It's research o'clock! All thanks to the Inleo daily prompt. Today, we were asked to pick anything and do research on it—something that might be more interesting than we think—and I wore my thinking map 💬🤔💬, meditating on a topic to research upon seeing today's prompt.
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Most people are familiar with the word IVF (in vitro fertilization), including me, but what many people aren't familiar with about this word is the procedure involved in carrying it out. Many times, I have gotten lost in thought about how the medical practitioners carry out this exercise. As a woman, I looked inside myself and kept imagining how this ivf was being done. I couldn't stop admiring science, but I had the opportunity to research it today. I read many materials and asked some doctors I knew about how this procedure was done so I can get more insight. You see, I am bringing to you my genuine understanding of this subject, which is simpler than you can imagine, so come along and let's learn together.
To start with, IVF is a medical procedure that leads to pregnancy. There are various reasons why people go for IVF,which include infertility problems among couples, gender selection, when a couple wants to prevent passing on genetic problems to a child, etc. Some people have negative views about IVF. For example, one of my uncles, who has been looking for a child since 8 years ago, believes that children born through IVF treatment later turn out to be imbecile. This is really the wrong assumption, and I confirmed it after my research today.
Procedures for In Vitro Fertilization
When someone wants to do IVF, the first step should be for you to be incharge of the reproductive cycle right because it's all a game of trial and error unless you're the one incharge, hehe. This is done by drugs which takes 7days to 3weeks to complete. Don't ask me about the drug, your doctor will do so if you have interest on doing this, hehe
After gaining control, you ought to prepare the ovary to produce ova/eggs you will use for the IVF and in this process, you keep monitoring with Transvaginal Ultrasound Scan because you can't see the ovaries with your naked eyes or can you? Lol . This lasts for 8-12days
When the ova is ready, next should be for you to trigger it so it gets released, isn't it? For you to do this, you have to give a medication and what this does is that it mimicks the LH surge in the reproductive cycle and boom! The ova is released.
What should be the next? I think you can take a guess already.Yes! It's you recovering the egg that was released, right? The suction pump and OCR needle under Transvaginal Ultrasound Scan are used to extract the eggs and it takes about 34 to 36 hours after the ovaries have been triggered.
Then, it's time for you to fertilise the just released ova/egg. You then get the washed sperm and inseminate it in a dish through a process called intracytoplasmic sperm injection guided with an ultrasound.
Once this is done, it's not transferred immediately back to the womb but rather it's monitored for atleast 3-5days in a cell culture incubator. When you've confirmed it's viability, you can now place it inside the woman's womb
You know progesterone is necessary to maintain pregnancy so the woman is placed on progesterone until the placenta is ready to take over.
This is a vital point because once there's no progesterone or not enough progesterone, spontaneous abortion occurs!.
So this is basically how IVF is being done. Once the ova or egg is transferred to the woman's womb, the woman will then carry the baby like a normal pregnancy for nine months. Just that a woman who conceived through IVF will require antenatal care frequent visits to the hospital,as it requires continuous monitoring until nine months unlike that of a normal pregnancy which may require minimal visit if there's no complications.
This is all I learned from the research prompt, and if you want to explore more about this topic, you can visit these links 1 & 2
Finally, have you heard about the monthly prompt from the Inleo community?
Kindly check out the announcement post here to get involved. This is my entry to the #MarchInleo monthly topic Day 25
Thank you for reading.❤❤