Podcast: Taming the Twin Trend from Infertility

This podcast is a couple years old (March 30, 2011), but I came across it on the RESOLVE website and decided to check it out.

I agree that people are seeing twins more and more, not even just in the popular media with celebrities, but with everyday people all around them.  Of course people struggling with infertility would feel comfortable hedging their bets with the risk of twins, rather than just transferring one embryo, which would be safer for the fetus(es) and eventual babies/children. It's funny that I say "hedgin their bets," because this whole world of infertility and ART treatments really is a gamble, and many couples get burned in the game, losing money, time, sanity, and the only sure-thing in all this is stress and heartache.  For the lucky ones, the risk is worth it and they graduate out of infertility into parenthood, one way or another.

The part that scares me is that whenever people try to warn me about how difficult multiples will be, I always just think about the cost of having two the same age at the same time, and the stress and time management of it all.  I always brush it off and declare that if anyone can handle multiples, its me!  I am the oldest of 4 kids and grew up living in an in-home daycare.  "I got this," I think to myself when imagining myself surrounded by my adorable like-dressed twins or even triplets.  I've never considered the health risks, medical costs, and heartbreak that could be associated with it.  This podcast kind of opened my eyes and makes me think twice about it.  And I think that's a good thing.  As we get closer to IVF ourselves, I think going in knowing how we feel about every possible outcome is the most important thing.

At this point, if B & I do IVF in 2014, would I choose to do a single or a double/triple embryo transfer?  Unless my health insurance covered it, or if they offered the "two-fer" deal as mentioned in the podcast, I'd probably still elect to transfer as many as my RE will allow, just to increase my odds of a successful live birth.  I'd rather have multiple children who need extra care & attention for a while, then no children ever.  It is so maddening that money and state-mandates on health insurance coverage can play such an important, and honestly, such a deciding factor in all this.  I truly envy those who are able to naturally and easily conceive.  They may think they do, but most of them have no idea what a gift life truly is, and I mean that in the most fundamental meaning of the word.