If you're considering IVF, one of the important decisions you'll make
is the choice of a clinic to perform the IVF procedure. The new
Web site for the
Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology
(SART) provides IVF success rates for clinics in the US.
Fertility clinics are required to report the outcome of every ART
procedure to the
US CDC
(Center for Disease Control), but getting those statistics published
has generally lagged 2 to 3 years behind. The new SART Web site
seeks to streamline reporting fertility statistics and making them
available sooner. Statistics are currently available through 2004,
putting the US far ahead of Europe, where it generally takes 4 years to
collect publish ART data.
Begging the question of why, in the age of the World Wide Web, we do
not have virtually up-to-the-minute ART statistics? Our local
middle school updates children's grades via the Web once weekly,
yet it takes YEARS to collate a few simple bits of data about a single
IVF cycle?
In any case, you should beware of putting too much stock in a clinic's
success rate alone, because it's far from telling the whole
story. The pregnancy rate can be misleading if there are too few
cases; for example, one clinic had an impressive 50% pregnancy rate for
women over 40, but it turned out only 4 women over 40 had been
treated. Some clinics are also guilty of "cherry picking", or
treating only patients who seem to have a good chance of becoming
pregnant, and turning away those who may have poor odds.
About Maureen
Click to play the Fountains of Wayne song about Maureen!
"Maureen, you're givin' me too much information!"
My Kiddies
My DH
(And never had a fight!)
About Me
In 1999, my two sons were 4 and 2 years old, and we were ready to have another baby. I hoped to have a daughter, and I turned to the Internet to search for ways of increasing the odds of conceiving a girl. I discovered the iVillage Gender Determination Board. On the board, I found information about at-home and high-tech sex selection methods, but more importantly, I discovered I wasn't alone. I was one among a legion of mothers who longed desperately for a daughter, keeping it a secret so others wouldn't think, wrongly, that we loved our sons less, and feeling guilty becuse we're not supposed to care if a baby's a boy or a girl, "as long as it's healthy". There were, of course, also mothers hoping just as much to add a son to their all-girl family.
After a lot of research and soul-searching, my husband I decided to try MicroSort. In the fall of 2000, I became pregnant on our first MicroSort attempt, by IUI. At 20 weeks of pregnancy, we discovered we were having twins, a boy and a girl! We were thrilled to have a daughter at last, and a new son to cherish too.
During my journey to conceive a daughter, I was so grateful for the support and information volunteered by others on the boards; mothers who didn't even know me, but were willing to help me, hope for me, and cry along with me, when there was no one I could turn to "in real life". I know that without being able to talk personally with women who had tried MicroSort, I would have never gone through with this daunting, complex procedure; and that we would have never had a daughter as part of our family.
Now that my journey's finished, this Web site is just my way of giving some of that help back, to you.