Is there an IVF-adoption trade-off?

Robert Edwards has won the Nobel Prize for in vitro fertilization. Not shocking, though there have been some interesting ripples across the media outlets, including topics touching on Octomom, old ladies carrying babies, and what to do with abandoned, frozen embryos.

I have extremely mixed feelings about IVF. On one hand, the scientific advance, the knowledge gained about how human life is and can be actually generated in different ways, should be celebrated. But I wonder if we’ve taken IVF too far as a society, and I’m not talking about super duper far-out things like Octomom, though of course that’s a whole discussion on the ethical dilemma on its own. No – instead, I wonder what happened to adoption rates after 1978.

I haven’t been able to find a really good study on it that is ready for general public consumption and discourse. Perhaps you do see adoption rates overall have declined since 1978, but you would need to control for other factors, like a more involved process developing over time that results in higher scrutiny, more restrictions, higher requirements of potential adoptive parents compared to before 1978. Not sure that’s the case, I’m just throwing it out there.

There is an academic report out of Duke University: http://www.duke.edu/~dlc28/papers/Adoption.pdf . A couple of things about this report:

1. Bravo to the authors to tackling this issue from a data-driven perspective. What data do we actually have on the issue, and how do we appropriately analyze it?
2. It’s a draft… meaning it hasn’t gone through the rigors of peer review, and so its assumptions may not have been adequately challenged by devil’s advocates.
3. It reeks of academia – the tone and writing style, mostly, but also: it’s heavily steeped in statistical analysis. Not that that’s bad – there’s just very little translation to a lay audience, as I’m sure Average Joe was not the intended target for the report.
4. When looking solely at insurance mandates of IVF and adoption rates, the study found “no consistent pattern of decreases in adoption rates is found, and in a few instances, positive effects of insurance mandates are found on adoption rates.”
5. The study postulates that adoption isn’t wholly “replaced” by IVF, but rather put off in time, since many IVFs have limitations or restrictions, and not all are successful, leading those parents to adoption eventually.

There is a ton of information in that report, and I won’t delve into a more formal critique here, since they do list some limitations of their study. But the IVF-adoption trade-off continues to be an intriguing question to me.

Patience: an unattainable virtue?

I didn’t get pregnant after Month 1.  No big deal, right?

I was talking to the hubby over dinner the other night, and suggested we start researching adoption, since there’s a lot to learn, and the process itself would probably take some time.  I didn’t mean to imply we act on anything, just that we start the due diligence, figuring out what’s it’s all about.

Hubby’s reaction was reasonable, I suppose.  He said we should give the pregnancy attempt some more time, at least until the end of the year, before tackling more research, more information, more procedural and emotional considerations and changes to process.  I kind of laugh to myself when I think about it.  Not pregnant?  OK, adoption!  Go!

Of course he’s right.  Give it more than a few weeks, eh?  It’s just that I’ve been waiting years to get to this point, of starting a family, and now that the time has come, I have zero patience.  Zip, zilch.

I suppose Nature will just teach me that hard lesson in patience, eh?  That, and a husband who can’t process more that one heavy, life-altering thing at a time.

I shouldn’t just ASSUME I’ll get pregnant when I want

OK, I know for a fact that I’m not the first person (or the last) to be grappling with What-Ifs as it relates to a possible pregnancy.

As a result of my often A-type personality (I’m a frequent A’er, not a constant A’er), I feel like I need to do some serious scenario planning and decide now about what I might do given the What Ifs. Here’s one: What if I don’t get pregnant?

I like to think this one is easy-speasy. Why, we’ll just adopt sooner! I like that we have been talking about adoption as a way to build our family from the very beginning. Frankly, I want it to be a way to refocus energy away from the potential disappointment and inadequacy that not being able to get pregnant might present.

Adoption isn’t just a field trip, though. Supporting kids who might grapple with depression and abandonment and trust issues… not to mention any physical issues stemming from unknown or uncertain biology or bad history… but I love the idea of taking a kid in and sharing the insane amount of love and support my and my husband’s families would give.

But how long do we wait? If I’m not pregnant by the time I’m 36, I don’t think I want to wait anymore. Besides, adoption can take a while.

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Point is, there are WAY too many unknowns, and my A-type personality is very uncomfortable with that. Hm, I feel as though there’s a lesson in there someplace for someone wanting to have kids…