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Cooper81
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
How do you feel about the concept of sex selection at conception?
Personally I find it apalling, and not for any religious reason. To me it's more like messing with natural selection in the fertility environment, kind of like the strongest (genetically) and best sperm will make it there first (also taking into account the whole timing of sex and ovulation of course). Favoring one sex over the other leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Sure I'd love to have a daughter and a son (we are planning on just 2), just to have one of each, but if I have another boy I would be just as happy.
Re: How do you feel about the concept of sex selection at conception?
I agree that this idea rubs me the wrong way. Messing with the natural course of things doesn't seem right to me. However, I'm 100% FOR intervening with things like IVF, IUI, or other means of assisted reproductive technology. And that's also messing with the natural course of things. But I guess the difference to me is that things like the sex (or to go further, eye color, hair color, etc) are not important enough to control artificially.
I want a boy and a girl too, so I'd love it if our next child is a girl, but if the universe gives me 2 boys, I'm good with that too. I'll even take a 3rd - of either sex
BFP#1: 01/10, M/C 6w -- BFP#2: 06/10, M/C 5w -- BFP#3: 09/10, DS born June 1, 2011
BFP#4: 07/12, M/C 5w3d -- BFP#5: 12/12, EDD 08/18/13
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I'm with you and get a little skeeved out that people would even want to have control over the gender of their child. My brother and SIL had such a hard time conceiving to begin with, that once they did get pregnant, choosing the gender would have been furthest from their minds. They were just so happy that they were having a child to begin with. I have a few friends having trouble conceiving too...they have all fought so hard just to be able to try and have a child that I think gender is the last thing they would care about after all the tests and months and months of IF . Actually, after typing that, I find it kind of a slap in the face to infertile couples that people who have no problems getting pregnant could possibly choose. WTF?
I agree entirely with IVF, IUI. Also actually concieving and carrying a child to term is something that is very hard for people to do, so when I see people (hello SIL, which is where this post came from) talk about things like choosing sex, hair color, etc it makes me angry. Be thankful and hopeful that you can even have a baby, hope for a healthy baby and be happy with whatever the universe decides to gift you with.
I don't like it. It just feels.......off, to me. The only exception I can see is if there is a certain disease that is only with one sex (and I know there are a few and I can't think of them right now) and you are choosing the sex to avoid that disease, you know what I mean? But besides that extreme exception, no, I'm not a fan at all.
I'm mostly concerned about what sex selection will lead to--choosing eye and hair color, then intelligence and talents, etc.
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Not a fan either. I know someone who got pregnant and adamently wanted a girl. When she found out she was having a boy, you would've thought the world ended, it was disgusting. People wouldn't even believe how she was acting (this was her first child btw, not that is matters). She told her DH she would not have another unless she could be guaranteed it would be a girl and her DH agreed. So they are going to spend the 10k to do so.
We were pregnant at the same time. It made me furious because we had test results that came back during our pregnancy that said Faith might've had DS so for her to be complaining to me about this made me want to punch her.
I will be the dissenter here. While it's not for me, I think that if people are already going down the path of ART (like IUI & IVF) then you might as well spin the boys around in an attempt to get the sex you want- I have no proof, but I bet you anything Charlie Sheen did this w/ Brooke Mueller to get those twin boys.
I figure that a lot of people who are conceiving using ART are likely open to selective reduction/terminating "excess" embryos if too many implant, disposing of extra frozen embryos, etc., so I think that it's a very ethically gray area anyway.
As far as natural methods to try and change the odds (like timing, diet, positions, etc.) go for it, but I am far too lazy for that kind of $h!t. Some of you may recall that when DD was a baby my MIL tried to show me her 30+ yr old charts of when she conceived DH and SIL- and she proudly told me she got what she tried for each time. Ugh.
I remember this and wishing I was a fly on the wall.....and pretty thrilled that I never speak to my MIL ever.
Plenty of people resort to ART pretty quickly- I know someone who did IVF after just 6 months of trying (she lied to her doctor) and shocker she got pregnant naturally after having IVF babies.
And I also know someone who was devastated after going through IVF & getting pregnant w/ twins to find out that they were both boys- she had pretty much ranked what she wanted- one of each or 2 girls w/ 2 boys being what she wanted "least." Oh and she told me this when her boys were 4- so it's not something she forgot about when she got those babies in her arms.
That makes me really sad.
I agree with what everyone else said. Definitely not against IVF, IUI, etc. but gender selection makes me a little sick to my stomach...it's going too far, IMO.
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I feel a little differently about it. I don't know how it works, but if it's as easy as sorting the swimmers in advance, I would have an easier time tossing half of those than I would have tossing actual embryos. It's not something that I would do myself, but if a couple wanted a large family and happened to have 3 or 4 sons and really wanted a daughter, I think that I would understand that.
One side of me doesn't think that it's right because you're messing with nature, but the other part of me understands some instances why people might want to do it. Like Becky said, I definitely understand wanting to avoid genetic diseases that are only inherited by one sex. As one poster said, I can understand wanting to have a certain sex, possibly in instances where you only responsibly want to have one child (maybe for financial reasons or because of the age of the mother, she only wants to have one child, or whatever reason) or only want to add one more to a large family that already has several of one sex. I can also see why people want to leave this up to nature, but given that I support a lot of medical advances, I can see both sides of this issues.
For those who feel ART is just fine but gender selection makes you squicky--why draw the line there? I mean, many of you have said that someone who wants to be a parent should just be happy with any baby but what if someone desperately wants a girl as much as they desperately want a baby? Why say that it's fine to force biology for one desire but not for the other?
I'm not trying to argue, I have no experience in TTC or getting my hopes up about babies at all so I'm honestly curious about the opinions of women who have thought about all this.
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I get this on an emotional level, but from an ethical position I personally can't rationalize how spinning sperm really any "worse" than going through IVF and ending up with 14 fertilized embryos, implanting or trying to implant 5 at most and then throwing the other 9 in the garbage. A higher value was already placed on some of those embryos.
I am looking at it from an ethical/medical viewpoint- if someone wants to spin sperm pre-fertilization to boost their odds to get one sex or the other and they are using ART anyway, then go for it.
I do have a problem with using abortion for sex-selection (which is of course much cheaper than doing the whole centrifuge & IVF) but I also find people terminating pregnancies because of DS, etc. repugnant.
BFP#1: 01/10, M/C 6w -- BFP#2: 06/10, M/C 5w -- BFP#3: 09/10, DS born June 1, 2011
BFP#4: 07/12, M/C 5w3d -- BFP#5: 12/12, EDD 08/18/13
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Right, understand, my initial question was how you personally feel about it. I'm not trying to get into an ethical/legal point of view, because that is an entirely other post, and if I were to look at it ethically/medically I would have to agree with you even though I still don't like it.
Specifically my SIL made a Dr's appointment yesterday to specifically ask if there was anything they could do to increase their chances of having a girl, since she has a boy from a previous relationship. It just really bothered me because of what I described above. I also did a HUGE eye roll (and totally judge, but for so many other reasons as well) because she was asking about things like eating raw meat/spicy food. I know the whole charting and the theory that sperm carrying the male chromosome may swim faster, so if you time sex right before ovulation you increase your chances of getting a girl. It's the value of having one over the other (even in her case where she has a boy already) it just sits wrong with me/bothers me.
Well, personally I am tremendous weirdo who doesn't even find out the sex of my babies until they were born- and that is partially out of laziness, so the effort required to do something that only might help it go one way or the other is completely out of the question for me.
That is one thin line between IVF and gender selection. I mean, for IVF, it's the best sperm that are set aside, the best egg that's chosen to be fertilized. So when a couple goes the extra step and chooses the sex of that sperm, from where I stand it's really not that big of a jump.
Ditto... I couldn't have said it better myself. You can judge all you want but I would also have done it if Shady Grove would allow it (they are against it but there are plenty of clinics that do it..... look at Charlie Sheen and The Beckhans). Also, my child would already be labeled as a "designer" child since I had to go the donor egg route. I got to choose a woman that fit certain characteristics that my husband and I wanted. Yes, I did get to choose her eye color and hair color...
DE IVF #1= 04/11 - BFP