If you’re planning your travel to pick up your baby, you may be tempted to buy your airline tickets to arrive on the Estimated Due Date (EDD). That’s a bad idea because the date shown in the report is not the actual number of weeks of the pregnancy. The EDD is based on the “Gestational Age” of the fetus, not the “Chronological Age”.
Category Archives: How Surrogacy Works
How to bring your surrogacy baby home from overseas?
When we flew back to the US with our newborns, it was the easiest flight of my life. Even at 3 weeks, newborns do really well on airplanes — the droning background noise makes them sleep even more than usual. The cabin crew also loved the babies and were happy to go above and beyond to get us anything we needed. But we did make some critical preliminary preparations…
Can a Surrogacy Contract Force me to Terminate a Pregnancy?
Would-be parents always ask me about the risk that the surrogate may change her mind and want to keep their baby. Nobody questions if the parents may change THEIR mind and decide they don’t want the baby. Frankly, the possibility should be banned by law — we expect such protections for the parents, so why not for the surrogate?
Should we do PGS testing on Day 3 embryos?
I have a clinic India that still likes to freeze embryos at Day 3. The rationale is that the embryos will develop better in their natural ‘in utero’ environment. I prefer Day 5 embryos, but I defer to the doctors on these types of issues– but there are exceptions, and PGS/PGD analysis is one of those exceptions.
What’s a “reasonable” success rate at an overseas clinic?
It’s hard to trust reported success rates at overseas clinics that have little, if any, oversight. My experience is that clinics in the developing world (e.g., Kenya, Cambodia, Georgia, etc.) have a pregnancy rate per embryo transfer of about 40% to 60% in general. That may seem like a very poor result, but it’s sometimes just enough…
Surrogacy Works: The cost and complications of freezing eggs
Women who face severe illness that can hinder their fertility such as various cancers and endometriosis can now make the choice to harvest and freeze their eggs in the hopes of having a child through IVF years later. Frozen eggs are one more innovation in how surrogacy works. The practice places a hold on these…
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Surrogacy Works: Studies Find Higher Birth Defects in ART Babies
According to two new studies, women that use assisted reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization or gestational surrogacy may be more likely have children with certain diseases or birth defects. But the studies’ authors admit that the findings have some flaws, and they still support the use of assisted reproduction techniques, including IVF and…
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Surrogacy Works: Birth Defects are Lower in ART Babies
If you read the previous blog post, you may be scratching your head… because recent studies also have determined that the likelihood of birth defects is lowered by ART procedures, like in vitro fertilization and gestational surrogacy. The likelihood of birth defects is typically higher in women who are older when pregnant. But a recent…
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Surrogacy with ICSI may pass along fertility problems in men
For the first time, young men who were conceived during the 1990s through intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) are being studied. The results of this study reveal that these individuals may inherit the same fertility problems that led their parents to seek reproduction through assisted measures in the first place. ICSI is a process wherein sperm…
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How Well Does Surrogacy Work?
A recent study reviewed data from the first decade of this century to determine the relative risks and overall safety of surrogacy procedures. The finding? Surrogacy works pretty well, and the risks are low. The risk of complications with the stimulation or surgical process of ART related procedures was low in the United States during…
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