Small Frys

Where were we? It looks like I reported on the embryo transfer, but then never came back and reported on the remaining embryos:

In addition to these two, five more embryos are still alive and developing. Those five are a little farther behind, and not yet to the blastocyst stage at all. They will either make it to that stage in the next day or they never will. Those that do will go into cryo-preservation (ie, a freezer) for later transfer. We'll hear about how many (if any) go into cryo tomorrow morning.

That post is from last Monday, June 21st. We did indeed hear about the disposition of these embryos on Tuesday the 22nd. As it turns out, not only did all five of the lagging-behind embryos make it to the blastocyst stage and go into cryo, but a sixth (and presumed-lost) embryo did as well!

So, as of today we have eight embryos in play: the two that were transferred to Sarah last Monday, and six in FAM's cryo facility.

If you're interested in cost (which I've tried to keep up with through most of these posts), the freezing and first two years of storage cost $785. In purely financial terms, this is a clear winner, because the cost of transferring a couple of frozen embryos is far less than the cost of producing new embryos and transferring those. In subsequent cycles, we'll now be able to skip the entire stimulation/retrieval/fertilization/culture phases and go straight to transfer. There's a huge reduction in cost associated with this change in the procedure: fewer drugs, fewer lab tests, fewer trips to the clinic, fewer needle sticks, etc. If we assume that six frozen embryos are enough to do two future transfers (more on this in a moment), this is a net savings of several thousands of dollars.

Of course the money is a relatively minor concern. (That's not to say trivial; we are talking about a lot of money, from a civil-servant perspective.) The much bigger issue is: these are live humans, and our children to boot. I know, I know: I said there would be no politics. But we see it this way:

1. our actions brought about new, live organisms of H. sapiens;
2. moral humility requires that all live organisms of H. sapiens be treated as persons with an inalienable right to life; so,
3. we have a moral duty to give each of these organisms the best chance at life that we are able to provide.

I know that point 2 is controversial in public discourse, but there's nothing controversial about it in our house. So let's just leave it at that.

In any event, what this adds up to is: all six of the currently-frozen embryos will at some point be transferred to Sarah and get a fair shot at life. So there's the potential that we could have as many as 8 children. This is unlikely, and it's not what we set out to get (we maintain that we'd be happy with one healthy baby) but if that's in the Divine Plan we're happy to work with it.