POSTS WITH TAG: ivf

  • 54 +SHARE

    Forget about the debate over passport forms replacing ‘Mother’ and ‘Father’ with ‘Parent One’ and ‘Parent Two’ -- make way for Parent Three! A Florida judge has ruled that a 22-month-old baby girl shall have three people listed as her parents on her birth certificate -- a married lesbian couple and the gay man that provides one half of her DNA.

    Maria Italiano, 43, and Cher Filippazzo, 38, had not successfully conceived a much-desired child, even after several attempts at fertility clinics. Italiano’s hairdresser Massimiliano Gerina offered to provide his sperm for artificial insemination after the women approached him on the subject.

    Read More
  • 30 +SHARE

    There is no greater gift that a person can receive than having a baby, which is something that two gay fathers from Britain know first hand. With the help of an egg donor and a surrogate mother who helped them welcome twins over a decade ago, they were able to achieve their dream of having children. Barrie and Tony Drewitt-Barlow were actually the first gay couple to become parents in the U.K., and since their first babies were born, they've added three more kids into their family -- who were all born using a surrogate.

    They may have their hands full with their brood of five at home, but now they want to help other same-sex couples achieve their dream of becoming moms and dads as well. They opened a surrogacy center that caters to other same-sex couples who want to add little ones into the mix and wouldn't otherwise be able to have kids.

    Read More
  • 18 +SHARE

    Sometimes science simply amazes me. Like, say, when a baby is born 21 years after a man banks his sperm. That seems kind of crazy, right? Not only the fact that 20-year-old sperm still works, but that the man it belonged to is still interested in caring for a newborn at that point in his life.

    The stars were all aligned for a 53-year-old former police officer and cancer survivor, when his wife utilized his frozen sperm in an IVF attempt, and it worked on the first try. Baby Jasmine was born, and she's pretty dang cute. But Jasmine isn't the only miracle in this story.

    Read More
  • Rant

    Egg Donors Are Business People Not Parents

    posted by April Peveteaux February 14, 2012 at 2:15 PM in Baby
    57 +SHARE

    Oy. If you became a mother any other way than having a live human man directly impregnate you without any medical intervention, you're going to feel a tad bit irritated when I tell you what someone is saying about you. One writer believes your children are going to suffer. Because only hetero sex (does it also have to be missionary style?) resulting in a live birth will give you well-adjusted kids, according to Elizabeth Marquardt. None of this new-fangled science stuff if you don't want your kids waking up some day and demanding to know their sperm or egg donor.

    Because apparently, if you use a surrogate, or donor eggs, or made use of any type of donor in the process, your child is going to grow up and miss his "real" mother. Now you're really pissed, huh?

    Read More
  • 170 +SHARE

    I'm not afraid to stand up for what I think is right. Seek justice. Fight for the underdog when the underdog is deserving. And when I heard about Christa Dias, the Catholic school teacher who was fired after getting pregnant through artificial insemination, I wanted to stand up for her, too. But I'm conflicted. The contract she signed with Holy Family and St. Lawrence Catholic schools in Cincinnati, Ohio, specifically states that artificial insemination is immoral and a teacher employed by this school must abide by their clause.

    But is it right for a job to deny a woman her desire to become a mother? Shouldn't pregnancy be regarded as a miracle?

     

    Read More
  • Could IVF Study Mean End of Multiples?

    posted by April Peveteaux October 24, 2011 at 2:30 PM in Pregnancy
    10 +SHARE

    The end of an era is upon is, ladies. No more Octo-mom, no more Kate Plus 8, and no more risky pregnancies for a huge number of IVF pregnancies. At least if other fertility clinics follow the lead at the University of Iowa where a study found that today women under the age of 38 have just as good of a chance of getting pregnant using one embryo in the transfer as multiple embryos.

    Unless you're one of those people who dream about having twins, triplets, or even more, this is fantastic news. After all, women carrying multiples are at an increased risk for diabetes, having premature babies, or babies born with cerebral palsy. Cutting down these risks for women who are already under bodily stress is an admirable goal. So let's hope fertility clinics embrace this idea, and we can all stop looking at moms of twins and wondering what the story is. You know, if you do that sort of thing.

    Read More
  • 78 +SHARE

    I'm worth how much?A new mom is facing felony charges after selling her baby to a friend for $15,000. Bridget Wismer says, however, it's not what it looks like. What it looks like is this single mom, who lives with her other two children and her own mother, unexpectedly got pregnant. She is unemployed and had no way to care for the baby, so she either gave or sold the baby to her friend Jack Gavaghan -- who is also facing charges. The fact that Jack gave her $15,000 seems like, hey, he just bought himself a baby. But Wismer insists that he was just helping her out during a hard time.

    Either way, dude got a baby, and the mom got $15K. Seems like some kind of transaction happened, whether the lady tried to get cash money for her newborn or not. While I know selling babies is illegal, it does make you wonder: Is $15,000 too much money to spend on one baby?

    Read More
  • Could You Have Your Best Friend's Baby?

    posted by April Peveteaux October 4, 2011 at 2:15 PM in Baby
    31 +SHARE

    There are a lot of amazing ways you can add to your family today. With the constant innovations in fertility treatments, technology, and worldwide adoption, it's amazing what a couple can do to get a baby when the traditional methods don't quite work out. But this story has me slack-jawed over not only one woman's generosity, but the other woman's restraint.

    Instead of using a surrogate through an agency, two best friends decided that they could work out the surrogate thing between themselves. When Logan (not her real name) offered up her womb to Tamara (also not her real name), these ladies ignored any potential complications and instead decided to make a baby together.

    First of all, that's an unbelievable best friend. Secondly, how difficult is this relationship going to be to negotiate now that it's been taken to this level?

    Read More
  • 6 +SHARE

    Remember Carolyn and Sean Savage? The couple from Ohio suffered a devastating loss when they were told Carolyn had been implanted with the wrong embryo, and was pregnant with someone else's child. After carrying the baby boy for nine months, and giving birth, the Savages turned him over to his biological parents in Michigan.

    It was a sad story of loss for a couple who had already gone through so much in trying to have a baby. How many of us wondered if we could do the same thing? Carrying a baby for nine months, learning to love that baby, only to have him taken away after you gave birth. (Not to mention suffering through the pains of pregnancy where the end result was disappointment.)

    But now the Savages have something to celebrate. The couple is expecting twins! And this time, there's no way the pregnancy will duplicate the last one in 2009.

    Read More
  • The Emotional Side of Egg Donation

    posted by April Peveteaux January 13, 2011 at 7:15 PM in Baby
    11 +SHARE

    There are so many ways to bring a baby into the world today, and the most technologically advanced methods have only been available in recent years. Which means the long-term issues of infertility solutions are just sorting themselves out, and they can be incredibly complicated.

    After the Twiblings story in NYT Magazine, an egg donor chose to speak out on Motherlode, as she felt the role of the egg donor was glossed over in the article that tackled the complicated roles of surrogates and the mother. I'll be honest in that I never expected an egg donor to have such complicated feelings. Then I gave it more than five minutes of thought, which was the egg donor's point.

    This anonymous writer expresses her longing, now that she has her own children, to somehow be connected to the twins she helped a couple conceive while she was in her mid-20s.

    Read More
SIGN UP FOR OUR DAILY NEWSLETTER
advertisement
Around the web