#infertility cw

[mysimsloveaffair]

Luca: Well…it’s the reason I haven’t reached out in a while, and I’m really sorry for that. You trusted me with your problem, and I kept mine to myself. I just want you to know it’s not that I didn’t trust you. I wasn’t in a good place and didn’t want to talk to anyone.

Wade: No need to explain - but did something happen between you and Sophia?

Luca: Not between us, more like - to us. 

Wade: What happened, Luc? Did you get attacked or robbed or something?

I can think of a hundred things that might have happened to them, and I dread hearing them all. 

Luca: Heh, I almost would have preferred that. We had trouble getting pregnant. Adoption was on the table, but we wanted to try everything first. She did several rounds of treatments, but they didn’t work. We later learned our chances were slim to none, so we did IVF, and that’s how Desiree got here.

This is not what I expected to hear, but my heart immediately goes out to him.

(Note: Dialogue continues below...)

Wade: Dude, that’s a lot! I never would have guessed…gosh - I’m sorry to hear that. It must have been hard.

Luca: Yeah…thanks. It was hard. Especially when… Nevermind.

Wade: What is it? Everything alright downstairs?

I can almost see the color drain from his face. Why the heck did I ask? I’m not his doctor. It’s a question no man should ask another man.

Wade: Luc…bro, I’m so sorry! I was trying to make a joke! I didn’t-

Luca: It’s fine. There’s no way you could have known.

Wade: Maybe. I still feel like an idiot. You know I would never try to hurt you like that.

Luca: I know you wouldn’t. I’m cool. I promise. 

I crossed a line, and I know it, but to my relief, Luca seems to take it in stride. He surprises me by laughing but in a sarcastic way.

Wade: What’s funny?

(Note: Luca's, and parts of Dub’s, dialogue were written by @storiesbyjes2g .)

(Full post available to read on my website)

[reasonsforhope]

"Scientists have created mice with two biological fathers by generating eggs from male cells, a development that opens up radical new possibilities for reproduction.

The advance could ultimately pave the way for treatments for severe forms of infertility, as well as raising the tantalising prospect of same-sex couples being able to have a biological child together in the future.

“This is the first case of making robust mammal oocytes [a.k.a. egg cells] from male cells,” said Katsuhiko Hayashi, who led the work at Kyushu University in Japan and is internationally renowned as a pioneer in the field of lab-grown eggs and sperm.

Hayashi, who presented the development at the Third International Summit on Human Genome Editing at the Francis Crick Institute in London on Wednesday, predicts that it will be technically possible to create a viable human egg from a male skin cell within a decade. Others suggested this timeline was optimistic given that scientists are yet to create viable lab-grown human eggs from female cells.

Previously scientists have created mice that technically had two biological fathers through a chain of elaborate steps, including genetic engineering. However, this is the first time viable eggs have been cultivated from male cells and marks a significant advance. Hayashi’s team is now attempting to replicate this achievement with human cells, although there would be significant hurdles for the use of lab-grown eggs for clinical purposes, including establishing their safety.

“Purely in terms of technology, it will be possible [in humans] even in 10 years,” he said, adding that he personally would be in favour of the technology being used clinically to allow two men to have a baby if it were shown to be safe.

“I don’t know whether they’ll be available for reproduction,” he said. “That is not a question just for the scientific programme, but also for [society].”

The technique could also be applied to treat severe forms of infertility, including women with Turner’s syndrome, in whom one copy of the X chromosome is missing or partly missing, and Hayashi said this application was the primary motivation for the research.

Others suggested that it could prove challenging to translate the technique to human cells. Human cells require much longer periods of cultivation to produce a mature egg, which can increase the risk of cells acquiring unwanted genetic changes.

Prof George Daley, the dean of Harvard Medical School, described the work as “fascinating”, but added that other research had indicated that creating lab-grown gametes from human cells was more challenging than for mouse cells. “We still don’t understand enough of the unique biology of human gametogenesis to reproduce Hayashi’s provocative work in mice,” he said.

Study Methods

The study, which has been submitted for publication in a leading journal, relied on a sequence of intricate steps to transform a skin cell, carrying the male XY chromosome combination, into an egg, with the female XX version.

Male skin cells were reprogrammed into a stem cell-like state to create so-called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. The Y-chromosome of these cells was then deleted and replaced by an X chromosome “borrowed” from another cell to produce iPS cells with two identical X chromosomes.

“The trick of this, the biggest trick, is the duplication of the X chromosome,” said Hayashi. “We really tried to establish a system to duplicate the X chromosome.”

Finally, the cells were cultivated in an ovary organoid, a culture system designed to replicate the conditions inside a mouse ovary. When the eggs were fertilised with normal sperm, the scientists obtained about 600 embryos, which were implanted into surrogate mice, resulting in the birth of seven mouse pups. The efficiency of about 1% was lower [although not THAT much lower] than the efficiency achieved with normal female-derived eggs, where about 5% of embryos went on to produce a live birth.

The baby mice appeared healthy, had a normal lifespan, and went on to have offspring as adults. “They look OK, they look to be growing normally, they become fathers,” said Hayashi.

Going Further

He and colleagues are now attempting to replicate the creation of lab-grown eggs using human cells.

Prof Amander Clark, who works on lab-grown gametes at the University of California Los Angeles, said that translating the work into human cells would be a “huge leap”, because scientists are yet to create lab-grown human eggs from female cells.

Scientists have created the precursors of human eggs, but until now the cells have stopped developing before the point of meiosis, a critical step of cell division that is required in the development of mature eggs and sperm. “We’re poised at this bottleneck at the moment,” she said. “The next steps are an engineering challenge. But getting through that could be 10 years or 20 years.”

-via The Guardian (US), 3/8/23

[habibialkaysani]

welp. I read 'when he was wicked' aka the franchael book in the bridgerton series... and I have Thoughts. mostly julia quinn writes men truly horribly. literally the saving grace of anthony bridgerton is the actor who plays him. in all the books I've read of quinn's, the guy protagonist shakes the woman he loves by her shoulders or disrespects her massively and is literally described as 'predatory' in the run up to the sex scene!!!! like. I really liked michael up until a point. I never really liked anthony in 'the viscount who loved me' and colin was only marginally more tolerable in 'romancing mr bridgerton'. but michael seemed genuinely charming and a good guy who had a solid reason why he didn't tell frannie about his feelings for her. so it's a real shame that he turns into a bit of a monster when he seduces frannie and basically tries to entrap her into marriage - idk what it is about julia quinn that she just seems allergic to writing decent male characters???

it does make me glad that they genderbent michael for frannie's season in the show. and I can see how they could work the whole infertility plot in too with michaela and frannie - say if frannie gets pregnant and doesn't know it immediately, finds out soon after john dies, and it turns out michaela is also pregnant but by accident (she's still a rake which I think would be interesting as a concept to explore in a female character). frannie miscarries as per the book and michaela has a lot of fears about being a mother - and at the same time there's all this talk about who the earldom will go to next now john is gone. so they somehow pass michaela's child off as frannie's, the earldom doesn't go to the awful debenham side of the family and this whole ordeal brings frannie and michaela closer and they learn to take care of each other while both still mourning, and they both feel like it would be a betrayal of john and likely frannie is in denial about her queerness... all I'm saying, bridgerton writers room, I'm available...

[fiddles-ifs]

CW - Pregnancy Mention

Heres my generic questions whenever clones show up, are they capable of having children & has anyone tried l to clone the clones?

It's complicated -- clones in the first generation are more often than not subfertile, or at least that was the case in the beginning. Marik has helped advance clone science so much that nowadays clones are indistinguishable from their genetic templates, which includes fertility. Where it gets complicated is the things the Rider Initiative and Marik do to the clones to make them grow as fast and effectively as possible. That involves sacrificing some things and unbalancing others. No clone has been able to successfully escape the Initiative to really. Uh. Try it out, I guess??

The clones you see are technically clones of clones! Anyone beyond Gen 1 and Marik's Frankenrider, anyway.

[fellsilver]

It does suck that you can never think about the Seven — or any of Mys.tra's Chosen — in relation to parenthood without also considering why Mys.tra wanted those children to exist and what effect that has on everything

[fictionkinfessions]

this doesn't fit the canon offspring game criteria, but it reminded me about when i *did* think a lot about children. mostly after i had "died."

i met another astarion that had children with his husband, and it kind of astounded me. i'm happy for him, truly, but becoming a vampire made *me* sterile. i wouldn't even entertain the possibility of children because i knew (quite early on, too) that, among everything else that was taken from me, children and offspring were something i could either only ever fantasize about, or i would completely have to drop in order to keep my sanity

i've yet to remember if my wife and i adopted, if i was ever ready to become a father (something tells me i wasn't, but that's an entirely different conversation.) she and i could never have talked about kids before i died, but it's not something worth regretting any more now that i'm in this new life (#🦇🩸🗡️)

p

[astrxthesiai]

CW: Pregnancy (Chrome's inability to do so) and Childrearing. Please remember that Chrome is her ten years later self and older in this headcanon.

Chrome does not have many surviving organs, and cannot get pregnant. However, they have frozen her eggs. If she wants children, she must adopt or consider a surrogate mother.

I do think she is hesitant about having children at first. She is not sure she would be a good mother. She did not have a good mother, but she does consider Sawada Nana a good mother. I think she would ask her about motherhood before even considering a child.

I think she also is not sure Mukuro wants a child. He does not have any father figures, and Fran is like an annoying younger brother to Mukuro. They are part of the mafia. Their children will have targets on their backs. I think there is a lull or plateau for the Tenth famiglia before Chrome and Mukuro discuss children.

For the Rokudo family, I think she would go for two biological children, and for the rest, she would adopt. The adopted children would most likely be from other mafia families who have been experimented on like Mukuro's been.

[ofspvrta]

Two headcanons I've been toying with incorporating (partially due to my own discomfort with the topic of pregnancy) is that Kassandra does have very faint stretchmarks from when she had Elpidios. Due to her body basically never changing from the time she got the staff, the stretchmarks never faded entirely.

The other is thanks to her injury in the battle of Pylos (book canon version) when she was slashed deeply across the gut, it rendered her infertile. This is after the events of Legacy of the Hidden Blade (in my timeline this happens before Pylos and the Battle of One Hundred Hands where Kassandra meets the last love of her mortal life, Roxana).

[flownintothesun]

𝐎𝐍 𝐅𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐈𝐒 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐋𝐔𝐂𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐍𝐄 𝐁𝐄𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐑𝐄𝐋𝐀𝐓𝐄𝐃 :

“Your sibling may take a different path in life. But your bond with them will be forever.”

Francis and Luci are half-siblings who do not know of the other's existence. They share a very powerful father who is a prominent political figure in French politics (sometimes, the president). Lucienne is a year older, and her mother is Caterina Agosti, a very powerful and somewhat scary woman who leaves France while she's pregnant to return to her home country of Italy and conquer / rule over Florence's underworld. Francis's mother is a sweetheart of a woman, a young opera singer by the name of Aimee Rousseau who caught Henri's eye when she was performing at a charity gala. Unbeknownst to Aimee, Henri was engaged to another woman, who he married for status (a blessing in disguise, really). While pregnant, Aimee loses her scholarships for University and takes a job as a live-in housekeeper where she and baby Francis thrive for three years before it's revealed Henri's wife is infertile, and Henri seizes custody of Francis from his mother in order to have an 'heir'.

[impetuoustrait]

things are a little tougher this time around

[mysimsloveaffair]

Luca: It’s really not funny. I was just thinking about how cocky we are as men sometimes. Sophia suspected she had a problem, so she got checked. We spent all that time and money on those treatments, but never once did I consider I could have had a problem.

Wade: Until you did.

Luca: Yeah… She wanted to have a baby before her birthday, but because of my male arrogance, I couldn’t give her what she wanted.

Wade: But you did. Maybe not when she wanted, but you have your family now  - a disgustingly adorable family.

He laughs again, but I know he means it this time because the humor reflects in his eyes. 

Luca: You’re a jerk, you know.

The lump of embarrassment is heavy in my gut, telling me it’s time to move on from this conversation before I say something else I’ll regret. 

Wade: Yeah, I’ve heard that once or twice. I think it’s time to beat your butt in some foosball.

(**Note: Luca's, and parts of Dub’s, dialogue were written by @storiesbyjes2g )

[whispersims]

♪ 'it hurts...it really hurts...it's in your blood...' ♪

[starsfreckled]

as for amaya & kids ...

amaya has one verse where they had a kid before becoming the wol ( a boy named miolent that they had with their elezen fiance ). mio either exists in verses where amaya is not a wol, or upon request but I do not write him a lot tbh, he's from the old days when I RP'ed in-game. they have a verse in which they adopt @manigfeald 's Totoshi & act as his parent. in the verse where they are with @opalwilled 's lito, they... basically get a child for saving the world(?) when amaya wakes up back on the ragnar.ok, the scions & them just find a baby on board that looks a lot like lito & amaya - a last gift from metei.on & the dynamis. they name the child meir who is basically a form of reincarnation of mete.ion. as for other verses, amaya cannot conceive children after 3.3 so unless it is through adoption or literal magic power McGuffin amaya won't be a parent.

[dignitywhatdignity]

I have urinary incontinence.

Most of the time it's nothing. I'll throw on a pad if I'm going to be out all day and make sure i use the restroom as needed (because if I have to pee urgently and then sneeze...)

But when I'm sick, I cough? All bets are off.

I'm recovering from covid, and pads were useless. For several days I was going through a good half dozen Depends a day. Husband thought I had forgotten to empty the Diaper Genie because it was already full the day after garbage day.

I saw a doctor about it. He says it's too severe for surgery -- my urethra is just flopping around in there with no support, apparently. I can either have a procedure that I'd have to repeat every 2 years, or I can get a surgery that's only 90% effective.

Or I can continue as I have been, because it's not a health issue. It's a quality of life issue.

My kids were wanted and planned and they're both rainbow babies because I had a miscarriage before 7yo and two more before 3yo. There's a reason they're 4 years apart.

When I found out I was pregnant with 3yo, I was sad and scared. I wanted this baby, but I had wanted the last one, too. And I was convinced this would be another miscarriage. That I would spend the years until menopause pregnant and miserable with no child to show for it.

There should not be unwanted children. Because if I had gone through this for kids I didn't even want?

Yeah. I can see how that could end very badly.

the thing is like. i get that it's scary and makes people who do desire to get pregnant uncomfortable when we talk about the brutality and violence of pregnancy and the damage that pregnancy can do to your body

but you deserve to give informed consent to that process.

the lies around pregnancy - that it's inherently safe, that it doesn't do you permanent damage, that it's only extremely rare for people to die of pregnancy complications, etc like

all of these are lies constructed so that more people will get pregnant w/o knowing all that

there needs to be more talk about the impact of miscarriages and how common they are, how different abortion processes are and how accessible they are

but also like. talking about how pregnancy fucks your body up should not be taboo

this is a process that permanently changes most people's bodies, and that's even if the pregnancy doesn't do them like. severe illness or injury

and i just think everybody should have a right to KNOW that

bc to live in a society that intentionally obscures and hides facts about a completely optional and dangerous process does so for a reason, and that reason is based in a very sinister ideology that does not value bodily autonomy or informed consent

[nemuriga]

alright midnight sex headcanons under the cut

she is the most versatile ever. she will be whatever her partner wants her to be she is at your service. you need a dominate, take charge partner? you want a submissive partner? you like brats? you want to be taken care of? she's the one for you.

foreplay for her takes awhile. she will want to have you so ready you may start crying. if you can she will make you cum a few times before the main event. she wants you to get off.

cock warming is one of her favorites. literally let her sit on your lap with your dick inside her and she's content or if you want to sit on a strap and just chill she's down too. if you're done fucking and want to just stay inside her and cuddle that's just fine with her.

she does own a lot of toys mostly to give her partner whatever they want or need she has a chest and a play room she is ready for any kink or fetish.

despite her seeming promiscuity she does not do anonymous hookups. she needs to have some sort of emotional connection to you to sleep with you. however, she'll make out with anyone it's her favorite thing to do.

she likes to be marked whether it's in a hidden or visible place. she's here for it and honestly if it's hidden it makes her even more turned on because it's just your little secret.

she is vocal about her wants she is not afraid to tell you what she needs you to do for her to feel good, but orgasming is not always her goal. she enjoys the act of sex and the intimacy of it so if she doesn't cum don't worry she still had a lot of fun.

she likes to be cum in. literally nothing to add besides she is unable to have children so don't worry about unwanted pregnancies.

goes without saying but she is meticulous about safe sex she will want you to be tested for std's regularly if you are having sex with other people besides her.

midnight has been known to squirt so if you wanna fuck her make sure you have a towel ready or are expecting to get wet.

[reasonsforhope]

"The first modern attempt at transferring a uterus from one human to another occurred at the turn of the millennium. But surgeons had to remove the organ, which had become necrotic, 99 days later. The first successful transplant was performed in 2011 — but even then, the recipient wasn’t immediately able to get pregnant and deliver a baby. It took three more years for the first person in the world with a transplanted uterus to give birth. 

More than 70 such babies have been born globally in the decade since. “It’s a complete new world,” said Giuliano Testa, chief of abdominal transplant at Baylor University Medical Center.

Almost a third of those babies — 22 and counting — have been born in Dallas at Baylor. On Thursday, Testa and his team published a major cohort study in JAMA analyzing the results from the program’s first 20 patients. All women were of reproductive age and had no uterus (most having been born without one), but had at least one functioning ovary. Most of the uteri came from living donors, but two came from deceased donors.

Fourteen women had successful transplants, all of whom were able to have at least one baby.  

“That success rate is extraordinary, and I want that to get out there,” said Liza Johannesson, the medical director of uterus transplants at Baylor, who works with Testa and co-authored the study. “We want this to be an option for all women out there that need it.”

Six patients had transplant failures, all within two weeks of the procedure. Part of the problem may have been a learning curve: The study initially included only 10 patients, and five of the six with failed transplants were in that first group. These were “technical” failures, Testa said, involving aspects of the surgery such as how surgeons connected the organ’s blood vessels, what material was used for sutures, and selecting a uterus that would work well in a transplant. 

The team saw only one transplant fail in the second group of 10 people, the researchers said. All 20 transplants took place between September 2016 and August 2019.

Only one other cohort study has previously been published on uterus transplants, in 2022. A Swedish team, which included Johannesson before she moved to Baylor, performed seven successful transplants out of nine attempts. Six women, including the first transplant recipient to ever deliver a baby back in 2014, gave birth.

“It’s hard to extract data from that, because they were the first ones that did it,” Johannesson said. “This is the first time we can actually see the safety and efficacy of this procedure properly.”

So far, the signs are good: High success rates for transplants and live births, safe and healthy children so far, and early signs that immunosuppressants — typically given to transplant recipients so their bodies don’t reject the new organ — may not cause long-term harm, the researchers said. (The uterine transplants are removed after recipients no longer need them to deliver children.) And the Baylor team has figured out how to identify the right uterus for transfer: It should be from a donor who has had a baby before, is premenopausal, and, of course, who matches the blood type of the recipient, Testa said...

“They’ve really embraced the idea of practicing improvement as you go along, to understand how to make this safer or more effective. And that’s reflected in the results,” said Jessica Walter, an assistant professor of reproductive endocrinology and infertility at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, who co-authored an editorial on the research in JAMA...

Walter was a skeptic herself when she first learned about uterine transplants. The procedure seemed invasive and complicated. But she did her fellowship training at Penn Medicine, home to one of just four programs in the U.S. doing uterine transplants. 

“The firsts — the first time the patient received a transplant, the first time she got her period after the transplant, the positive pregnancy test,” Walter said. “Immersing myself in the science, the patients, the practitioners, and researchers — it really changed my opinion that this is science, and this is an innovation like anything else.” ...

Many transgender women are hopeful that uterine transplants might someday be available for them, but it’s likely a far-off possibility. Scientists need to rewind and do animal studies on how a uterus might fare in a different “hormonal milieu” before doing any clinical trials of the procedure with trans people, Wagner said.

Among cisgender women, more long-term research is still needed on the donors, recipients, and the children they have, experts said.

“We want other centers to start up,” Johannesson said. “Our main goal is to publish all of our data, as much as we can.”"

-via Stat, August 16, 2024