BBC 1 a child against all odds

[lornaloo]

Just whatched it. Have a few questions about it.
I don't fully understand why ivf doesn't work sometimes if the eggs have been fertilised and inplanted into womb wall. What makes them detach?

same as any mc I suppose, no-one really knows.

Oh I recorded it and watched today.I had everything crossed for Suzanne and Allan. They seemed so lovely that I wept at the end when it was nothing but bad news. I bet she'd be a lovely mum. It must be so hard for her seeing all her friends with thier beautiful children

I watched this, and was somewhat bemused by the blonde one who had a baby thanks to a Russian donor egg (can't remember her name - kept nodding off while it was on.) After she became pregnant she was like " oh, I might not bond with this baby and er it's not actually genetically mine, I didn't think about that before, I just wanted to be pregnant." I couldn't help wondering if she'd always treat the 'Russian' baby differently to her genetic child.

Agree, missmistletoe.

You would think that counselling would be a good idea before going ahead with that procedure-she seemed to be really struggling with the idea.

Am talking from position of complete ignorance but hope that UK clinics offer that as part of the service - more difficult when done abroad.

but it's not considered to be a miscarriage if the embrio doesn't implant. I read somewhere that natural fertilisation of the egg is actually quite common, but that more often than not the embrio just doesn't implant and thus no pregnancy occurs.

in ivf, simply putting the embryos back doesn't mean they will implant - most don't - and hence a pregnancy isn't achieved. other times the embryo may implant briefly but then die, which is more like a miscarriage,

The science behind why a fertilized embryo might not implant is little understood even by the experts.

There are possible physical reasons which are still not fully understood and being researched, such as natural killer cells which may inhibit implantation. Endometriosis may also play a part.

Even if an embryo does implant, it may for many reasons not develop properly in the first few days, possibly giving a "chemical pregnancy" where HCG levels are measured (a positive test result) but nothing appears to be there on a scan.

Or, as happened to me, the embryo implants but fails to develop and an early miscarriage takes place. Tis is usually due to a chromosomal abnormality with the embryo.

All of these things happen in normal conception too, but in many cases you would be unaware that it had happened.

This really opened my eyes to the whole IVF situation. I cannot believe how much prep goes into it, how many drugs and how invasive the whole treatment is. It must be so hard to have to do it more than once.