To think some people treat IVF like ordering a designer baby?

[MyHazelCritic]

Not all, obviously, but there’s a rising trend of turning fertility into a consumer project: selecting traits, planning sibling sets, documenting every step online. It’s not always about creating life, sometimes it’s about curating an image.

Can’t say I’ve ever heard of this. Only of multiple attempts, repeated heartbreaking failures, and just the odd, eventual happy outcome. A friend of a dd had one expensive failure after the other, and decided to give up, but after a few years, knowing that there was still one embryo, went ahead with it - never expecting it to work - but bingo!

how does one 'select traits' in IVF? I know there is PID and sometimes sex selection but traits????

The stuff you are referring to is illegal in the UK and most other countries.

Stop consuming US based Tiktok, it will rot your brain.

No, I think you completely misunderstand IVF.
Posting updates hardly makes it a designer baby.
What traits do you think are designed in or out? The only thing that takes place in the UK is genetically testing embryos for serious genetic conditions in order to implant a foetus that will not suffer from this. This takes place for the most serious genetic conditions. Hardly a designer baby.

How on earth do you think people are "curating" embryos for cosmetic purposes? You can't even tell how a baby is going to look as an adult after they're born, let alone as a handful of microscopic cells.

I really hate posts like this. It gives people the idea IVF is easy. It really isn't.

I don't even begin to believe any sane person thinks of IVF in terms of ordering a designer baby. What you've seen is either companies advertising pie in the sky nonsense (like selecting for IQ), or people making the best of a tough situation. I do see people doing that - there's a woman I follow on instagram who posts a lot about how she and her wife made their family. It's not my style, but she quite clearly does it to cheer herself up around the awful bits, and I really can't judge someone for that.

A quick Google will tell you that you can have gender selective IVF in Northern Cyprus, people can and do travel from the UK to use this service. In other countries there are other services offered (though I know little about this myself).

I'm not sure why people are giving the OP such a hard time about their post, they never said it was specifically happening in the UK. The fact it is happening anywhere in the world concerns me.

With so much gender disappointment on here, it wouldn't surprise me if people chose the sex if they had the choice. They absolutely would!

I have done so many cycles I can tell you it's the most painful, emotional roller coaster I've ever experienced. No sane person would choose to do it unless they have to. Those people you refer to must be 0.0000001% and it's absolutely not a 'growing' trend. I'll be happy if my baby is healthy. That's all I ask.

Are you really 'not sure'?

It's because the OP didn't write 'do you think people ever select for gender doing IVF'. The answer is, yes, clearly people do. The OP said some people treat IVF like ordering a designer baby. She then described some extremely unlikely situations as if they were commonplace.

The reason people are 'giving her a hard time' is because this is goady shite. It feeds into the idea that IVF is fairly easy. I'm in the middle of doing IVF at the moment, and it is not easy. It's grim.

But you would be amazed how many people buy into that idea that it's easy. Men and women. The last cycle I did, I was working a physical job, and there was a point when I simply couldn't do it - the clinic told me not to lift anything heavy; you risk ovarian torsion, which is agonising and also potentially pretty awful for your fertility - and you would be amazed how many people expressed confusion. 'But how come it's not just like any other monthly cycle?' (Er, because I am doped up on a ton of hormones and my ovaries are the size of oranges, you idiot.)

People also think it must work pretty well. Because if you read nonsense like the OP's posts, wouldn't you assume it works most of the time? And that hides the reality that, most of the time, IVF doesn't work. Yes, it's a wonderful technology, but even for young, healthy women, it is often a failure, and a gruelling, expensive failure at that.

That's why the OP's post is making people cross.