Say what?

What?!?!

I had someone recently ask me, "why did you choose to have your embryos transferred instead of implanted?" My response, "I like a good challenge and figured I would do it the hard way." Insert loud sigh and eye roll here please.

For the love of Pete Sakes* people, no man or woman can "implant" an embryo. If that were the case, IVF would have a much higher success rate and no infertile women would try other methods of conceiving a child. You can however have embryos transferred into your uterus and from there God, mother nature or whomever/whatever you believe in will choose. Implant or don't implant.

I wish the media would get their terminology correct. It is stories like the Octo-Mom or the Mom with the wrong embie that make fertility treatments seem like a joke. Ok, maybe not a joke but it is a blow to those of us trying to have a baby by using IVF. I think by sensationalizing how these women were "implanted" with embryos, those us doing IVF are treated like we did something wrong. We did not have our embies implanted, therefore we don't want it as bad as the Octo-mom. And if you have some "educated" (read: know it all) talking to you about your IVF, they don't want to be informed that they have it all wrong. You can't choose the best eggs only, you can't add more drugs after your ER reveals one ovary did not give you any eggs and you don't get the option to do anything special to make sure every embie you do get is perfect. Finally, by questioning if I (or other women doing IVF) have looked into all the options and know "for sure" that I am doing the best that I can do isn't going to change the outcome. You don't walk into IVF blind and no, the Octo-moms doctor is not the right doctor for me. She got lucky, the doctor did not do anything other then over transferring embies into her, to improve her chances for success. And, yes, I am sure that I got my embies and yes, I am sure my eggs were fertilized with Scott's sperm.

I don't believe for one minute that a women chooses IVF over sex for conception intentionally. I will skip the whole "but I want to be a single mom" people here since clearly that is different bird of another feather. Seriously, I don't ever recall waking up one morning and thinking to myself "damn, IVF sounds fun. I will save up my pretty pennies and then fork over $15K for a procedure that has a 35% chance of working for me, because I think IVF is groovy and I want to be part of the cool club." Instead, I hoped and prayed that I too can get pregnant from sex, just like they said happens in high school, and can fore go the painfully expensive, emotional and physically stressful and sometimes painful procedure called IVF. But nooooo, damn my infertile body for refusing to cooperate.

*Yes, I know...I got that saying all wrong. Before you lecture me on my terminology being wrong, let me say I just admitted to having the saying wrong. But, I have been saying it that way for so long now that I am not sure I will ever say it the right way. Besides, "for the love of Pete Sakes" versus "confusion between transferred/ implanted" is not the same.