Insurance coverage is broader now. When we did it, we used cash pay but nowadays where we live in California there is SB 729 that means most big insurance plans will cover IVF. Personally, I think that's a bit regressive. Older, more established couples like us are benefiting from what will be primarily paid into by younger couples. But if pre-implantation testing becomes widespread (a good thing, imho) then IVF will be more widespread so perhaps this is a forward-looking policy. Still, expanding the child tax credit and raising it to 10x what it is would be good, I think.
We ended up doing 1 extraction and 2 implantations. If I remember it was roughly ($15k-20k) then (~$5k * 2). This was about 8-9 years ago. We had no fertility issues and had other reasons for doing IVF, but if you do have fertility issues it's more risk the extraction and embryo process will fail and need repeating.
* feeling bloated during the process (and feeling heavy in the stomach)
* the discomfort of the actual injections (there are two daily)
* pain post-retrieval that was reminiscent of cramps
One of our other friends who had many eggs retrieved on a single cycle actually got ovarian torsion which is supposed to be outrageously painful.
Never hear about it again after the initial news.
Perhaps it is because you're not a specialist—all of these things are still worked on.
or a fix,
for this?
(The fix is to consume less popular science types of sources.)
If my son has his first kid the same age I had him, I'll be in my 80s when that kid is starting little league (or that age). Then, factor in the fact that I don't know of any men in my family that have lived past 80 and it gets really grim. They were all heavy smokers and drinkers I remind myself with fingers crossed.
The most sad part for me, is I realized by delaying parenthood - I was just being selfish - and the net result is I minimized "shared time on earth" with the person I love the most. It's easy to say I wouldn't have been a good parent or I wanted X job/income first, but it's all just excuses and selfishness.
Exactly. My advice to anyone is not wait. If we hadn't, we would have found out sonner that we needed to go through that process. It's not a "wake up and schedule an appointment tomorrow" kind of thing, it's a treatment of last resort and you can burn years trying, going through evaluations and alternatives first.
> Biological optimal vs societal optimal
to
> Biological optimal vs personal optimal
"Figuring out your life" was not a thing when humans evolved.
I don't understand why governments of countries with increasing average age and low birth rate don't pay for this for all women. This is one the best pro-family policies that can be implemented.
Do we really want to rely on IVF to solve the fact that people can only afford a family home once they're well into their 40s? It's insanity if you ask me.
Hard disagree on that. You're coming from an angle of someone who wanted to have kids and do it in a mathematically optimal way. A lot of people see egg freezing as a way to delay having kids until they're older, which can become a disincentive to raising families when they're young and healthy enough to do it. If you want a pro-family policy, you should be spending the money on people with families and their children, not on a tool that is used to delay having children in common use.
Another huge problem with this proposal is that freezing eggs is only a small part of the cost. The cost of IVF later in life could push into six figures depending on how many rounds are needed. If we're talking about pro-family policies that can cost upwards of $50,000 to $100,000 per family, there are many more effective places to spend that like on childcare options.
Governments need to make COL more affordable, birth rate will go up naturally
Waiting to get a good balance of "your eggs are still reasonably healthy" and "if you haven't had kids until now, it'll probably be a while still" is probably the reason behind the current advice.
On the other hand, it may be a useful tool to resist expectations to become a mother until it becomes socially acceptable to say no. So it might be important even if the eggs are not getting used.
Even a few paragraphs down they say this:
> The optimal age to freeze eggs varies depending on the source and metric, but almost all sources agree it's sometime between 19 and 26.
So there's some heavy bias inserted already into the title.
The next chart shows a peak around 19, but if you read the fine print it's not a chart about eggs at all. The subtitle says it shows:
> probability of getting pregnant for couples not on birth control
Not the quality of eggs frozen. They're saying one thing in text and showing a chart of something else. If you can't imagine why couples in their early 20s might have a higher rate of pregnancy than couples in their 50s then you might want to think a little deeper about the factors that go into that.
The writeup then goes into polygenic embryo screening, which then jumps to improving IQ by selecting embryos, which gets to their final argument which is that it's easier to collect more eggs when younger. So freezing a lot of eggs when you're younger allows for more boosting of your child's IQ through genetic screening based on a company called Herasight's data. Herasight has been widely criticized for overselling their abilities. Also, why do so many rationalist writeups end up back at a conversation about genetics and IQ?
Employers should be required to pay for future maternity disability care insurance e.g. 2-3 years of maternal leave fully paid, elective at any time, even after they separate from the company. Also disability compensation in the event that fertility fails. e.g. $500k / missed fertility .
That would reveal the true success rate of the procedure. If employers or fertility clinics believed it to be a deterministic process, the risks for the employer would be low.
I feel I am a better parent now that I am sharing custody of my kids and can better balance personal life and hobbies and parenthood.
A cheaper option would be to find someone looking for kids with no romance and agree on having shared parenthood.
Teever•2h ago
I've always found this one fascinating. Somehow human cells age and humans get old and die but humans can somehow make an entirely new creature through reproduction where that is reset and most of the defects from the parent are gone as well.
How does that work and what stumbling blocks exist that prevent us from replicating it?
pbh101•2h ago
strangefellow•2h ago
xyzzy_plugh•2h ago
shrubble•1h ago
The large award for a medical malpractice trial was the reason for doctors pushing for a C-section if there’s any possibility of a complication. (Sometimes called defensive medicine.)
Most people point to the cases won by John Edwards, trial lawyer and vice presidential candidate as the reason for the great increase in C-sections. His case wins include 30 trials at which he won at least $1 million dollars each.
DanielHB•1h ago
rendall•1h ago
Waterluvian•2h ago
Like I’m not sure it actually works this way but I can intuit why it’s possible, given the new life doesn’t have to be an exact replication.
micromacrofoot•2h ago
It's almost like trying to change the flavor of a cake after it's been baked. Significantly easier to swap out ingredients before it's that far in the process.
colechristensen•2h ago
gopalv•1h ago
I think the eggs aren't dividing as you age (you are born with them, so to speak) and the sperm is held "outside" the body.
One is in original packaging and the other is produced in a "cooler" enviroment by the billions with a heavy QA failure of 99.9999%.