WTF Stories of the Week

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Drince88

With the Mom of octuplets - they said that she received counseling about the risks of carrying 7 babies to term, and she refused selective abortion. I respect her right to make THAT decision, but WHAT fertility clinic implanted that many embryos in the FIRST place without going through extensive counseling. I was under the impression that they would implant fewer embryos if you weren't willing to go through selective abortion.

It's unlikely that they were implanted.

The deal with these super-multi-pregnancies is that it's generally people who do step 1 of fertility (hormone injections to promote follicle growth), but, for whatever reason, fail to stick to the rest of the procedure. It's impossible to predict exactly how much follicle growth will result from an injection, so you're supposed to get blood work done to monitor it. If too many follicles are detected, a responsible doctor will either tell them to hold off on trying to conceive until the next cycle when they can reduce the hormone dose, or they'll harvest eggs for invetro. But if they just got the hormone injection and went ahead and conceived without checking, or ignoring the advice to wait until next cycle....... (I read a good article yesterday).