Many groups offering embryo donation – including NEDC – require prospective parents to undergo a home study conducted by an accredited adoption agency.
Thanks for watching! Be sure to come by next week as the Embryo Connection Series continues with “Legal Perspectives on Embryo Donation!”
Prior to an actual embryo transfer, candidates for embryo adoption undergo a mock cycle. In this video, couples who have gone through the process – including NEDC With Child Blog’s Cathy and Scott LaSorsa- discuss their experience and what future patients can expect.
We encourage you to share this with those you feel may be looking for this type of information, as well as a link to our website www.embryodonation.org for more information about embryo donation and embryo adoption. The Embryo Connection Blog’s Video Series continues with “Planning for a Home Study,” and “Legal Perspectives on Embryo Adoption.”
Patients prepare for their embryo transfer with hormone therapy, just as they did for their mock cycle. In this video, featuring the NEDC With Child Blog’s Cathy LaSorsa, couples who have gone through the process discuss their experience.
As always, please share your thoughts and pass this along to your friends, colleagues, or family members who may benefit from this knowledge. Also, keep an eye open on the Embryo Connection Blog for updates in the video series, including “Planning for a Mock Cycle,” “Planning for a Home Study,” and “Legal Perspectives on Embryo Adoption.”
The NEDC’s New Media Team has been working hard on producing a series of videos to educate and raise the public’s awareness of embryo donation and embryo adoption. Today, we’d like to present our video “Introduction to Embryo Donation.” NEDC experts, including Dr. Jeffrey Keenan and Embryologist Carol Sommerfelt along with other experts and professionals explain the concept of Embryo Donation and couples who have taken advantage of the process – including the NEDC Blog’s Marti Bailey and the NEDC With Child Blog’s Cathy LaSorsa – explain why it was the best choice for them.
Please leave comments and share with friends, relatives or professionals in the field, and check us out for updates in the video series, including Planning for a Mock Cycle, Planning for a Home Study, Legal Perspectives on Embryo Donation, and Planning for an Embryo Transfer!
The cost of infertility treatment is a barrier for many couples. We’re happy to pass along this grant resource for our friends residing in North Carolina: Pay It Forward Fertility accepts applications for grants (which may be awarded in the form of services or medication) quarterly. Notice that there are a few weeks remaining before the February deadline.
Please share. We’ve also added the link to our list of favorites, for future reference.
For the sake of our many new readers, I’m re-posting this introduction to Hannah Dowling, student at Elon University, in North Carolina.
~
Hello,
My name is Hannah Dowling. I am a Women/Gender Studies major at Elon University in NC and am pursuing research on women’s experiences with embryo adoption, particularly within their larger experiences with infertility. My research is interview based, and I would really like for my work to speak to the issues and experiences that actual women who have been or are currently involved with embryo adoption–both as donors and as adoptive mothers– find to be most important and significant. I am looking for women who would be interested in speaking with me about their embryo-adoption experiences (either as donors or adoptive mothers). I have already spoken with many women in various stages of involvement with the embryo-adoption process (i.e. those who are still waiting to be matched with an adopting or placing family, those who are currently pregnant with embryo-adopted children, those who were involved with embryo adoption many years ago, etc.), but I would like to include every woman who has the desire to participate in this research effort.
Participation in this research is entirely voluntary, and you will always have the option to not answer any questions with which you feel uncomfortable or would otherwise prefer to leave unanswered. You will have the option to complete interviews by phone or through email and can spend as little or as much time as you would like on the completion of interviews.
If you think that you might be interested in speaking with me about your experience or if you have any questions before you decide to participate, please do not hesitate to contact me at hdowling@elon.edu. Additionally, I would be more than happy to speak with you over the phone.
I look forward to speaking with you,
Hannah Dowling
If you have participated in embryo donation or adoption, or if you’ve simply looked into it, you’ve probably asked at least one question to which the answer was, “We don’t know yet.” The body of legitimate research is growing, but there will never be too much.
Hannah Dowling, a student at Elon University in North Carolina, has chosen embryo adoption as the subject of her undergraduate research project, and has the support of her faculty there. We at NEDC are happy to pass along an invitation for you to participate in her project. Be aware that your participation is entirely voluntary, that it will not affect your care in any way, and that your interaction with Hannah will be entirely external to NEDC and any of its programs.
Feel free to read Hannah’s appeal here. And if you are so moved, reach her via the email provided for additional information and perhaps next steps.
Chris Barrett
NEDC New Media Coordinator
with relevance to embryo donation and adoption
October 1, 2010
1) Two blogs by Dr. Connie Shapiro, professor of family studies at the University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign are well worth reading. I had the privilege of meeting Dr. Shapiro on a recent visit to the University of Illinois.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/when-youre-not-expecting/201009/infertility-and-embryo-donation
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/when-youre-not-expecting/201009/infertility-and-recipients-embryo-donation
All in all I think Dr. Shapiro has done a good and balanced job in bringing attention to embryo donation and adoption and will in all probability be read by a number of people that may not read about the subject from other sources.
2) Here are two literature articles from Fertility and Sterility that I found well worth reading. The first is a Danish cohort study looking at large numbers of sibling pairs, focusing especially on pairs where one child was conceived by IVF/ICSI or FET and the other spontaneously. We have often stated that the prevailing wisdom in the field holds the somewhat poorer neonatal outcomes for IVF (compared to spontaneous conception) as likely to be due to the couple’s underlying infertility condition rather than to anything associated with IVF treatment per se. This article challenges this assumption to a degree. The idea was to compare births while holding maternal characteristics constant. The statistics may be a bit deep but you can get the idea by reading the abstract, introduction, and discussion sections. Fortunately, the infants born after frozen embryo transfer fared a lot better in this study than those born after fresh IVF (in fact, about as well as spontaneously conceived infants). This is good news for us in embryo adoption, since EA is, by definition a frozen embryo transfer enterprise.
The second article is one of several published in the last few years showing that states with mandated IVF coverage turn up with fewer average embryos per transfer, somewhat lower live-birth delivery rates, but also lower multiple birth rates. Although the relationship to EA is indirect, this is an important issue to follow because it will ultimately impact the national “embryo census” that we are trying to reduce – possibly in either direction.
3) Linked here is a brief update on the embryonic stem cell research court case. Its outcome could substantially affect couples’ choices for their embryos, a major (if not the major) factor limiting the scope of the EA enterprise generally. It is encouraging that the federal government has required agencies embarking on ESC to tell the couples about the option of embryo adoption.
Yesterday we hosted our 3rd and final live webcast entitled Embryo Donation Basics for Professionals hosted by NEDC PR and Marketing Manager Debby Frederes. In true NEDC Webcast Series fashion, the presentation was informative and entertaining, educating those in attendance on the basics of embryo donation as it pertains to professionals in the field. If you missed the webcast, again, no big deal, as it has officially been uploaded to the archives page for those who unfortunately missed the presentation. We’re loookin’ out for ya!
Click the image below to be taken directly to the presentation:
Thanks again for your support and for watching!
Here’s our most recent video. Dr. Keenan, Carol Sommerfelt and others explain the concept of Embryo Adoption. And couples who have adopted embryos explain why it was the best choice for them. Please share.
INTRODUCTION TO EMBRYO DONATION AND ADOPTION from Embryo Donation on Vimeo.
 |
 |
 |
 |
The purpose of this page is to share information on the subjects of embryo adoption and embryo donation. This venue is made possible by support from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under grant #1EAAPA091015-01-00. The statements expressed herein are those of the National Embryo Donation Center and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department. We ask that participants stay on topic, and exercise mutual respect for their fellow participants. All posts and comments are subject to approval by NEDC New Media staff.
