We already work with a very good Christian embryo-adoption agency locally, but it’s encouraging to hear that others are being established.

Despite Nicole Kidman’s assertion that swimming in the waterfalls near Kununurra, Australia helped her fertility, I would not recommend making the trip all the way out there. Now if you happened to already live nearby, then it might be worth a try.

A 61-year old Japanese woman gave birth with the help of her daughter’s donated eggs. She carried the pregnancy for her daughter, who has no uterus.

Because of the patients I get from Japan who come all the way over here to California to do donor egg cycles, I was under the assumption that donor eggs and surrogacy were illegal in Japan. I stand corrected. They are not illegal, but just not conventionally performed by the medical community except by defiant doctors like the one mentioned in this article.

It’s probably no coincidence that the UK’s policy removing anonymity from the sperm donation process has resulted in a shortage of donated sperm. It’s also probably no coincidence that we RE’s in the US are seeing more and more patients who come to us from Europe for their treatment.

In the US, anonymity is safe for now, but it’s something that could change.

"Make sure that’s the right sperm!" is a comment we often hear when doing an IUI. While there is a tone of joking when it’s said, the anxiety behind that statement it is very real. The odds of a mix-up ever happening are extremely extremely extremely low. I used to think it was about the same as the odds of a baby mix-up at the hospital, but now I think the occurrence of a sperm/embryos mix-up is much less likely than that of a baby mix-up at the hospital. Baby mix-ups might even happen more than we realize. I would bet that there is at least one child out there in the world who was switched at birth, who grew up and lived an entire life without anybody knowing — not the child, not his parents, not the doctors, nobody.

The reason a sperm or embryo mix-up is even lower odds is because of the low volume. For example, we rarely do more than 4 IUI’s in one day, so we can pretty much focus individually on each prep. We have systems in place to double check and triple check. In addition, I have a small staff whom I trust 100% to be diligent and ultra-meticulous in avoiding any remote possibility of mix-up or contamination. Such is not true of a large government hospital. There, it is possible for thousands of babies to be born each year under disorganized hectic conditions, with a nursing staff of hundreds so that you will have the extremes of some excellent workers and some careless or clueless ones. If you have the bad luck of an overworked less-than-compulsive nurse being on shift at the time your baby delivery, you are at higher risk of something bad happening.

A recent story in the news tells of a woman in Spain (let’s call her Juana) who went shopping. By the way, their real names were never publicly revealed. The sales clerk, a stranger, ran up excitedly and tried to hug her, thinking it was her good friend. When  Juana rebuffed the hug attempt, the puzzled sales clerk called the friend (let’s call her Amalia) who confirmed that she had not been in the store that day. A few days later, when Juana came back to the store, the sales clerk struck up a conversation and arranged a meeting between Juana and Amalia. When they saw each other, it was a cinematic moment of two long-lost identical twins being reunited. Juana apparently became very shaken and went into a depression. Years later, she eventually agreed to a DNA test, which confirmed they were twins. Piecing together the story, it appears that Amalia and Juana’s mother had given birth to her at a hospital in a part of Spain, known as the Canary Islands. Incidentally, if you are ever playing Trivial Pursuit and are asked what animal the Canary Islands are named after, the answer is not that obvious. They are named after dogs! Think canary as having the same root as the word canine.

Somehow, Juana was taken out of the bed next to Amalia and switched with another girl (let’s call her Maria). There is no evidence that this was intentional. In fact, similar stories like this have been reported, and often it’s when nurses are overworked, doing double shifts. So Maria and Amalia grew up as happy loving sisters, while Juana grew up by herself, oblivious to the existence of Amalia until the fateful day in the clothing store. Juana’s attorney is suing the government of Spain for mucho dinero, of which, some of it will go to Juana herself.

The emotional damage has been done. Will taking money out of the public health funds and giving it to Juana and her lawyer make things better or make this less likely to happen in the future? I have an opinion. You are entitled to yours.

It just goes to show what we’ve all heard time and time again, "If you’ve seen Juana, you’ve seen Amalia".

There are good pregnancies and bad pregnancies. We all know what the most common form of bad pregnancy is — miscarriage. However, there are pregnancies that are even worse than that — ectopic pregnancies. Ectopics are doubly sad because just as with miscarriages, you don’t end up with a baby. However, in addition to that, ectopics also put the mother’s life at risk. Most ectopics are in the Fallopian tube and can potentially grow so large as to rupture the tube, causing dangerous internal bleeding. 99.9% of ectopic pregnancies will either die on their own or be removed medically before they can develop. However, there is always that one in a million that grows to become a baby. Today, just such a case was reported in Australia

I try to visualize what would have happened had this occurred under my care. We would have detected a heartbeat in the ovary early on. Whenever, a heartbeat is detected in the tube or in the ovary, the risk of maternal death is so high, that instant intervention to remove the pregnancy is the clear choice. This woman was lucky that she survived. Furthermore, the baby was lucky that her mom didn’t have routine medical care initially, because then she would have surgery to remove the ectopic. So she actually wound up with a better outcome. Life is strange.

I bet if you ask most people if they believe everything the media tells them, they will answer NO. However, what they may not realize is that they still do believe a lot of stuff that is misleading or outright false. I confess I used to be pretty naive. There was a time in my youth when I sheepishly believed what the newspapers, magazines and TV news fed me regarding the world. But over time, I’ve realize the error of being too trusting of the media.

For example, when the headlines scream "Unemployment on the rise!", you read the fine print and see that it really rose just from October to November, which is something that it tends to do every winter, just based on seasonal changes. So things aren’t really bad at all.

Sometimes, the news will report something truthful, but report it with a misleading slant. For example a headline that reads "Millions wasted on building more prisons, despite lower crime rates ever" could just as easily read "Crime rates drop to lowest ever as more criminals are kept behind bars".

There is a tendency for everything to be presented in a negative viewpoint. When home prices dropped, the headline was, of course, "Homeowners suffer worst drop in house value ever". However back a few years ago, when home prices soared, the headline was "Shortage of affordable homes worse than ever".

By the way, just because the media distorts and lies is not necessarily a grave sin in itself, as long as we, the readers, take caution to assess things intelligently and critically and as long as we are diligent in reading from a variety of different sources and synthesizing our own views. The worst thing is when people mindlessly accept everything at face value. Of course, everything I write is slanted from my own viewpoint. So make sure you to pursue reading opposing viewpoints from mine before making up your own mind.

I came across an article today that provides abundant examples of how being critical in our thinking can help us from falling into the trap of becoming media lemmings.

Let’s start with the headline. The wording implies that prior to this news, women somehow were not given the "right" to have children without fathers. In the US, for example, single women and lesbian couples are free to pursue motherhood without fathers. The same is actually true of the UK from where this article hailed. The only difference is now the government will pay for it. It’s not a simple matter of gaining the right. There was always the right. The difference is that now, it can be demanded and have the NHS foot the bill.

This article mixes together some different topics besides the issue of fertility treatment without the need for fathers. It also talks about a ruling on abortion. In the splash photo, the caption mentions the 24-week abortion limit. In actually, it is showing a picture of an embryo that is less than 9 weeks. If a true 24-week pregnancy was pictured, you would be looking at something that appeared very much like a baby and not an embryonic organism. Very misleading.

Later in the article there is a quote that "children without fathers were more likely to have problems at school and with drink and drugs". This is misleading in the context of this particular article, because while it’s true that traditionally, fatherless children do have more behavioral issues, these are children of divorce or of involuntarily unwed moms. There is data that intelligent, financially stable, productive single mothers by choice have children who are as stable or more so than average.

I personally disagree with this policy change of not taking into account the need for a stable family unit when deciding on who gets free fertility care in the UK. Whereas in the US, there is a safety system in place that only financially stable women could afford to be single mothers by choice, thereby predicting a more stable future for the child. Now, in the UK, they will have the socialist policy that any single woman, even those on the dole, can have kids. The government will pay for the treatment. And the government will pay for the child’s upbringing. One can only guess what that will do to family and society there. Is it a surprise that marriage rates in the UK are the way they are?

According to this article, the five mistakes women make are:

1. Women don’t question doctors
I think a lot of this is determined by the doctor. Some doctors get angry when they are questioned. I take the opposite approach. My staff and I welcome questions, actively solicit patients for any questions and do not take offense if a patient wishes to go elsewhere for a second opinion. More than half the time, after seeking a second opinion, patients come back to us, confident and ready to proceed with our treatment plan.
2. Women tend to over-research
Ha ha. In the field of infertility, I would definitely agree with this. Despite a lot of misinformation out there on the net, I’m open-minded enough to look at the printouts patients bring me, knowing that it’s always possible that they could teach me something.
3. Women don’t recognize gender bias
This is not an issue with RE’s and OB’s because ALL our patients are women. This applies to women who go to doctors who see both men and women and who might not recognize the potential medical differences between their male and female patients.
4. Women interpret their own symptoms
Very true, but so do men. I know I do.
5. The mother of all mistakes: Women don’t trust their intuition
I disagree. Some do. Some don’t.

Baltimore Orioles third-baseman Melvin Mora is father to well-behaved quintuplets.

An Arkansas woman is now pregnant with child #18.