I am in the IVF procedure and have been hearing these questions regularly for months. I know that many of them do not come from malice, but from lack of knowledge. That's why I will give the answers in the text - so that you satisfy your curiosity and don't ask these - often painful - questions to other people who are in or after IVF.
This text has been auto-translated from Polish.
1. And normally you couldn't .
Those entering IVF usually have a long history of unsuccessful efforts to have a child. They often face illnesses. If they could get pregnant without IVF, I assure you they would do it right now. IVF is a way out for people who "normally" could not.
The very term "normally" is loaded - after all, the in vitro procedure results in a normal pregnancy. Fertilization itself takes place in the same way, the embryos develop identically - except that they are not in the fallopian tube. Instead of arbitrary and judgmental terms, such as "normal," it is better to speak of assisted (medically assisted), unassisted (with intercourse, without drugs and treatments) or spontaneous fertilization, systemic (in the fallopian tube) or extracorporeal (in the laboratory). Then we don't evaluate the method of fertilization, we just describe the facts.
Many pregnancies would not have occurred without medical assistance, such as surgery to remove polyps, medication or insemination. You don't even know about most of such assistance - medications taken during pregnancy enable healthy development of the fetus, but few people call the pregnancy "abnormal" because of them. Wearing glasses is not called "abnormal vision" either. Medicine helps in many aspects of life - and there is nothing abnormal about it.
2. When will you be pregnant?
In vitro is often portrayed as a "shortcut," where medicine provides certainty of pregnancy and term. "You ordered a pregnancy? Please." Well, no. Here nothing can be planned with certainty. At any stage.
The procedure helps with the process of fertilization - but the process of nesting and pregnancy itself is just as (or more, by infertility) uncertain as with unassisted efforts. The embryo must nest naturally and begin to develop. This often doesn't happen the first or second time. Not only in IVF: 60-70 percent of embryos in the natural process are expelled by the body. It is impossible to plan with certainty the moment when an embryo will take - with or without medicine.
In vitro does not give full control over the entire process. It helps only in one part of it - at fertilization. But here, too, it does not give certainty - it happens that no embryos are formed after stimulation and LP. You can't create embryos with desire and technology alone. This is where biology continues to work.
In the IVF process, you have to accept the constant unknown. When I approached it in July, I thought to myself, "Maybe I'll already be pregnant in August." It's November, and I still haven't had a single attempt to implant an embryo. The doctor decided to use the so-called long simulation protocol, which takes many weeks, then there are genetic tests on the embryos and waiting for the results, then we did another stimulation and an LP - each time we had to wait again for the period, or the beginning of the cycle. That's how three months passed.
A week before the transfer, in which the embryo was to be transferred into my body, the doctor saw bumps on the uterus during the ultrasound. The transfer was immediately canceled, despite the fact that I had been preparing for it for weeks, taking medication and everything was subordinated to this moment. In the final straight, I learned that the procedure would be not in a week, but in two months at the earliest. I, in the meantime, will have a hysteroscopy, during which the polyps will be removed (if these are the irregularities visible on ultrasound, because this is also not certain). A whole month of preparation in vain. I've gone backwards again, and the process extends by at least two months. And how to plan when I will get pregnant?
I don't know. I just don't know.
So a couple in IVF cannot answer such a question. Instead, she can recall all the moments when it didn't work out. If it is after a failed implantation or miscarriage, the question itself can bring great pain.
3. Why did you take the shortcut?
Daily injections, a series of drugs, procedures under anesthesia and hundreds of tests are certainly not a "shortcut." "The shortcut" is sooner trouble-free fertilization through intercourse. Many people assume that IVF takes a while and you are immediately pregnant. And it's months, sometimes years. It doesn't always work out. It rarely succeeds after a few weeks - much less right away.
4. Are you already pregnant?
This question is always uncomfortable - regardless of whether the couple is trying to get pregnant with IVF or the standard way. If the person wants to share this with you, he or she will certainly do so. If not, such a question will only embarrass her, after which she will most likely lie (especially if they haven't yet agreed with their partner to announce it). It's the couple's decision when to announce the pregnancy, not yours.
5. So you are infertile?
People undergoing IVF often face infertility, i.e. the inability to get pregnant. Infertility is 30-40 percent due to the female factor, 30-40 percent due to the male factor, and the rest cannot be determined. There are many couples in which both people are diagnosed with infertility.
Infertility is not infertility. Infertility means the permanent inability to conceive, such as through lack of sperm, eggs or a uterus. It cannot be fixed or reversed. Infertility is curable - despite infertility, you can conceive a child from your own sperm and eggs.
People with infertility can also be in the IVF process - adopt an embryo, use an egg cell or sperm from another person, if they do not produce eggs or sperm, but have a uterus. Then they can be pregnant - the child genetically will not be theirs, but biologically as much as possible.
However, most couples undergoing IVF are infertile, and the children born are their genetic children.
6. Why did you wait so long to decide to get pregnant?
People who approach IVF are often in their 30s, sometimes in their 40s. This does not mean that they have just started trying for a child. They may have been trying for several or more years. Maybe the doctors implemented other solutions - treatments, medications, insemination - before they allowed the couple to undergo IVF.
Pregnancy in one's thirties is nothing strange - our mothers and great-grandmothers also had children at this age. The average age of first pregnancy in Poland is 27, in the European Union - 29. In Spain and Italy it's over 30 (and the fertility rate there is still higher than in our country). This is relatively late - and yet hundreds of thousands of women succeed. Others do not succeed either in their early teens or later.
With endometriosis, which I myself suffer from, even teenagers can be infertile - it's a chronic, incurable disease, infertility can be one of its symptoms.
Often, diseases worsen with age, including those that cause infertility - but after all, it's not the fault of the patients, especially if they haven't had a good diagnosis and proper treatment for years. Doctors are responsible for that.
Placing the blame and responsibility for the lack of pregnancy on those facing infertility is an easy way to exacerbate our harm. We often do this to ourselves - we continually reproach ourselves that we did something wrong. We ate gluten for breakfast, we stressed ourselves out, we skipped the gym once, a friend pissed us off - in our heads, anything can become the reason why the embryo didn't implant. Voices from outside only get us down. Instead of judging without knowledge and awareness - it is better to support and be beside.
7. Nature knows better, why are you combining?
No, nature does not always know better. If it did, babies would not be born with lethal defects, who are doomed to unimaginable suffering and a quick death. And IVF is still subject to the laws of nature - an embryo must develop, a blastocyst must form, then the embryo must nest in the uterus and develop into a fetus. Fertilization from in vitro will not happen if nature "knows better." - this process is subject to the laws of nature in a similar way to fertilization through intercourse.
8. Are you not afraid that the child will be insulted that it is from a test tube?
The child will only be insulted if people like you insult it. There is nothing offensive or demeaning about the very way it was created. It is the miracle of the creation of life and should be presented as such.
A child created through IVF is not "from a test tube." It is from the uterus, like any of us. In IVF, only fertilization took place in a laboratory. The alternative to it is fertilization through sexual intercourse and in the fallopian tubes.
Since the children created through in vitro are called "test-tube children," what do you call those created without the support of medicine? Children from sex? Children from inserting the penis into the vagina? Children from frictional movements involving genitalia?
In a "Catholic country" there could probably be further terms for this: children from extramarital intercourse, children from an illegitimate bed. The Church has been fond of this for centuries. You probably do not want your children to be referred to in this way. So why does the phrase "test-tube children" come so easily to some of you?
Adults can't handle taboo topics like sex or infertility. They should do their homework instead of burdening their children with the consequences of this fear and ignorance.
9. How do you feel about the fact that the child will not be your partner's?
This is another misinformation. In vitro is often seen as a woman-only decision. Sometimes people think it's a common way for a woman to "get pregnant on her own," without knowing the details of the sperm donor. They probably confuse in vitro with insemination (which, after all, can also be done using a partner's sperm).
The government's in vitro program is designed for couples facing infertility. Most people undergoing the procedure create embryos with their partners. Of course, there are times when the sperm is from someone else - when the partner does not produce his own. But this is neither the most common nor the most obvious way. Besides, the partner in this situation is a full-fledged father - because he raises the child and loves it.
The government's IVF program excludes independent women who want to have children. Another thing is that this should not be the case. But for the time being, funded IVF is certainly not for those who want to have a child without a partner.
Assuming that IVF is a decision of women only is, above all, unfair to men, who also participate in the process: they consent to the various stages, have tests done, their semen is used. They experience embryo formation and failure just as much as women do. They have the same desire to become parents.
10. How do you feel about the fact that in order for one child to be created, others must die?
The Roman Catholic Church, which explicitly calls IVF part of the "civilization of death," plays a huge role in driving this misinformation.
The process by which babies are born and new lives are created is described by the Church as "mortal." Denying believing couples the opportunity to create life by prohibiting them from using IVF arguably is very "pro-life."
Priests talk about the "death" of embryos or even children. No children die during IVF, embryos are not endangered. On the contrary, every embryo and later fetus is cared for and hankered after, because they are most precious to people who could not get pregnant for years. This makes the nonsense preached by the Church all the more painful for such couples.
Some embryos do not develop or do not implant - just as in the natural process. Then they are expelled - biology (or God, as priests see it) decides. For people undergoing IVF, this moment can be a trauma, like a miscarriage. But the Church doesn't give a damn and kills them, accusing them of "murder."
People with infertility care and fight for each embryo. Nature or God - do not. Neither does the Church, since it chooses to attack people undergoing IVF, demeaning and insulting them publicly for years. Stress can cause an embryo to fail to implant or miscarry. Apparently, the Church has no problem with exposing embryos or fetuses to death - nor with accusing others of doing so baselessly.
They are the civilization of death.
However, if a pregnancy through IVF manages to occur despite the priests' campaigning in Poland, embryos that are not used at this stage can be used by the couple in the future. Most couples plan to have two children. And if someone does not want another - the embryos are not destroyed anyway. They are donated to another couple - one that cannot produce their own. This is known as embryo adoption. It allows people who have no sperm and do not produce eggs to get pregnant. In Poland, it is illegal to destroy embryos.
Another myth reproduced by the Church is "selective abortion." It would occur when a multiple pregnancy occurs as a result of IVF and one fetus is "selected" at the expense of another. This is also not the case in Poland - abortion in such a situation is illegal.
No child dies as a result of IVF. This misinformation, however, is extremely incriminating - it makes people who often spend years trying to have children and want to give them the most beautiful life equal to murderers. Calling people who try to have children murderers is a defamation for which the Church and anyone accusing in this way should answer criminally. In a democratic country, innocent people cannot be slandered for crimes. May it end in prison sentences for the promoters of such a narrative. The Church's terrorizing of children and infertile couples dreaming of children must stop.
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Thanks to the Our Stork Association for the factual verification of the text..
