The vast majority of pregnancies conceived using IVF are just as healthy as those from natural conception. Furthermore, the children coming from IVF pregnancies are just as smart and physically fit as their naturally-conceived counterparts.
IVF children are as normal as other children as far as their physical attributes and mental capacity are concerned. And also they are as naturally born as other children. Since IVF is a rarefied subject, many people are still skeptical about it and harbor a lot of preconceived notions.
If you have opted for an IVF pregnancy, you will need proper prenatal care in the first trimester. However, once the pregnancy has been established and you are weaned off the hormone treatments, there is no major difference between IVF pregnancy and normal pregnancy.
The chance of congenital abnormalities in children born after IVF or ICSI is about a third higher than for children conceived naturally, which means a chance of around 4 per 100 births instead of 3 per 100 births.
A new study has found that teenagers born from IVF procedures tend to be better behaved but more likely to suffer clinical depression, in one of the first studies of its kind.
A recent Danish study* examining the academic performance in children conceived by assisted reproductive techniques (ART) confirmed that ART-born children are just as intelligent as their spontaneously conceived peers – not super kids, but certainly not worse off.
Mothers of children born using assisted reproduction (IVF and DI) reported lower levels of anxiety and parenting stress than mothers who conceived their children naturally (Golombok et al., 1995, 1996). No significant differences in parenting stress or anxiety were found in fathers (Golombok et al., 1996).
Because a donor egg won't share any of its genes with its intended mother, there's a chance the baby will not resemble its mother. However, if her partner's sperm was used, the baby may look like its father because they share the same genetics.
IVF is associated with an increased health risk for the offspring in the form of malformations, functional disorders, and a poorer peripartum outcome. This is possibly caused by parental factors, but also by factors related to the IVF technology used.
Doctors don't know exactly why IVF babies are born earlier than other babies. More research is being done, but so far the studies suggest that a combination of the IVF procedure itself and factors in the mom may cause the increased risk of delivering early.
It is very common for women and people who became pregnant through IVF to be advised to have an induction of labour, usually around 38-40 weeks, if spontaneous labour hasn't started already.
Babies born by in vitro fertilization — when a woman's egg is fertilized outside of her body and then implanted back into her uterus — skew more heavily male than babies conceived naturally. A study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences sheds light on why that happens.
For couples considering IVF with donor eggs, epigenetics suggests that the baby may or may not look like a combination of the egg donor and the egg recipient's partner; there are too many variations and unknowns to make that prediction.
The possibility of the IVF resembling its mother is thin as a donor egg doesn't share any of its genes with its intended mother. Nonetheless, if the sperm used is that of her partner, the baby may look like its father. This is simply because both share the same genetics.
No significant association was found between IVF and ASDs (adjusted odds ratio (OR): 0.9, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.7–1.3) or its subtypes childhood autism (OR: 0.8, 95% CI: 0.4–1.5), Asperger's syndrome (OR: 0.9, 95% CI: 0.5–1.6) or other pervasive developmental disorder (OR: 1.0, 95% CI: 0.6–1.6).
For specific procedures, IVF with ICSI for paternal infertility was associated with a small increase in the RR for autistic disorder and mental retardation compared with IVF without ICSI. The prevalence of these disorders was low, and the increase in absolute risk associated with IVF was small.
IVF can be mentally, physically and emotionally painful. In many cases, one of the biggest complaints is bloating and pain some women face during the ovarian stimulation process, where hormones are injected to produce multiple eggs for retrieval.
A test-tube baby is a baby who is conceived by IVF. IVF is in vitro fertilization where the word “vitro” means glass. In such cases, the fertilization is done outside the uterus in a glass vessel by combining a female egg with a sperm.
Artificially-conceived babies have superior vocabulary skills at the ages of three and five, a study found. Yet, this wanes by the time the child reaches the age of 11, the research adds. Toddlers born via IVF are more mentally development than naturally-conceived youngsters, new research reveals, reports Daily Mail.
IVF also seems to be linked to a higher likelihood of pre-term delivery and pre-eclampsia, both of which are associated with cardiovascular disease later in life. Udell dug into these links with a study that appeared in the Canadian Medical Association Journal in 2017.
Most of the children born from IVF appear healthy. We have noticed a small increase in health problems, such as low birth weight, premature birth and congenital birth defects. Some of these long-term health effects may be encoded by epigenetics.
Among these, ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome and multiple pregnancies are the most serious. Other potential risks include increased levels of anxiety and depression, ovarian torsion, ectopic pregnancy, pre-eclampsia, placenta praevia, placental separation and increased risk of cesarean section.
They deduce that more male than female embryos may be transferred because males have higher morphology scales and are thus deemed more suited for success.
In addition, research shows that the process of assisted reproduction itself is also associated with increased anxiety, depression and stress and can impact on your self-esteem and confidence. This may particularly be your experience after a failed IVF cycle – making the IVF journey a difficult time.