Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought that I would want to be surprised, but after finding out how many male and female embryos I had why would I leave that up to the lab to pick for me?
I decided immediately that I wanted to pick, DH took a bit of convincing. In the end, he agreed and we choose the gender rather than leave it up to the lab.

Do they specifically pick, toss a coin, follow some other protocol?

I can't speak for all clinics but at mine they number the normal embryos and then the embryologists just go down the list (i.e., first transfer you get normal embryo #1, second transfer you get normal embryo #2, etc.).

Anonymous wrote:OP we decided after ART that we didn't want to know the sex until baby was born. Everything about the fertility clinic was SO impersonal and standardized that we are happy for one thing that seems semi-natural. Not judging others' choices, but this is peaceful to us to not know.

We do want one of each gender so if we get to the 3rd baby and no boy or girl yet, we'd probably choose the sex if possible.

This is OP again. That's exactly how I feel! And, *if* I get lucky enough to have more than one (much less one), maybe I would change my tune on the 2nd, and pick a boy if the first were a girl, or vice versa. But I think for the first, it does seem the closest we can get to "semi-natural", as you perfectly put it.

OP we decided after ART that we didn't want to know the sex until baby was born. Everything about the fertility clinic was SO impersonal and standardized that we are happy for one thing that seems semi-natural. Not judging others' choices, but this is peaceful to us to not know.

We do want one of each gender so if we get to the 3rd baby and no boy or girl yet, we'd probably choose the sex if possible.

Anonymous wrote:I thought that I would want to be surprised, but after finding out how many male and female embryos I had why would I leave that up to the lab to pick for me?
I decided immediately that I wanted to pick, DH took a bit of convincing. In the end, he agreed and we choose the gender rather than leave it up to the lab.

Do they specifically pick, toss a coin, follow some other protocol?

I thought that I would want to be surprised, but after finding out how many male and female embryos I had why would I leave that up to the lab to pick for me?
I decided immediately that I wanted to pick, DH took a bit of convincing. In the end, he agreed and we choose the gender rather than leave it up to the lab.

We opted to find out following PGS testing (clinic at GW). Before finding out we decided that we would follow our doctor's advice as to which embryo to transfer, but if there was a choice, we would have chosen. Turns out all of our frozen embryos are girls, so we didn't have to make a choice.

I don't get the surprise issue. We were certainly surprised when we found out about our embryos. When we found out the sex of DC #1 at 13 weeks, we were certainly surprised then. We wouldn't have been any more surprised if we waited for the birth to find out!

We never knew. Our clinic will only tell you if you are testing for a sex-linked disease and can only use embryos of a certain gender.

OP here. Awesome- thank you!

PP again. To answer your questions, no you don't automatically know whether an embryo is male or female. Even if you have the testing, you can opt not to find out and, indeed, some clinics (e.g. SG) will not tell you male or female.

Here is the thread on this topic:
http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/536968.page

It was posted in Entertainment. I asked Jeff to move it, but he declined. A lot of the posters don't seem to understand IVF with chromosomal testing (PGD/PGS), which is one reason I thought it would be more suited to this forum.

Sorry if I missed another thread on this:

I agree with Chrissy Teigen that the entire IVF process is unnatural, so the public outrage to the revelation that she picked a girl embryo is a little strange.

But the "controversy" got me thinking- I'm just starting the process, and have thought how nice it would be to not know the gender, considering how clinical every other step of the process seems. Throw a little spontaneity into the mix. Is that possible? Or, once your embryos (hopefully) reach the normal blastocyst stage, is the gender of each embryo emblazoned all over paperwork and testing results, etc? Would doctors be willing to play along?