will be 35 this year, and Fatu will be 24.

The animals, which were born in a zoo in the Czech Republic, are expected to live to about 40, says Stejskal, who also serves as director of international projects at the Safari Park Dvůr Králové, the zoo where the animals lived until they were brought to Kenya in 2009.

Impregnating a rhino

The next phase of BioRescue’s plan involves implanting one of their limited number of northern white rhino embryos into a southern white rhino surrogate mother — which the group plans to do within the next six months, Stejskal says.

They’ve identified the next surrogate mother and set up precautions to protect her from bacterial infections, including a new enclosure and protocols about disinfecting workers’ boots.

But now, they must wait until the female rhino is in estrus — the period when the animal is ready to mate — to implant the egg.

To identify that prime fertile time, they can’t readily perform regular ultrasounds at the conservancy as they might do in a zoo.

Instead, they have enlisted a rhino bull that has been sterilized to act as a “teaser” for the female, Hildebrandt says, adding that they must wait a few months to make sure that their recently sterilized male is truly free of residual sperm.

Once the animals are brought together, their couplings will alert conservancy staff that the timing is right for reproductive success.

The sex act is also important because it sets off an essential chain of events in the female’s body that boosts the chances of success when they surgically implant the embryo about a week later.

"There’s little chance the conservancy staff will miss the act. White rhinos typically mate for 90 minutes," Hildebrandt says.

What’s more, while mounted on the females, the males often use their temporary height to reach tasty plant snacks that are generally out of reach.

Boosting genetic diversity

With so few northern white rhinos left, their genetic viability may seem uncertain.

But the BioRescue team points to southern white rhinos, whose numbers likely dropped to less than 100, and perhaps even as few as 20, due to hunting in the late 1800s.

Government protections and intense conservation strategies allowed them to bounce back, and now there are almost 17,000.

“They have sufficient diversity to cope with a wide range of conditions,” says Balfour.

Researchers don’t know exactly how many southern white rhinos existed a century ago, he says, but it’s clear that the animals came back from an incredibly low population count and that they now appear healthy.

Beyond their small collection of embryos, the BioRescue team hopes to expand the northern white rhino’s gene pool by drawing from an unconventional source — skin cells extracted from preserved tissue samples that are currently stored at zoos.

They aim to use stem cell techniques to reengineer those cells and develop them into sex cells, building off similar work in lab mice.

According to their plan, those lab-engineered sex cells would then be combined with natural sperm and eggs to make embryos, and from there, the embryos would be implanted into southern white rhino surrogate mothers.

Such stem cell reprogramming work has previously led to healthy offspring in lab mice, Hildebrandt says, but rhinos aren’t as well-studied and understood as mice, making this work significantly challenging.

A global effort

The northern white rhino revitalization venture has cost millions of dollars, supported by a range of public and private donors, including the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

Other partners on the effort include the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, the Czech Republic’s Safari Park, Kenya Wildlife Service, Ol Pejeta Conservancy, and also Katsuhiko Hayashi, a professor of genome biology at Osaka University in Japan who conducted the mouse stem cell research.

Building upon Hayashi’s stem cell techniques could ultimately bring the northern white rhino gene pool up to 12 animals — including eggs from eight females and the semen of four bulls, according to Stejskal.

An alternative approach to making more babies, like crossbreeding northern and southern white rhinos, would mean the resulting calves wouldn’t be genetically pure northern white rhinos, Hildebrandt notes.

The two subspecies look quite similar, but the northern version has subtle physical differences, including hairier ears and feet that are better suited to its swampy habitat.

The two animals also have different genes that may provide disease resiliency or other benefits, Hildebrandt says.

There are unknown potential differences in behavior and ecological impact when populating the area with southern white rhinos or cross-bred animals.

"The northern white rhino is on the brink of extinction really only due to human greed,” Stejskal says.

“We are in a situation where saving them is at our fingertips, so I think we have a responsibility to try.”

🩶🦏🩶

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Michael Shermer

Published: Mar 3, 2024

It was an X post (tweet) mostly out of frustration after wasting too much time on social media absorbing endless stories about the Rigid Right and the Loony Left that led me on February 23 to exclaim…

The thousands of responses were as predictable as they were confident in their assertion that one side of the political spectrum is unquestionably worse than the other. A short sampling (see all responses here):

My post is suggestive of the Horseshoe Theory of politics, according to which if you take a linear spectrum from Left to Right and bend it into a horseshoe shape, the extreme ends are not so far apart (see graphic above).

The type specimen for the Horseshoe Theory was the 1939 Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact that resulted in the joint invasion of Poland that launched World War II, and was famously broken by Hitler when he invaded Russia two years later, in part, because he detested Communism (which he also equated with Jews), plus he wanted lebensraum (living space), thought of the Russian hun as a lesser breed, needed their natural resources, was a proponent of blood-and-soil romanticism, and more (so his motivations are probably overdetermined). The theory has been applied and criticized ever since, for example here and here. But it very much depends on what issues are being compared and, to be frank, whose ox is being gored by the theory (few on either extreme see themselves as remotely like the extremists on the other pole). Well, then, what would critics prefer, the equally delimiting straight spectrum like this? Where would you put someone like me who is socially liberal but fiscally conservative?

For my political tastes I prefer something like the 2x2 matrix below with the primary dimensions being Liberty (Economic or Personal) and Security (Economic or Personal), in which extremes on the Security variable once again find Communists and Fascists cheek-by-jowl. (I’m in the upper quadrant around Classical Liberalism—more on this below.)

One of my respondents posted in the comments this helpful checklist with updated examples for current events:

Since I started this Skeptic Substack column in 2021, I have been highly critical of the Far-Left’s woke ideology that has led them to abandon the search for objective truth; to treat science as nothing more than a hegemonic Western colonial capitalist tool of power and domination; to give up on Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of judging people by the content of their character, and instead obsess over the color of their skin by implementing DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) programs that force otherwise liberal, tolerant, color-blind people into elevating race above character; to punish anyone who deviates from Far Left norms (created only recently and constantly changing) through any means necessary, from censorship and cancel culture to loss of employment and life ruination; and to redefine biological sex from the long-accepted definition of gamete size/type to whatever anyone says it is, and along with this delusion to discard a century of hard-earned women’s rights to privacy (bathrooms), to female-only spaces (changing rooms, prisons), to female-only sports (swimming, cycling, volleyball), and more generally to ditch the dignity of being a woman. (See my Skeptic columns critical of the Far Left here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

As I said in my X post, at least the Far-Right knows what a woman is—an adult human female…who belongs in the bedroom making babies. The SCOTUS overturning of Roe v. Wade was, as I predicted at the time, only the start of the Far-Right’s plan to take control of women’s reproductive rights, starting with abortion. (See my three-part series defending the pro-choice position here, here, and here. And additional columns critical of the Right, such as here, here, and here.) It was only a matter of time before the Far-Right would target IVF, and that time has come with the Alabama State Supreme Court declaration that all frozen embryos stored for InVitroFertilization are legal persons, and thus the disposal of unused frozen embryos should be considered murder. Predictably, IVF clinics began closing their doors, and in the process deprive couples of this life-giving technology. Here are a couple of my outraged tweets on the matter:

I don’t think many Republicans on the Far Right even know what IVF entails. It is quite invasive, risky, time consuming, expensive, and not guaranteed to work. To prep the body for the process hormone shots must be self-administered for weeks in order to produce extra eggs. Withdrawing the eggs is a form of surgery requiring general anesthesia. After withdrawal they are then fertilized (after we guys make our, um, “contribution” to the process) and then implanted. At least half of all implanted fertilized eggs fail to result in a viable birth, so many couples have multiple fertilized eggs implanted in hopes of having one viable birth (and thus some have twins or triplets), with the rest frozen for future use if all else fails, which is as often the case as not. By treating these frozen embryos as “persons”, if couples don’t want to have half a dozen kids or more, then they (and by “they” I mean the women) would have to go through the painful, stressful, expensive, and time consuming process over and over again in hopes of success. Are conservatives willing to foot the bill for the tens of thousands of dollars for each round in order to “save” the frozen persons?

How ignorant and uninformed are Republicans when it comes to reproductive technology? Here is Alabama Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville when asked his opinion of his state’s Supreme Court decision:

Yeah, I was all for it. You just gotta look at everything going on in the country. It’s just an attack on families, an attack on kids. You know, anything we can do for the future of our young people, because they’re our number one commodity. We need to have more kids, we need to have an opportunity to do that, and I thought this was the right thing to do.

The NBC News reporter was understandably dumbfounded by the Senator’s ignorance. “But IVF is used to have more children, and right now IVF services are paused at some of the clinics in Alabama,” she explained to the now-flummoxed law-maker. “Aren’t you concerned that this could impact people who are trying to have kids?”

Now stumped, and aware of his own lack of knowledge of what IVF is, exactly, Tuberville stuttered out a change of topic: “Well, that’s for another conversation. I think the big thing is right now you protect, you go back to the situation and you try to work it out to where it’s best for everybody. That’s what the whole abortion issue is about.” Uh, no it isn’t Senator.

In fact, IVF enables around 500,000 babies to be born every year worldwide, with an estimated 10 million total since the technology came online. You would think baby-loving pro-natalist conservatives would be all for this technology. But no. This led me to tweet out that the GOP was once again the POS—the Party of Stupid (a descriptor coined by GOP Presidential candidate Bobby Jindal)—and (channelling Monty Python) predicting what may be coming next for the Religious Right:

Every sperm is sacred. / Every sperm is great. If a sperm is wasted, / God gets quite irate. Let the heathens spill theirs, / On the dusty ground. God shall make them pay for / Each sperm that can't be found. Let the Pagans spill theirs / O'er mountain, hill, and plain. God shall strike them down for / Each sperm that's spilt in vain.

As for contraception, apparently this technology leads to “recreational sex,” and for conservatives that’s a bridge too far. As if living up to H. L. Mencken’s definition of a Puritan—"the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, might be happy"—the conservative Heritage Foundation posted on X that “Conservatives have to lead the way in restoring sex to its true purpose, & ending recreational sex & senseless use of birth control pills.” In support they quoted British writer Mary Harrington, who advocates against the birth control pill and in favor of “rewilding sex, returning the danger to sex, returning the intimacy and, really, the consequentiality to sex.” So…conservatives only have sex for reproductive purposes? Sure. The hypocrisy begs for comedic commentary, as in Bill Maher’s observation of pro-life politicians who arrange abortions for their mistresses, or George Carlin’s assessment of conservatives who pretend to care deeply for the “unborn”, but once you’re born…

You’re on your own. No nothing. No neonatal care, no daycare, no head start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing. If you're pre-born, you're fine. If you're preschool, you're fucked. Conservatives don't give a shit about you… until you reach military age. Then they think you are just fine, just what they’ve been looking for. They’re not pro-life. They’re anti-woman. They believe a woman's primary role is to function as a broodmare for the state.

In response to my X post comment (below) that IVF is just the start, right-wing activist and author Christopher Rufo responded:

“Recreational sex” is a large part of the reason we have so many single-mother households, which drives poverty, crime, and dysfunction. The point of sex is to create children—this is natural, normal, and good.”

Here was my response to Rufo:

Recreational skiing, softball, soccer, tennis...is a big reason we have so many sports injuries @realchrisrufo ! Recreational sex is not the cause of single-mother households. It is LACK of birth control use + lack of education & norms of commitment, marriage, responsibility, etc. Conservatives are right to emphasize family values. Wrong to restrict freedom & choice for others. IVF & frozen embryos have given > 8 million babies life. Why would you want to deprive parents of this life-giving technology that results in endless parental love? (I speak from personal experience.) Egg retrieval, fertilization, hormone prep, embryo implantation, not to mention pregnancy itself, is a HUGE commitment, mainly born by women (we men just have to, uh, make a "contribution" in a cup) Freezing embryos is necessary because the process is very hard on women, expensive, & many first-tries fail. I don't believe that conservatives really believe that a frozen embryo is a person. I think it's part of a larger religious/political agenda to control women's reproductive choice and freedom. Restricting choice and freedom should not be a conservative value, but it has become one.

An even more extreme position on these matters (if such a thing is even possible) was that of Daily Wire conservative commentator Michael Knowles, who opined that…

The reason surrogacy and IVF are immoral is because they interfere with the family, they break up the nucleus, the very building block of society. They separate the reproductive from the conjugal act. The problem for IVF and surrogacy is that no ends, no matter how good, justify immoral means. No ends, no matter how good, justify actions that are intrinsically evil to achieve them. This is the same kind of logic that we would apply to, say, rape. A child who is conceived in rape. I know some. They have a right to life. It’s very good that they exist. We like these people.

This was a bridge too far, even for me, and so I cut loose on Knowles’ despicable, detestable, disgraceful statement:

As I assess matters here in 2024, the Rigid Right and the Loony Left are both manifestations of authoritarianism—specifically, the well-researched and documented (mostly by liberal social scientists) Right-Wing Authoritarianism, but the newly documented (mostly by conservative social scientists—what few there are) Left-Wing Authoritarianism that is equally divisive and destructive. In response, I would like to make the case for Classical Liberalism. To wit:

Like most liberals, I am pro-choice and fully support women’s reproductive and economic rights; I am in favor of free speech and free thought; I believe in the separation of church and state and am against prayer in school; I believe in liberal democracy and voter’s rights; I believe in some gun control measures; I support environmental protection laws and agree that global warming is real, human caused, and something we should work toward mitigating; I work toward reducing animal suffering and expanding animal rights; I think that we need judicial reform because of our broken criminal justice system that incarcerates far too many people for victimless crimes, especially people of color; I think we should legalize all drugs and regulate them like tobacco and alcohol; I believe we have a moral obligation to help those who cannot help themselves; and, of course, I hold that science is the best tool ever devised for understanding the world and changing it for the better.

Like most conservatives, I believe in limited and accountable government, along with low taxes, low spending, and a balanced budget; I believe in the Constitution and the rule of law along with our system of Constitutional republicanism with checks and balances to prevent power from accruing to any one person or agency; I believe in property rights, and that one of the primary functions of government is to protect our rights; I believe in individual liberty, personal responsibility, and the philosophy of individualism in contrast with collectivism and identity politics; I contend that free trade and free markets are by far and away the best economic system for wealth production and lifting people out of poverty; I believe that there are objective moral values that apply to most people in most places most of the time (although I do not believe they were derived from God) and I reject moral relativism in all its forms.

Most of all, I agree with John Stuart Mill’s timeless observation (in his 1859 book On Liberty) that: “A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.”

In the run-up to the forthcoming Presidential election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden it doesn’t appear either extreme form of authoritarianism is going to attenuate any time soon. Out of a population of nearly 260 million adult Americans, these two are the best in show? What we need is a uniting President in the mold of Abraham Lincoln who, in his First Inaugural Address, as the country was about to be split asunder in civil war, nevertheless addressed all Americans when he thundered both descriptively and prescriptively:

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

[hello-there]

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[gaudiumivf]

Unlocking the process of Fertilization in In Vitro Fertilization (IVF)

In vitro fertilization (IVF) is a groundbreaking reproductive technology that has transformed the lives of millions of individuals and couples worldwide. At the heart of the IVF process lies fertilization, the crucial step where egg and sperm unite to form an embryo. Let's delve into the intricate process of fertilization in IVF with Gaudium IVF, the best IVF center in Delhi, exploring the techniques involved, factors influencing success, and its significance in assisted reproduction.

Read more- https://article-realm.com/article/Health-Fitness/Womens-Issues/63656-Unlocking-the-process-of-Fertilization-in-In-Vitro-Fertilization-IVF.html

[memenewsdotcom]

Alabama protects IVF clinics

[odinsblog]

Just like wheat is not bread, embryos are not people

[breastcancerdiaries]

I haven't been keeping up with this diary because I found I don't really need it as much, but here's my experience with IVF. I hope it helps somebody.

IVF is an option they usually offer younger cancer patients because chemo has a 10% - 20% chance of rendering you infertile.

I chose to do it because even though I wasn't sure if I wanted kids or not, I still wanted the decision.

Usually during your period, you'll have one egg that matures and releases. During IVF, they give you hormones to stimulate growth in more eggs so they can collect them.

For the first 4 days, I injected myself at home with Gonal-F. If you're needlephobic like me, use numbing cream. It helps a lot. I had to inject myself twice the first time I used it because I didn't feel it so I didn't know if I was doing it right.

For the next 4 days, I injected myself with Gonal-F, which was a little needle and it was okay, and Cetrotide so I wouldn't ovulate. This was a big needle and scary so I asked a friend to help. It was better with the numbing cream.

I also needed to take letrozole to control my estrogen levels because I have hormone positive cancer. I think people who don't have cancer don't take this but it varies I guess? I'm not sure.

IVF cycles can be anywhere between 8 days to 14 days depending on where you are at in your cycle. If you're already ovulating, they may need to artificially induce a period because you've only produced one egg at that point and then it'll prolong your IVF cycle time.

I was lucky I had short cycles and had just come off my period, so I only did 8 days.

Then 36 hours before I was scheduled for my surgery, I took my trigger shot. It's 3 needles, and two of them are dull so I bled a lot and the funny part is that we accidentally injected it on the side of my stomach without numbing cream so it hurt extra bad lol. It was funny because I straight up raw dogged it for my last shot, completely forgetting which side the numbing cream was on. But I got through it, and if a baby like me can get through it, so can you.

I also started pre-emptively taking anti-biotics they prescribed.

The day of my surgery, the nurses and staff were really nice. I got dressed in a hospital gown, taken to a room, hooked up to an IV with saline (no eating or drinking after midnight the day before so you're kind of dehydrated so they want to put some fluids in you). If you're at risk for a blood clot, they inject you with a blood thinner which hurt like a BITCH (they have a system they score you on and I was right on the cusp goddamnit). I sat in the chair for a bit while they prepped everything and they gave me a warm blankie. Then when it was all set up, they wheeled me to the operating room and gave me meds for pain management and anxiety.

I fell asleep instantly, and when I woke up it was all over. I had already taken painkillers that morning because I had port surgery the day before and when I woke up, that hurt like a bitch.

They gave me some cookies that were probably the best things I've ever had, although that's probably the anaesthesia talking, but it was still really good.

I got picked up by a caretaker (friend's mom who I hired to be my caretaker because I don't have family and she could use the money), dropped off at home and was fine. Took a painkiller every 6 hours because I was cramping a bit. I was up and doing chores even, I did the dishes and I made myself pulled pork sandwiches for dinner. You bleed a little bit, but it's just a very small amount, kind of like the last day or so of your period, so wear a pad (not a tampon, those things are toxic, I saw the news yesterday, they have heavy metals in them). But overall it doesn't really hurt. I had 13 eggs collected but only 8 were mature and frozen. Pretty normal, although I wish more eggs had been mature. But something is something.

And that's it.

A couple things that stood out to me is that one of the nurses that treated me had childhood cancer. She was 5 when she got it and she's cancer-free and 44. So that gives me a lot of hope.

Everybody was really nice throughout this process. I'm grateful for the doctors, the nurses, everybody. I'm grateful for my friend who injected me. I'm proud of myself for injecting myself solo for the first couple days, I'm stronger than I think I am.

If you're going through this process and you're scared, I believe in you. You're stronger than you think you are. I would cry in the shower everyday and kick and scream and straight up not want this. But I got through it. And you will too. And your future self will thank you for it.

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[thingstrumperssay]

So in Alabama they're unwilling to allow people to get pregnant through in vitro fertilization. Y'know, that thing people usually do when they're struggling to get pregnant otherwise?

Why? I thought these people wanted people to get pregnant. Why prevent that?

Also,

Does the owner of the building where these embryos are stored get to put every single embryo down in their taxes?

Do the people who wanted to parent these embryos have to pay child support since they are legally the parents of these embryos who are now legally children?

Can the parents legally claim that the people holding their embryos are kidnappers?

Can the embryos vote and join the military if they survive being frozen for 18 years?

Do the embryos get to drink alcohol if they survive being frozen for 21 years?

Is it considered child abuse when the parents don't feed their embryos?

Can an immigrant marry an eighteen year old embryo to become a US citizen?

I have many more questions but most of them are "can they legally do x when they're old enough" and "would it be considered as child abuse if parent fails to do y because embryos can't physically do that?"