Sunday, December 7, 2008

IVF 13: Quantum of baby

As many of you know, the start of pregnancy is back-dated to the woman's last period, not the actual moment of conception.

Thus as I sit at home, with Dr Hyde's and my genetic material cavorting in someone else's incubator, I may or may not be pregnant, depending on the results of a test in two weeks.

It feels uncannily like a version of Schrodinger's cat, where a cat boxed with poison under control of a particle's behavior has to be considered both alive and dead until the particle's behavior is measured.

Of course, Schrodinger invented this scenario as a reductio ad absurdum of the quantum hypothesis (Copenhagen interpretation, if Wikipedia serves correctly) that a particle exists in all different states until it is measured.

This IVF cycle feels a bit like a reductio ad absurdum, too.

Tomorrow we transfer the blastocysts. We have planned all along to have two transferred, but I am suddenly getting cold feet about the risk of twins and wondering whether to have only one. Last minute decision making under the sway of hormones--not a great idea.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh! So excited for you! Best of luck with one or two whatever you decide!

Anonymous said...

What a tremendous amount of uncertainty to endure. You and Dr. Hyde have a beautiful determination to be parents. All of us are rooting for you.

Anonymous said...

We didn't have your wealth of fertile material :-) - only 2 blastocysts; thankfully they were both grade A+ [and they really were - better than textbook pictures. OK, now I'm boasting about pre-fetal material, back on track...]. Anyway, point of post: that if we had only implanted one and it *had* taken, MsAnon would have forever worried about the 'one that we didn't pick.' Having put both in, there's still a little of that, but it feels - to her - much more of a 'natural' decision that only one came out.

Granted, we would have greatly preferred twins to no baby, albeit both some distance behind (the actual outcome of) a singleton. Just some no-longer-hormonal post-birth perspectives :)

Julie R said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Julie R said...

I don't have any experience with IVF, but I do have a bit of experience with twins. Twins are a lot of work, but they are a lot of fun too. My twin daughters are now 3 and there is nothing better than watching them play and laugh together.

Good luck with everything!

Anonymous said...

Good luck Dr. Jeckyll. I'm enjoying seeing a scientist who doesn't mind admitting to being a woman, even when discussing the details of womanhood (i.e. our ability to bring children into this world).