Onward and Technicalities

For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. - Psalm 139:13-16

Fair warning, this post has a lot more questions than answers. And a lot more technical details than the wise (read: fumbling) theology of some previous posts.

After gathering our information and choosing our doctor we were faced with more complicated decisions than we ever imagined. We are both very much "pro-life", in the fullest sense of the word. All life is precious and created by God. So life begins at the moment of conception, right? Easy. Or not. That's a question I came back to quite often, and still to this day can't fully answer to my satisfaction.

Because of the nature of our infertility, fertility drugs and IUI were not viable options for us. There are several different kinds of IVF: "Normal" IVF, ICSI, GIFT, ZIFT. Again, because of the nature of our infertility issues, ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection) made the most sense for us. Basically, that's when they "manually" fertilize each egg by injecting it with a single sperm. Which of course means it's more expensive. Perfect.

So when a man and a machine fertilize an egg, is that conception? Did they just create life (with or without God's say so)? Or is conception when the embryo implants? Or is it somewhere in between? I often wonder if I already have children waiting for me in heaven. Barren on earth but fruitful in heaven? Guess I'll have to wait for answers to those questions.

This uncertainty made the decision-making much more difficult. Did you know "non-viable" embryos get tossed in the garbage? Or that only a certain percentage of embryos that are frozen survive the freezing and thawing process? And that they will usually only try transferring one (or maybe two) at a time? So our problem became how to do this and still respect the sanctity of life.

We didn't want to "waste" any embryos just because some guy in a lab thought they weren't going to develop properly. And we didn't want to freeze them because that would be like saying it's ok if they don't survive. So we had a special meeting with our doctor and he agreed to the "demands" we came up with. One, freeze just my eggs instead of embryos (for future cycles if the fresh cycle was unsuccessful). Two, only create a max of two embryos at a time to give them a better chance of implantation. And three, that he would transfer them no matter what "grade" of viability they were.

With that hurdle taken care of, we chose our medications and specialty pharmacy and more medical stuff than I ever wanted to know about. At this point I was scared, of what it would be like, how I would feel, and what all it would do to my body. But we were blessed to have the money (from that rebate for the house be bought) and we were pretty well convinced that this was what God wanted us to do. So, onward we went.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. - Philippians 4:6-7