Would you tell your IVF conceived child that the other embryos were discarded?

[Anonymous]

If you have a child that was conceived through IVF, have you or could you see yourself at some point (maybe late teens or later) see yourself sharing with them that the other embryos were discarded? I don't mean coming right out and saying it of course, but if you just happened to be discussing the topic of IVF, do you think you would reveal that information?

[Anonymous]

Do you mean when they are older?

I can't imagine that I'd chose to do IVF, and discard embryos if DH and I weren't both 100% prochoice, in which we'd be passing those values on to our child, and I'd hope he or she would be OK with that choice.

Beyond that, I can't imagine what else to say. Are you considering lying? So, your child grows up enough to be curious and asks and you lie? Tell them you tried them all? Or that only one embryo was made?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do you mean when they are older?

I can't imagine that I'd chose to do IVF, and discard embryos if DH and I weren't both 100% prochoice, in which we'd be passing those values on to our child, and I'd hope he or she would be OK with that choice.

Beyond that, I can't imagine what else to say. Are you considering lying? So, your child grows up enough to be curious and asks and you lie? Tell them you tried them all? Or that only one embryo was made?

Yes, older like mid teens or later. It's not something I would just bring up out of the blue. But I can easily see it coming up at some point when the child is older and knows enough about IVF to realize that it often results in remaining embryos. I can imagine them asking whatever happened to those remaining embryos.

[Anonymous]

I don't understand this question. Won't they eventually learn how the process works? But then again I am an atheist European so don't get the whole fuss Americans make around abortion etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do you mean when they are older?

I can't imagine that I'd chose to do IVF, and discard embryos if DH and I weren't both 100% prochoice, in which we'd be passing those values on to our child, and I'd hope he or she would be OK with that choice.

Beyond that, I can't imagine what else to say. Are you considering lying? So, your child grows up enough to be curious and asks and you lie? Tell them you tried them all? Or that only one embryo was made?

So then what would you do with the embryos if you’re done having children? Pay storage fees forever??

[Anonymous]

Why does it matter enough to tell them?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why does it matter enough to tell them?

This.

[Anonymous]

Huh? Would you tell them each time you took Plan B too?

[Anonymous]

If they ask, yes. We kept our embryos for 3 years, until a younger sibling turned 1 and we knew we were done.

We looked into embryo adoption, but didn’t feel like the law was flushed out well enough for us and we didn’t feel like it would be fair to have biological siblings out in the world that our kids didn’t know about and might meet through 23&Me or other DNA tests. We felt better eventually telling them about 7 destroyed embryos than having to tell them someday about 1 or more biological siblings.

[Anonymous]

If it comes up, of course. No secrets from my kids.

[Anonymous]

I would only tell them if they asked — and if we had already had a lot of open discussions. For me, an embryo is a Potential person, not a person yet, so I would want them to be at a point where they could understand the complexity of that viewpoint. If they didn’t bring it up rather insistently though, I would never bring it up for discussion. I would also ask why they were asking before responding to their questions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you mean when they are older?

I can't imagine that I'd chose to do IVF, and discard embryos if DH and I weren't both 100% prochoice, in which we'd be passing those values on to our child, and I'd hope he or she would be OK with that choice.

Beyond that, I can't imagine what else to say. Are you considering lying? So, your child grows up enough to be curious and asks and you lie? Tell them you tried them all? Or that only one embryo was made?

So then what would you do with the embryos if you’re done having children? Pay storage fees forever??

I'm the PP you're responding to. I'm prochoice. I would have no problem discarding embryos. I mean, maybe some problem just in that I had gone to a huge amount of work to create them, and it would be like discarding anything else that represented blood, sweat and tears. My writing above wasn't in the hypothetical because I wouldn't do it, it's just that I don't have any IVF kids to talk to about it.

But if I didn't feel that way, and I thought of embryos as babies, then I imagine that I wouldn't do IVF, or wouldn't do IVF in a way that carried a risk of creating embryos that I didn't use. I'd adopt someone else's embryos, or create one at a time (is that I thing, I've never looked into it), or I'd adopt a child (which I did, actually, but not because of my beliefs around abortion).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why does it matter enough to tell them?

Kids often ask all sorts of things that don't matter that much. But if we refuse to answer, then we're communicating to them that there's something to hide.

My kid asked me what color I was wearing when he was born. He asked me what his name would have been if he was a girl. He asked me to point out the part of my belly where he kicked me the hardest. None of these things "matter", but I still told him.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you mean when they are older?

I can't imagine that I'd chose to do IVF, and discard embryos if DH and I weren't both 100% prochoice, in which we'd be passing those values on to our child, and I'd hope he or she would be OK with that choice.

Beyond that, I can't imagine what else to say. Are you considering lying? So, your child grows up enough to be curious and asks and you lie? Tell them you tried them all? Or that only one embryo was made?

So then what would you do with the embryos if you’re done having children? Pay storage fees forever??

I'm the PP you're responding to. I'm prochoice. I would have no problem discarding embryos. I mean, maybe some problem just in that I had gone to a huge amount of work to create them, and it would be like discarding anything else that represented blood, sweat and tears. My writing above wasn't in the hypothetical because I wouldn't do it, it's just that I don't have any IVF kids to talk to about it.

But if I didn't feel that way, and I thought of embryos as babies, then I imagine that I wouldn't do IVF, or wouldn't do IVF in a way that carried a risk of creating embryos that I didn't use. I'd adopt someone else's embryos, or create one at a time (is that I thing, I've never looked into it), or I'd adopt a child (which I did, actually, but not because of my beliefs around abortion).

It is a thing...but an expensive thing.
We asked that only two he’d be fertilized and I think our doctor was baffled by that until we explained that we were comfortable with the possibility of twins but didn’t want to risk having to make uncomfortable moral decisions about discarding or paying for storage of embryos.

I have zero judgment toward others about what they decide to do. It’s a verrrry personal choice. That’s just what we were comfortable with.

[Anonymous]

Geez! What a ridiculous thing to worry about! Did you tell your kids how often your significant other killed possible children by wearing a condom? How many children weren’t born because you let an egg escape without becoming pregnant ( the rhythm method?) How backward step you ?