‘Our Baby: A Modern Miracle’ C4 10pm tonight

Neither did I, boatyard, but I knew I'd heard it somewhere! Tracked it down in the end....

Thanks Zeugma - I had no idea which programme it was on.

Fanny and boatyard - I heard that too. It was on You and Yours on Thursday, about 20 mins into the programme.

Did anyone also happen to hear the very worrying Woman's Hour item on Monday about artificial gestation and so-called 'bio-bags'? It was in the context of pushing the boundaries of what was ethically possible regarding birth, and the interviewee, who I think has written a book on this, raised the prospect of this becoming a serious likelihood in the foreseeable future. Needless to say, no mention was made of the enormous elephant in the room....I found it chilling tbh. I didn't see the documentary but reading this thread made me think about that interview with even more concern for the welfare of the babies involved in these transactions.

boatyardblues
I'd be interested to listen to that radio 4 programme - was it on Woman's Hour or can you let me know which programme please.

The problem with IVF clinics is they are totally profit orientated. Most NHS hospitals don't offer IVF in-house, they refer women who qualify to for NHS funding to the local private clinic. This is what my own hospital does. It may be that one of the NHS consultants also works at the private clinic or it may be other specialists that take on the work.
The profit motive means that they take on even hopeless cases with practically zero chances of success to keep the money rolling in. Any problems that arise then fall to the NHS to deal with.
Being private the only oversight is the HFEA, you can't do an FOI to a private clinic.
I have been investigating this because although the department I work in isn't maternity or gynaecology, I have had some dealings with women who have run into problems with OHSS.

We recently had a case that very closely resembled the details of the woman in this case report.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5174786/

Women with substantial surgical background, very unlikely to achieve IVF success and a high risk factor for problems related to ovarian stimulation.

The surgeon was, shall we say, a little concerned.
This has had significant ongoing health impact for her.

Ivf clinics need to be much more highly regulated.

I've heard of people being talked into full ivf rather that just sperm insemination (sorry don't know the actual term) the clinics sight sucsess rates, but why wouldn't you try a pretty much non invasive almost natural approach first,especially when the woman hasn't got fertility problems.

I know a single woman who just got pregnant by donor sperm. No clinic or ivf required. Just a cup and syringe and willing male.

Not RTFT sorry, but on the subject of egg donation, lesbian couples are often targeted as good supply for this too (or certainly were - it’s been a while since I was anywhere near this). Approaching a clinic for artificial insemination, lesbians are persuaded to “upgrade” to IVF, told it has a higher success rate and that if they donate half their eggs from the egg harvest to a couple needing donor eggs, that couple will pay for large part of the IVF cycle for them, reducing the cost hugely. Risks are barely mentioned, and not until the idea has been sold to them as a good one.

Those adverts for egg donation! How can they advertise as safe. Surely that could lead to being sued?

£75k for egg donation would be hard to turn down at that age. Now I'm older there is no way I would donate eggs, not for any amount of money. I don't understand how a woman can be comfortable knowing she has biological children walking about in the world and not know if they're OK, if they're happy, safe. Not know what they're like. Could bump into them and not know.
But as a twenty somthing, the fact they are my children wouldn't really occur to me. I fear these women would donate eggs in their early 20s thinking no big deal - then go on to have their own child in their early 30s and learn to regret their decision.

Thats not even taking into account how you would feel if the donation lead to infertility, cancer or both.

I'm glad you've watched KingFred

I've been reading, learning, listening to podcasts and watching documentaries for nearly two years now since I learnt of the Law Commission proposals for new surrogacy law in the UK.

Surrogacy is relentlessly presented in the media as a lovely gift for a kind woman to help the childless have a baby.

Scratch the surface and I'm afraid it's all bad!

But for me, the bottom line is - I think it's a damn cheek to ask a woman to go through nine months pregnancy and childbirth for another person, and to give away sell her baby. Maybe I'm not very empathetic or good at looking at things from another person's point of view (I'm not, it's true!) but I really can't imagine why anyone would do that.

And no baby should be bought, sold, wrapped in ribbon and gifted.

It really is that simple - for me, at least.

We all know you can't sell your ten year old if they are getting a bit annoying, or your five year old, or your two year old. Why is it OK when it's a newborn?

Anyway, this is a great article that covers lots of the issues.

mercatornet.com/use-and-abuse-the-exploitative-reality-of-surrogacy-and-egg-donation/24920/

Thank you Fanny - have just watched a bit of 'Eggspolitation'

Another study showing the much increased risk for hypertensive disorders in Oocyte donation (OD) pregnancies.

"Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy and pre‐eclampsia
The incidence of HDP in singleton pregnancies was 13.0–39.3% in the OD group, 1.9–23.3% in the IVF group and 2.1–3.8% in the SC group (Table S4)."
(SC = spontaneous conception)

obgyn.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1471-0528.14257

Women are being exposed to unacceptable risk and do not have this sufficiently explained to them.

@KingFredsTache I'd encourage you to watch Eggsploitation to learn more about the risks and harms off egg harvesting.

It is in English but with Spanish subtitles.

Donor eggs are an independent risk factor and women who act as surrogates, having previously has problem free pregnancies frequently run into difficulties with their surrogate pregnancies. This applies to women using donor eggs for ivf as well as surrogate mothers.

This major study concluded

"Donor oocyte pregnancy acts as an independent risk factor for pregnancy complications, including hypertensive disorders, small for gestational age, and preterm delivery. Women should be counselled carefully before undergoing DO ‐assisted conception."

obgyn.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1471-0528.13910

There is also the matter of the risks and harms of obtaining the eggs, which I hesitate to refer to as egg donors. True, in the UK payment is capped at £750 which in no way would tempt me to go through the process.
In the USA college students are targeted as good genetic material, clever, sporty etc and payment may be as much as $10,000 so obviously a significant temptation to help pay college fees this way.

*Lupron /anti rejection drugs are given to the surrogate mother to prevent miscarriage but it doesn't always work.

Eggs from someone else will be seen as a foreign body to your own body, so similar-ish to how anti rejection drugs are used in organ transplants, it's a similar premise with donor eggs.*

I fully appreciate the sentiment but need to clear up a few things. The process of receiving donor eggs is not very different to a frozen embryo transfer. I’m not making a judgement on whether donor conception is ethically right or not.

Lupron is not an anti rejection drug, it’s used to treat prostrate cancer and to turn off ovarian function in women for a discrete time period for medical and sometimes fertility reasons most often in those those suffering endometriosis or adenomyosis. In the UK, you might be given birth control pills to sync cycles where the donor eggs are “fresh” but it wouldn’t be necessary where the eggs were frozen.

There is pretty limited evidence to support the concept that donor eggs are less acceptable than your on eggs. It’s not remotely comparable to an organ transplant. In IVF, women are prescribed immune suppressants (steroids, intralipids) for their own eggs where they’ve had recurrent miscarriages or bloodwork suggesting an overactive immune system.

She obviously doesn't pass on any genes but part of her is going into the foetus for 9 whole months?

Mitochondrial DNA can be present up to 10 years after birth.

Do donor egg surrogacies often result in miscarriage or do they have a similar rate as any other IVF?

Lupron /anti rejection drugs are given to the surrogate mother to prevent miscarriage but it doesn't always work.

Eggs from someone else will be seen as a foreign body to your own body, so similar-ish to how anti rejection drugs are used in organ transplants, it's a similar premise with donor eggs.

Jake is effectively the egg donor and will not be on the birth certificate and my understanding is, wouldn't be able to register the birth of Millie as he has no documentation to show he is the spouse of the mother. Someone is going to have to register the birth, even with the understandable delays around covid.

For the BC the father will be blank (as it was a sleek donor) and Laura will be the mother yes, it's the parental order that will be the challenge as I don't know whether, even with GRCs, the judge will approve them being recorded on the PO as the parental roles they chose.

Also, your post made me wonder something about surrogacy... Obviously it works perfectly fine with an egg that has a totally genetic makeup to that of the woman gestating pregnancy, as we have seen, but how does that work?

The woman who is actually pregnant, its her blood and tissue that is used to feed the baby and help it actually grow? She obviously doesn't pass on any genes but part of her is going into the foetus for 9 whole months?

Do donor egg surrogacies often result in miscarriage or do they have a similar rate as any other IVF?

I don't know, it's just something I have never thought of before about surrogacy, or indeed about pregnancy in general?!

OK feel a bit better now. I had a rough #1 and an OK #2 so I was expecting #3 to be a walk in the park.

@Alabamawhirly1 You've scared the shit out of me. What's this about troublesome thrids. I'm pregnant with no 3 and have been expecting this one to just pop out.
If it helps, my no 3 did just pop out - about 90mins in total - we only just made it to the hospital - probably should have had her at home. I didn’t know there was a thing about no 3’s.

Sorry Alabama actual delivery was fine, if anything she was the easiest. I was just in slow labour for 30 hours, before my waters broke. The first two were 12hrs from waters breaking to delivery. Oh and she was term unlike #2.

A friend wanted her husband with her during Covid and wasn’t allowed at that point (In England). It has varied over the weeks.
Friend described this as “giving birth alone”.

nordicmodelnow.org/2020/01/29/i-was-an-altruistic-surrogate-and-am-now-against-all-surrogacy/

Really good insight to an altruistic surrogate.

I think when intented parents want to be at the birth - they seem to forget that giving birth is a very private and intimate thing. I don't want anyone other than my dh or possibly my mum seeing me in my most vulnerable state. I would feel extremely uncomfortable giving birth in nothing more than a nighty hitched up to my waist with even my closest friends present.

But then intended parents don't seem to care about what's best for the mother - they wouldnt ask her to surrogate in the 1st place if they did.

@TheGreatWave

You've scared the shit out of me. What's this about troublesome thrids. I'm pregnant with no 3 and have been expecting this one to just pop out.