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Multiple Pregnancy
Too Much of a Good Thing?
By Michele St. Martin
After the fetal reduction, Whittley carried two babies, both girls, nearly to term, delivering at 38 weeks. Both babies weighed more than 5 pounds at birth. Whittley had a difficult pregnancy, including bed rest and high blood pressure.
"It was the hardest decision we've ever made, but we'd make the decision to reduce if we had it to do over," Whittley says. "I am convinced that had we not reduced, I could very well have lost them all."
Some doctors fear that if ART-induced multiple pregnancy rates continue to rise, insurance health plans will refuse to cover pregnancies conceived in procedures not covered by insurance (IVF is often not covered by health insurance). Others point to countries like Great Britain, which introduced guidelines in the late 1990s forcing women younger than 40 who are undergoing IVF to have no more than two embryos transferred.
In the IVF that led to Whittley's pregnancy, six embryos were placed into her uterus. "In previous IVFs, I'd had three embryos transferred each time, and they didn't take. This time, I had six embryos, and none of them really looked good. No one knows why it worked this time and not the other two."
"I think we were more willing to gamble because, frankly, we were desperate," says Whittley. She now wishes that her clinic had followed the SART IVF guidelines (under SART guidelines, a maximum of three embryos would have been transferred). "I think the doctors who cared for us should have had policies in place to prevent high-order multiple pregnancies," she says. "I don't think we should have ever had to make that decision."
* Names changed to protect privacy.
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