did you know
can you guess how big a zygote is? a human zygote?
the only reason i know is because i just spent a month at an infertility clinic. i was able to see the in vitro fertilization process. lots of comments on this later. you know i'm opinionated on this end of things.
the answer... not sure but definitely a fraction of the size of a grain of sand, but totally visible by the naked eye. like a speck of dust in a petri dish. one really big cell. eventually one heartbeat (unless it splits into twins). one beloved soul with the capacity to become a Saint someday. i guess you could technically say, "i knew you before you were placed in your mother's womb." isn't that weird?
the problem with in vitro isn't, per se, the life that you create, albeit, without the conjugal act, etc (at least for the average non-Catholic joe, that is).... it's the amount of embryos/babies/lives/souls lost in the process. for example, you stimulate a woman to ovulate 10 or 15 eggs, the more the merrier. then you fertilize them with a load of sperm. say only 9 fertilize... still, that's 9 lives. ok. then you implant 2 in mom because you should really try not to have too many babies at once since that can cause serious complications. that leaves 7. now what? okay, you freeze them. i can't stand the idea of frozen children already created, arrested in their developmental state, waiting to be born, loved, cuddled, fed... so say mom comes back afterward and wants another set of twins, so she turns to her 7 frozen embryos. 30-50% of them won't make the thaw cycle. i guess if a group of us got put in a meat locker for an indefinite amount of time, 30-50% of us wouldn't survive either. say that leaves only 3 behind. but twins are too much work, so she opts to only implant one. but she's too attached to the 2 frozen embryos to adopt them out. by the way, the staff affectionately calls them "kid pops".
when you walk into the office, it's magnificently decorated. you'd have to have a decent amount of money to even go there. so the baby boards aren't the typical corkboards with pin-up pictures of newborns. they are actually artistically framed displays of precious children taken by top of the line photographers. yet i look at these kids and wonder, for those who had in vitro, would they have consented to so many of their siblings dying or being frozen that they could be born to wear baby Gap?
the only reason i know is because i just spent a month at an infertility clinic. i was able to see the in vitro fertilization process. lots of comments on this later. you know i'm opinionated on this end of things.
the answer... not sure but definitely a fraction of the size of a grain of sand, but totally visible by the naked eye. like a speck of dust in a petri dish. one really big cell. eventually one heartbeat (unless it splits into twins). one beloved soul with the capacity to become a Saint someday. i guess you could technically say, "i knew you before you were placed in your mother's womb." isn't that weird?
the problem with in vitro isn't, per se, the life that you create, albeit, without the conjugal act, etc (at least for the average non-Catholic joe, that is).... it's the amount of embryos/babies/lives/souls lost in the process. for example, you stimulate a woman to ovulate 10 or 15 eggs, the more the merrier. then you fertilize them with a load of sperm. say only 9 fertilize... still, that's 9 lives. ok. then you implant 2 in mom because you should really try not to have too many babies at once since that can cause serious complications. that leaves 7. now what? okay, you freeze them. i can't stand the idea of frozen children already created, arrested in their developmental state, waiting to be born, loved, cuddled, fed... so say mom comes back afterward and wants another set of twins, so she turns to her 7 frozen embryos. 30-50% of them won't make the thaw cycle. i guess if a group of us got put in a meat locker for an indefinite amount of time, 30-50% of us wouldn't survive either. say that leaves only 3 behind. but twins are too much work, so she opts to only implant one. but she's too attached to the 2 frozen embryos to adopt them out. by the way, the staff affectionately calls them "kid pops".
when you walk into the office, it's magnificently decorated. you'd have to have a decent amount of money to even go there. so the baby boards aren't the typical corkboards with pin-up pictures of newborns. they are actually artistically framed displays of precious children taken by top of the line photographers. yet i look at these kids and wonder, for those who had in vitro, would they have consented to so many of their siblings dying or being frozen that they could be born to wear baby Gap?
posted by mad @ 12:14 AM
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