(RNS) — When Ericka Andersen and her husband started infertility treatment a decade ago, they were hoping for one successful pregnancy.Andersen, a freelance writer and author who lives in Indianapolis, had married in her early 30s and wanted to start a family right away. When she did not become pregnant after a couple of years, she sought out help and eventually decided to try in vitro fertilization — better known as IVF — in which a woman’s fertilized eggs grow into embryos in a lab and then are transferred to her uterus.
“You are thinking, I just want one of these to work,” she said. “Because for some people it never works.”
After two successful transfers, the couple now has two children, born three years apart. They also have 9 embryos in storage. Andersen said she’s left dealing with “the devastation of extra embryos.”
“I have deep anguish at the lives that I haven’t carried, the siblings of my children that they will never meet,” she wrote in a recent essay about her experience. “The babies I will never know, whose eyes I will not see, whose bodies I will not rock, whose smiles I will not recognize.”
The fate of frozen embryos has been the subject of fierce debate in recent weeks after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that embryos are “extra-uterine ch …
Article Attribution | Read More at Article Source
“You are thinking, I just want one of these to work,” she said. “Because for some people it never works.”
After two successful transfers, the couple now has two children, born three years apart. They also have 9 embryos in storage. Andersen said she’s left dealing with “the devastation of extra embryos.”
“I have deep anguish at the lives that I haven’t carried, the siblings of my children that they will never meet,” she wrote in a recent essay about her experience. “The babies I will never know, whose eyes I will not see, whose bodies I will not rock, whose smiles I will not recognize.”
The fate of frozen embryos has been the subject of fierce debate in recent weeks after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that embryos are “extra-uterine ch …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]