Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know Fromhouse Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W.
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant y. Yeah, and this is Stuff you should Know.
Speaker 1: It sounded uh sardonic, yery yi j a silent yawking, yawking.
Speaker 1: I'd never get sick of that movie. No, it's a
Speaker 1: good one. I haven't seen the second one. Don't really
Speaker 1: intend to, but I'm afraid too, Yeah, because it might
Speaker 1: tarnish my love of that character, because I've heard it's
Speaker 1: not very funny to just keep it keep it with
Speaker 1: the first one. I'm totally gonna watch him just waiting
Speaker 1: for cable. Oh yeah, yeah, Yeah, TBS knows what they're
Speaker 1: doing with movies that were for the big screen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: size them down, best start ever. Uh. So you're doing good.
Speaker 1: I'm great, Okay, good. Um. So we're talking today about
Speaker 1: IVF in vitro fertilization. Um. And I have to say, Chuckers,
Speaker 1: I don't really have by the way, I don't have
Speaker 1: an intro for this one to um, although I do
Speaker 1: have a bit of one. All right, let's see uh
Speaker 1: in nineteen In two thousand thirteen, a lady named Louise
Speaker 1: Brown celebrated her thirty fifth birthday, and with her birthday
Speaker 1: coming and going, she announced that she was pregnant with
Speaker 1: her second child. This is like mind blowing crazy stuff
Speaker 1: all over the place, because Louise Brown was the first
Speaker 1: human being ever conceived using in vitro fertilization. Yes, they
Speaker 1: called them test two babies back then. Remember that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: totally test two babies. You don't call it that anymore. No,
Speaker 1: we've gotten a little more scientific as a society since
Speaker 1: the seventies. Plus. I don't think they use test tubes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if they ever did, I think maybe petri dishes, culture dishes,
Speaker 1: not test twos, but you know culture dish baby. It's right,
Speaker 1: that's weird. Test tube baby. It kind of rolls off
Speaker 1: the tongue. It's got the two T sounds, which makes
Speaker 1: it a little funny ish and um intriguing. But that's
Speaker 1: what she was. She was the first test two baby.
Speaker 1: It was eight in England, um, and she was born July.
Speaker 1: I think, um, like just a few days later. I
Speaker 1: think the second IVF baby was born in India very
Speaker 1: in very short order. For two. I'm sure that their
Speaker 1: doctors were like come on, will you give birth already?
Speaker 1: I want to be the first. Nobody remembers number two.
Speaker 1: And then the following year, in nineteen seventy nine, the
Speaker 1: first American IVF baby was born. And that's the history
Speaker 1: of IVF, like it just goes back that far. Since then,
Speaker 1: I think thirty five more than thirty five million uh
Speaker 1: IVF babies have been born a couple of hundred thousand
Speaker 1: each year in the US alone. Now, yeah, it was
Speaker 1: like in the sixties eighties. Now it's up to like
Speaker 1: a hundred and something a hundred and change. I think
Speaker 1: I got over two thousands. Do you really really? I
Speaker 1: saw two thousand twelve or maybe maybe two d thousand worldwide.
Speaker 1: All right, let's just settle on that. I'll bite on
Speaker 1: that one. Um. But yeah, that's a lot of babies
Speaker 1: that are born through IVF, and it's a it's crazy
Speaker 1: how the thing that struck me and finally we're getting
Speaker 1: to the end of the intro um is that what
Speaker 1: I v F is? It seems so like whiz bang
Speaker 1: crazy futuristic. No, it's it's figuring out. We figured out
Speaker 1: how a woman becomes pregnant and figured out the ways
Speaker 1: that we could possibly best help that process along, and
Speaker 1: that's what it is. Yeah, it's really there's no like
Speaker 1: crazy new technology. They don't like like buzz her with
Speaker 1: like a prey goo laser, nothing like that. It's strictly
Speaker 1: like catheters and timing and you know, hormones. It's crazy
Speaker 1: how simple it is. But it's also equally crazy that
Speaker 1: you know, it's as successful as it is considering what
Speaker 1: it What in vitro fertilization consists of. Yes, I guess
Speaker 1: we can go ahead and talk about success rates. Um.
Speaker 1: In the US, women under the age of thirty five
Speaker 1: have a thirty to thirty five chance of conceiving with
Speaker 1: ibf uh. It drops between thirty five and forty six
Speaker 1: over forty uh. And that is percentages of live birth cycle,
Speaker 1: which is yeah, per cycle. So like, if you go
Speaker 1: through a cycle of in vitro fertilization, do you have
Speaker 1: the percentage chance typically which is pretty much in lock
Speaker 1: step with natural birth rates according to age it Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean it definitely decreases with age, but I'm not
Speaker 1: saying it's like one for one. Sure, yeah, yeah, it's totally,
Speaker 1: But I'm saying that I think the depreciation of possibility.
Speaker 1: It goes down with age naturally as well with IVF two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and live birth is the key here because many times, uh,
Speaker 1: there will be conception and there will be a pregnancy,
Speaker 1: but any number of things can go wrong from there.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah sure. Chemical pregnancies UM topic pregnant topic pregnancies. Apparently,
Speaker 1: some Chinese researcher did a survey of a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: plus live IVF births UM and found that there's a correlation.
Speaker 1: You were three times likelier to have a major birth
Speaker 1: effect if you were born via in vitro fertilization than natural.
Speaker 1: And he just found a correlation. Um, not a cause,
Speaker 1: but just the numbers. For some reason spit that out. Yeah. Well, now,
Speaker 1: one of the new things you can do is up
Speaker 1: for at a certain point in the process pg D,
Speaker 1: which is preimplantation genetic diagnosis. And this is a test
Speaker 1: that will cost you several thousand dollars and it basically UM.
Speaker 1: It allows you to root out certain mono genetic disorders,
Speaker 1: like you can get PGD testing and find out if
Speaker 1: the baby might have like sickle cell or Huntington's disease
Speaker 1: or cystic like process or downs and then UM you
Speaker 1: can make a decision at that point whether or not
Speaker 1: you want to continue with the process. Yeah. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a real um concern that there won't be like
Speaker 1: that down syndrome, people will be extinct eventually because the
Speaker 1: should have gotten so accurate. Yeah, yeah, I don't think
Speaker 1: that will happen. Well. And there's also ethical concerns with
Speaker 1: pg D about you know, do you do selective termination
Speaker 1: if you can find out it's a boy and you
Speaker 1: wanted a girl, right or um, oh I didn't want
Speaker 1: to give brown eyes? Yeah, and I know there's a
Speaker 1: lot of ethical yeah, associated with it, and um, it's
Speaker 1: even more basic than that for a lot of people
Speaker 1: to like, if you have a fertilized egg, um, or
Speaker 1: even just an egg with the potential human life. To
Speaker 1: some people, that destroying just the egg that that was
Speaker 1: never fertilized is like a moral problem. Yeah. Or let's
Speaker 1: say you, um, you have a chance of multiples, um
Speaker 1: twins or triplets or quads or more. If you're a
Speaker 1: certain age, that is not good and can be dangerous
Speaker 1: for you as the mother and for the kids too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So at that point, um, you might have to go
Speaker 1: through what they call selective reduction, which is choosing which
Speaker 1: ones to go with. Well, there's a lot of pitfalls
Speaker 1: this UM, but there's a lot of people who are
Speaker 1: helped by it as well, and at the very least
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people who seek the help from it.
Speaker 1: I saw something like in this article, which I think
Speaker 1: was written in two thousands, six or seven. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a little dated. A head they said six point one
Speaker 1: million Americans are faced with infertility, which UM, infertility is
Speaker 1: not like Bam, you're infertile. UM, here's what's wrong with you?
Speaker 1: Infertility be right, but it isn't always technically infertility. The
Speaker 1: definition of infertility is that you have um gotten it
Speaker 1: on for a year unprotected and no baby has been
Speaker 1: produced for six months. If you're overt okay, But it
Speaker 1: depends on the doctor. Like this article talked a lot
Speaker 1: about well, if you've gone this far and you've done
Speaker 1: these procedures, then they'll move you to this. A lot
Speaker 1: of the places are fertility clinics or baby factories and
Speaker 1: they'll you can go right to I D F if
Speaker 1: you want to. And if they say that they believe
Speaker 1: in so's. There's not like any hard and fast law,
Speaker 1: you know, that's the impression. After doing this for how
Speaker 1: many years have we been doing this? Now, after eighty
Speaker 1: years of doing this, um, I've learned that how stuff
Speaker 1: works article is like it deals in ideals. It's not
Speaker 1: necessarily like this is how it works in the real world.
Speaker 1: It's like, this is how it works according to the law.
Speaker 1: That's true. We do our best. Yeah. Um. So, apparently
Speaker 1: about seven point three million people UM are faced with
Speaker 1: infertility and they turned to IVF, and IVF is far
Speaker 1: and away the most popular form of what's called UH
Speaker 1: assisted reproductive technology, which, as we said, sounds whiz bang
Speaker 1: and futuristic but not necessarily Yeah, about fifty of a
Speaker 1: r t UM methods are what they call low tech,
Speaker 1: which is maybe we'll put you on some hormones. UM
Speaker 1: Antibiotics apparently are a huge one, a huge stream of
Speaker 1: for infertility. Yeah. They supposedly especial the unexplained infertility, which
Speaker 1: affects something between ten to thirty percent of infertility cases
Speaker 1: are just unexplained. Yeah, they're like, we there's nothing structurally
Speaker 1: wrong with you. Your husband's sperm is fine, Like there's
Speaker 1: we can't figure it out. Well, it made getting pregnant
Speaker 1: isn't the easiest thing in the world. It seems that
Speaker 1: way in the movies, but there's an explanation for things
Speaker 1: even when it's unexplained. And because there's this whole unexplained thing, Chuck,
Speaker 1: there's like a lot of suggestions as to you know,
Speaker 1: what's at play. Yeah, but you're but you're right. It
Speaker 1: is kind of like, uh, man, woman, get together, have child,
Speaker 1: have another child, maybe a third, and like it's no problem,
Speaker 1: like you said in the movies. Well, and especially when
Speaker 1: age comes and you know people are getting married later.
Speaker 1: Uh you see, you know, sixteen year will have a
Speaker 1: baby without any problem. It's sort of weird that we've
Speaker 1: we haven't. Things haven't changed reproductively speaking, Like people are
Speaker 1: getting married in their mid thirties, but you can still
Speaker 1: get pregnant when you're thirteen, And it's like has shifted.
Speaker 1: It's not going to shift within cultural attitudes. No, no,
Speaker 1: which is why we're like, okay, well we need technology then, right, right,
Speaker 1: But like I said, um, about half the assisted reproductive
Speaker 1: technology methods are low tech. Um. Klomad is a big
Speaker 1: probably the most popular fertility drug treatment. They've been using
Speaker 1: that since like the fifties, right, I don't know, they
Speaker 1: say fifties, either fifty years or since the fifties. Okay,
Speaker 1: Well it's um. It's an oral medication and it is
Speaker 1: used to induce ovulation. And actually now men have seen
Speaker 1: have used it to increase testosterone. Um. Because an NFL player,
Speaker 1: UH just got banned for using chlomad for fertility because
Speaker 1: they said it increases testosterone. So it was a performance
Speaker 1: enhancing drug, but he was using it to try to
Speaker 1: get pregnant. That's what he said. Oh that's not fair. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Robert mathis of the cult, so he was suspended. Um.
Speaker 1: But clomad, with clumbad alone, you have a chance of
Speaker 1: ovulation success and about a forty three percent chance of
Speaker 1: pregnancy success over three cycles. And after three cycles that
Speaker 1: number goes way down. UM. So really like it becomes
Speaker 1: less and less probable that you'll conceive after three cycles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the same through three and then and that's just
Speaker 1: with clomad and then after that, like what people generally
Speaker 1: do is try a few different methods before moving on
Speaker 1: to IVF, like just the hormones UM or what we'll
Speaker 1: talk about now, which is uh artificial insemination, right, and
Speaker 1: that that like um assisted reproductive technology with an umbrella term.
Speaker 1: Artificial insemination is an umbrella term underneath the a R
Speaker 1: t umbrella. Yeah, and it's basically any time you UM
Speaker 1: try to give the sperm a leg up and its
Speaker 1: race toward the egg. Yeah, it's it's inseminated artificially. In
Speaker 1: other words, it doesn't come directly from the penis into
Speaker 1: the vagina. Right. Why does that make you laugh? Still?
Speaker 1: I just felt like I was in the kindergarten class
Speaker 1: cop class. Uh. Yeah, it's when the sperm is harvested
Speaker 1: in UM for for AI for artificial insemination, it's either
Speaker 1: implanted intravaginal or interest cervical, so in the vagina, in
Speaker 1: the cervics. But if you're going to put it directly
Speaker 1: into this service or the uterus, you have to wash them. Yes,
Speaker 1: you can't put untreated sperm into directly into the uterus
Speaker 1: because you will have what's called uteral contraction, which apparently
Speaker 1: is extraordinarily unpleasant. The sperm have some sort of um
Speaker 1: it's called proto glandings. I think, yeah, that you have
Speaker 1: to wash off the sperm. If you don't, protoglandings will
Speaker 1: set off these contractions in the uterus exactly. So they
Speaker 1: and I said, you or I think of at uterine
Speaker 1: contractions they're pretty violent. Uh so yeah, you wash the
Speaker 1: sperm and um. Not only does it remove those protoglass stuns,
Speaker 1: it's um. It eliminates any substance it will get in
Speaker 1: the way and make the sperm motile. And motile means
Speaker 1: they're good swimmers. Right. That's another another advantage of using
Speaker 1: artificial inscimination, as you can say, uh, you're cut, you're cut.
Speaker 1: You made the team, you're cut, and then you put
Speaker 1: together this dream team of the best firm and you say,
Speaker 1: go get them. That's right. Right, So, if you're using
Speaker 1: the wash sperm and directly onto the uterus, that's called
Speaker 1: I ui intra uterine instimonation. Uh. And that's just kind
Speaker 1: of one step further than Hey, I like artificial instimination.
Speaker 1: You can do the turkey based method at home, sure
Speaker 1: if you want. So that's a thing. Yeah, like they
Speaker 1: have kids. That's a form of artificial insemination. That is
Speaker 1: artificial instamonation. Yeah, but I mean it's an umbrella term.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, if you're using the key based her at home,
Speaker 1: you're you're artificially inseminating but you're probably inserting it directly
Speaker 1: into the vagina. Maybe the cervix. You're not doing intra
Speaker 1: uterine you can't do unless you have a sperm washer, right,
Speaker 1: which you can afford one of those these days, you know,
Speaker 1: that's right. So if those fail, then your next step
Speaker 1: is is probably gonna be IBF. But like I said,
Speaker 1: depending on your age and what's going on, you can
Speaker 1: skip straight to ib F if your doctor says that's okay,
Speaker 1: well we'll skip straight to IVF after a message break.
Speaker 1: How about that? All right, So let's talk about the
Speaker 1: IVF process. Huh yeah, again, pretty low tech, high tech stuff.
Speaker 1: It's neat. Yeah, it will cost you about twelve grand
Speaker 1: I saw. Yeah. I mean that's a I hate the
Speaker 1: ranges for these procedures because it really it depends on
Speaker 1: where you are and if you have insurance. I think
Speaker 1: fifteen states require insurance to cover it. Um. You know.
Speaker 1: Let me interject here. There's an argument that the lack
Speaker 1: of standards in pricing for medical procedures is the single
Speaker 1: problem for why the health care system in the US
Speaker 1: is broken. Yeah, that it's not necessarily insurance, that it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily chronic disease that it is. If you came
Speaker 1: up with standard pricing, yeah, you could solve quite a
Speaker 1: bit of the car mechanics. Yeah, that's supposed to be
Speaker 1: a standard. Yes, I always I never knew that with
Speaker 1: car mechanics. If you um, when they say how much
Speaker 1: time it takes, it's really not how they don't time
Speaker 1: how long it takes. There's a manual that says, you know,
Speaker 1: changing a carburetor is one point five hours. I didn't
Speaker 1: know that. Yeah, I just know that Mr Goodbrand's posts
Speaker 1: is on the board him like McDonald's what like oh
Speaker 1: a menu. Yeah. Anyway, I agree with you about the
Speaker 1: medical standards, and it makes a lot of sense. I mean,
Speaker 1: chronic disease is a huge problem, especially preventable chronic disease.
Speaker 1: But that's not the only issue here. It's the fact
Speaker 1: that you can be charged almost literally in arm and
Speaker 1: a leg depending on where you go. That's rights. It
Speaker 1: will cost you some money, but if you have good
Speaker 1: insurance then that will help out. Uh. So here are
Speaker 1: there are basically five steps. The first is ovarian stimulation. Um,
Speaker 1: this is when you're gonna be taking fertility drugs. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's could be a couple of weeks of that um.
Speaker 1: Some are oral. Sometimes you're gonna be given shots to
Speaker 1: your wife, or if the ladies on our own should
Speaker 1: be given shots to herself. Because the good thing about
Speaker 1: ib F is you don't need a live man necessarily. No,
Speaker 1: you just need the sperma. So a lot of the
Speaker 1: could come from anywhere. Yeah, single ladies are all the
Speaker 1: single ladies or ladies in the l g BT community.
Speaker 1: I always want to mix up those letters. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: like they doesn't need to be a man involved. No,
Speaker 1: I mean at some point, I guess if you could
Speaker 1: grow sperm in a lab from stem cells. Not directly
Speaker 1: technically you could do that, but no, it doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be involved in harvest sperm from a sperm bank,
Speaker 1: anonymous donor friend of a friend, transient who's just passing
Speaker 1: through town, whatever your standards are. You could conceivably get
Speaker 1: your hands on some sperm and then bam, you don't
Speaker 1: need a man. I was it from the besket I
Speaker 1: could get you some sperm by three pm. That is
Speaker 1: a great movie. Man. I saw that again for the
Speaker 1: first time in a while recently. Oh man, I think
Speaker 1: he's talking about a big toe. I can get you
Speaker 1: a big toe by three pm. Um. But yes, you
Speaker 1: will need sperm if you're the husband and it's uh,
Speaker 1: just your regular old husband and wife trying to conceive,
Speaker 1: or just a man and woman. Then the hus and
Speaker 1: will deposit that sperm and a little room designed to
Speaker 1: make that happen, and then they will take the sperm
Speaker 1: and wash it and hold it. Uh, and it's all
Speaker 1: timed out, you know appropriately. Of course they can't hold
Speaker 1: them to it forever. And so that's the ovarian stimulation.
Speaker 1: Like you're trying to get the eggs to come along,
Speaker 1: and not only are you trying to get that an
Speaker 1: egg to come along, you're trying to get several to
Speaker 1: come along. Yeah, that's the whole point is you want
Speaker 1: multiple eggs, right. So you know, a woman is born
Speaker 1: with all of the approximately four hundred thousand eggs she'll
Speaker 1: ever produce in her life. Um down right, during her
Speaker 1: menstrual cycle, one of those eggs enters a fallopian tube
Speaker 1: and um it becomes mature. Right. So what these hormones
Speaker 1: do is get a bunch of those eggs into their
Speaker 1: fallopian rappers and get them to mature over time. And
Speaker 1: the doctor um, I guess pays attention to how they're maturing,
Speaker 1: and when he decides these eggs are ready to get
Speaker 1: that's when you hit step two, which is the egg
Speaker 1: retrieval step. That's right, and that is not super complicated either.
Speaker 1: It's called the name sounds complicated, transvaginal ultrasound aspiration, but
Speaker 1: what it really is is a mild sedative and a
Speaker 1: suction device that sucks out the eggs and that's really
Speaker 1: all there is. Do it. It's pretty amazing. Um. If
Speaker 1: you cannot use the um TU a method, you will
Speaker 1: have to undergo a more involved procedure called laparoscopic surgery,
Speaker 1: which isn't super involved either. It is also a short process,
Speaker 1: but there's a small incision in the abdomen to locate
Speaker 1: your ovaries. Yeah, they put a little video camera in there.
Speaker 1: So um more involved obviously because it is a surgical procedure,
Speaker 1: but it's not like you're staying in the hospital for
Speaker 1: a week or even right. Yeah, it's just more involved
Speaker 1: because you have to use more anesthesia to which automatically
Speaker 1: increases risks exactly with the other one aspiration. Yeah, uh
Speaker 1: the uh, I guess you just need a mild seditive.
Speaker 1: It sets here. Yeah, it's like like twilight sleep alright.
Speaker 1: So step three, you've got your eggs. You've got your
Speaker 1: multiple eggs. They're all looking good. Then you yeah, because
Speaker 1: they go through and they look at them and ye
Speaker 1: and say this one looks good. This one looks good, man,
Speaker 1: not this one. Yeah, And I'm not sure when pg
Speaker 1: D can take place. I think after would think yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess it would have to be yeah, okay, that
Speaker 1: makes sense. Um. So then you've got your insemination. And
Speaker 1: like I said, you're you've got your sperm. However you
Speaker 1: got it. We ain't asking whatever it was a transient
Speaker 1: on the street, More power to you. Um. They examine
Speaker 1: the eggs and say these look robust and juicy and full,
Speaker 1: and these are the best ones. So we're going to
Speaker 1: use these. And that's when the sperm is at it
Speaker 1: and the best sperm um is picked and then it's
Speaker 1: in a culture and it's doing its thing right. And
Speaker 1: depending on the sperm um, they might injected directly into
Speaker 1: the egg, which is called um oh intra citoplasmic sperm injection.
Speaker 1: They could also just right, that's like the sperm doesn't
Speaker 1: have to go into the egg, it gets put into
Speaker 1: the egg um. But more traditional methods are just inserting
Speaker 1: it into the near the egg in the culture, right,
Speaker 1: and the culture can be artificial, but um it's also
Speaker 1: often made of the endometrium from the woman or um
Speaker 1: some in addition to possibly like her um uh cervical fluids.
Speaker 1: So like it's it's basically mimicking what will what would
Speaker 1: be going on in like the fallopian tube or something.
Speaker 1: That's all they're doing is taking the process that normally
Speaker 1: happens inside the woman's body and outside for a little while.
Speaker 1: And so you've got the egg and the sperm in
Speaker 1: the same culture and it's within possibly an hour, fertilization
Speaker 1: might have taken place. There's an open bar, everyone's getting
Speaker 1: to know each other, everyone's getting friendly. Little icebreaker happens,
Speaker 1: and like you said, it can be hours when they
Speaker 1: are doing the fertilization dance. And the next day your
Speaker 1: doctor is gonna confirm visually that there are two pro
Speaker 1: nuclei and that is the basis of your embryo right there.
Speaker 1: You see that, then that means things are ahead in
Speaker 1: the right direction because the pro nuclei from the sperm
Speaker 1: and the pro nuclei from the egg you're gonna fuse
Speaker 1: to make a single nuclei and that becomes the embryo,
Speaker 1: which divides into well, that becomes the zygote I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: which divides into two cells, and then I think by
Speaker 1: the time it's either two or four cells, it becomes
Speaker 1: an embryo, right, yeah, and then that's a couple of
Speaker 1: days after fertilization. Is when you get to that stage. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the cell division is very slow at first, but then
Speaker 1: it starts to pick up time. By the time you
Speaker 1: reach day five or six, you've got what's called the
Speaker 1: asked the system. By this time, there's um fetal tissues
Speaker 1: growing in like uh, embryonic fluid cavity, and this thing
Speaker 1: is yeah pretty much. Um this the doctor is not
Speaker 1: normally gonna see this. They're gonna observe the egg, the
Speaker 1: fertilized egg or embryo for maybe a couple of days
Speaker 1: to make sure everything is progressing normally, and then they'll
Speaker 1: put it back into the mom. Yeah. I mean that
Speaker 1: can be done after one day, but um, your your
Speaker 1: doctor that they'll have a plan of when they think
Speaker 1: the best time is. And you're being monitored and all that.
Speaker 1: Not you with the man, but the woman is being
Speaker 1: monitored they don't care about the man. And then depending
Speaker 1: depending on where they put it, that that's the type
Speaker 1: of UM assisted reproductive technology that's being used. Right, So,
Speaker 1: like if you're using IVF, the thing has been fertilized
Speaker 1: outside of the womb, outside of the body, and then
Speaker 1: introduced into the the uterus. Yeah, it's called the transfer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they basically just usually catheter right, Yeah, it's UM.
Speaker 1: It's it's suspended in fluid um to I guess, just
Speaker 1: make it easier to get in there. It's like those
Speaker 1: UM peanuts, the foam peanuts for shipping. It's that version exactly.
Speaker 1: So it's suspended in the drop of fluid and it
Speaker 1: is a long, thin cafeter and it's um placed into
Speaker 1: the vagina, pass the cervix right there in the uterus
Speaker 1: and squirt there it goes. And it's really that easy.
Speaker 1: There's another process called um zygo introphallopian transfer where UM
Speaker 1: it's the same process, but instead of depositing the fertilized
Speaker 1: egg into the uterus, they put it into the fallopian tube. Right,
Speaker 1: And I think that has not as great a chance
Speaker 1: as as ib F. Is that right, I think you
Speaker 1: try ZIFT is what it's abbreviated as UM before IVF okay,
Speaker 1: but again all those rules are subthing to change depending
Speaker 1: on your doctor in your situation. UM. And then your
Speaker 1: embryo hopefully well attach to the uterine wall, uh if
Speaker 1: it attaches. I think we said at up topic, pregnancy
Speaker 1: is when it does not attached to the uterine wall,
Speaker 1: but outside of the uterus, but usually the Filippian two
Speaker 1: I think, right, it like never descends into the uterus,
Speaker 1: and so you can't get pregnant that way, or you
Speaker 1: can't have a kid that way. No, you can't, like
Speaker 1: even if the kids starts to develop, you have to
Speaker 1: terminate the pregnancy because it will kill you, that's right.
Speaker 1: Or you can get what's called a chemical pregnancy, which
Speaker 1: is basically just a really early miscarriage, super early in
Speaker 1: the process chemical pregnancy. Yeah. Uh, And those are just
Speaker 1: a couple of things that can go wrong along the way. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a stressful time for the couples because
Speaker 1: they're probably at there it's probably their last step towards
Speaker 1: having a natural as they call them UM. And then
Speaker 1: the woman is also getting injections for hormones throughout that
Speaker 1: can be rough on on the lady as well. I
Speaker 1: can imagine so um, in addition to being infected with hormones,
Speaker 1: having your eggs harvested, getting laproscopic surgery like um, your
Speaker 1: husband being in a room where he has to ejaculate
Speaker 1: into a cup and like all of this stuff, Um,
Speaker 1: there are actual risks involved, like physical risks. So like
Speaker 1: we said with if you get the laproscopic surgery, when
Speaker 1: your eggs are harvested, UM, like you have the risk
Speaker 1: that comes from any kind of anesthesia, any kind of
Speaker 1: surgery like that. So um there are things like chest pains, um.
Speaker 1: What else. Well, there's one risk called o h s
Speaker 1: S Ovarian hyper stimulation syndrome, and that's when you're overari
Speaker 1: swell up, which is super painful and about of patients
Speaker 1: UM experience that. But it can range from mild cases
Speaker 1: where you just take over the countermens two more severe
Speaker 1: cases UM moderate to severe where you know gas and
Speaker 1: alge and vomiting and no appetite. Uh. And I think
Speaker 1: only one to two of women experienced severe ohss. That
Speaker 1: means you're probably gonna gonna go to hospital, gain a
Speaker 1: lot of weight, like things that women don't like. And
Speaker 1: and that's the result of those fertility drugs, like the ovaries. Like, whoa, whoa,
Speaker 1: I did not sign up for this. You're over stimulating
Speaker 1: me and I'm fighting back pretty much. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it does sound like it's fairly common, at least
Speaker 1: in a mild form, and it's in the mildest form
Speaker 1: apparently it clears up on its own. Um. So then,
Speaker 1: like I said, with a retrieval, you have the general
Speaker 1: anesthetic issue. Um. And then even with the lighter aspiration procedure, Uh,
Speaker 1: there's still problems. Like you can get an infection, Um,
Speaker 1: you can have structural damage. But speaking of structural damage, um,
Speaker 1: in addition to in vido fertilization, you could also try surgery.
Speaker 1: That's another avenue that some people try to UM solve
Speaker 1: their infertility. Like if you have if your fallopian tube
Speaker 1: is blocked or whatever, they can go in and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: like if you have a physical problem. Yeah. So chuckers,
Speaker 1: we already mentioned ZIFT. Have you heard a gift? I
Speaker 1: have gamme eat inter phallopian transfer similar to IVF, but um,
Speaker 1: it's in the fallopian tubes. Now, what's the difference between
Speaker 1: XIFT and GIFT? Then okay, I'll explain. Oh wait, wait,
Speaker 1: Ziff is in a lab. Gift is in the Philippian tubes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you go in and and artificially inseminate the egg
Speaker 1: in the fallopian tube. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: if you have damage phallopian tubes, you can't use the
Speaker 1: gift method. But that the Gift method, the advantage of
Speaker 1: it is much much more closely mimics natural birth or
Speaker 1: natural pregnancy because the egg is inseminated in the fallopian
Speaker 1: tube and then it just goes about its normal process
Speaker 1: from there. Yes, so aside from having sperm introduced through
Speaker 1: a needle, it's totally natural. But it's not used. It's
Speaker 1: only like two of cases, and I think Ziff is
Speaker 1: only one percent. Yeah, I saw even less than I
Speaker 1: saw that. Both of them are less than one percent.
Speaker 1: And the big blockbusters in vitro fertilization. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: there's something called I C S I UH intra cytoplasmic
Speaker 1: sperm injection and that's a treatment that you'll do alongside IBF.
Speaker 1: Remember I was saying like, depending on how the sperm
Speaker 1: is introduced, that's one way that it might work. Yeah.
Speaker 1: At about cases, I think they use the the I
Speaker 1: C S I method, and that's just injecting the sperm
Speaker 1: basically into vegg. Well, a single sperm that's like your
Speaker 1: sperm has problems, and so we're gonna pick out one, dude, hercules, hercules. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the cool thing about IVF is literally, yeah, if
Speaker 1: you have multiple eggs um that are really great, um,
Speaker 1: you can freeze the ones you don't use, and if
Speaker 1: you want to go back for round two, you can
Speaker 1: skip the first part of the harvesting and go directly
Speaker 1: to uh, the next steps. Yeah, I guess you could
Speaker 1: skip all the hormones and all of the possible over
Speaker 1: stimulation of ovary. Yeah, the initial hormones, but you still
Speaker 1: have the ones on the backside. That it's being able
Speaker 1: to skip that that first bed is a big relief
Speaker 1: to a lot of women, I can imagine. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's worth the expense too. Ut freezing Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: So um. What's crazy about all this chuck is that
Speaker 1: not all insurance covers this. A lot of insurance treats
Speaker 1: UM IVF procedures as an elective procedure. UM. As a result,
Speaker 1: some states, I think fifteen states have laws on the
Speaker 1: book saying if you're an insurance company operating in our state,
Speaker 1: you have to at the very least cover infertility treatments. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I mean just check with your insurance if you're interested.
Speaker 1: They may cover some but not all. UM, but you'll
Speaker 1: probably get some assistance, you hope. Yeah, Or you can
Speaker 1: just move to a state like Massachusetts that has like
Speaker 1: UM law. Yeah. Basically the law is like you cover
Speaker 1: ivfly they have right, they have the best some of
Speaker 1: the best IVF doctors up there. Yeah. I read an
Speaker 1: article that interviewed this one couple and they were like,
Speaker 1: what some state that didn't have any insurance laws about
Speaker 1: IVF and they moved to Massachusetts, and they said it
Speaker 1: was like going from a place, going from a hospital
Speaker 1: that didn't even have X ray technology going into like
Speaker 1: the most cutting edge type of hospital you could possibly imagine,
Speaker 1: just because because it's required there. The doctors by nature
Speaker 1: are all just experts at it because they've done so
Speaker 1: much work on it. They're trying to make little baby liberals, right,
Speaker 1: little take Kennedy tone and around you anything else. I
Speaker 1: got a thing else. So let's speed the couples out
Speaker 1: there going through this stuff. Yeah, God's being good luck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we wish you well. Um, and if you want to
Speaker 1: learn even more about this, you can type in vitro
Speaker 1: fertilization in the search part how stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: and that brings up listener mail. I'm gonna call this,
Speaker 1: uh work surveillance. Good. We did that one people employees
Speaker 1: spying on you, the employers spying. That's just true. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I work for blank company on a large shipping corporation
Speaker 1: let's call ship Co. Yeah, ship Co for seven years.
Speaker 1: When I started, I love the company and the job.
Speaker 1: As things shifted more towards the bottom line oriented attitude
Speaker 1: with the company, I start to get pretty burnt out
Speaker 1: began looking for something else to do with my life.
Speaker 1: I always had an intense I'm sorry, in interest, we'll say,
Speaker 1: an intense in an electric guitars, not just as a player,
Speaker 1: but something I studied from a historical standpoint and always
Speaker 1: enjoy taking apart and messing with my guitars. At some
Speaker 1: point it became interested in lutheriory and decided to become
Speaker 1: a guitar maker. So what I ended up happening doing
Speaker 1: Luther Yeah, like a luthier. As a guitar maker, like
Speaker 1: a cooper makes the barrels. Yeah, wine barrels in it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a luthier makes a guitar. I did not know that,
Speaker 1: l U t h I e er Uh what ended
Speaker 1: up happening. I would finish up my workload for the
Speaker 1: day and tidy up the store, and if there were
Speaker 1: no customers I would work on my guitar designs at work.
Speaker 1: For a while, the management didn't care, but as the
Speaker 1: pressure started being put on them, they had to tell
Speaker 1: me to stop. But I didn't because I found my passion. Finally,
Speaker 1: one day I was pulled into the office and handed
Speaker 1: screenshots that I hadn't taken of my guitar design work
Speaker 1: that I was doing on the clock. So they had
Speaker 1: a program that wasn't just sending keystroke information of their
Speaker 1: security team, sending actual screens of everything going on on it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We talked about that one. Yeah, I don't remember. It's
Speaker 1: called man. I would freak out if someone handed me screenshots. Uh.
Speaker 1: Needless to say, I was put on disciplinary probation. Didn't
Speaker 1: make it to the end of that because I quit
Speaker 1: to pursue my dream and I'm happy to say that
Speaker 1: I've been a full time professional luthier ever since. It's
Speaker 1: one of my guitars. Is even on the cover of
Speaker 1: a recent issue of Premier Guitar magazine that's like the
Speaker 1: Premier Guitar Magazine. There's a second story about a robbery
Speaker 1: that happened while I was on that probation period, but
Speaker 1: I'll leave that for anyone curious enough to google my name.
Speaker 1: Tantalizing all right. That is from Paul Roney R H
Speaker 1: O N E. Y. And he says, if either one
Speaker 1: of you guys once a handmade USA electric guitar by
Speaker 1: a company that doesn't spile and some employees and hit
Speaker 1: me up, I will hook you up. Wow. And I
Speaker 1: checked them out and they're sweet. Yah. Yeah, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: see what hook you up means and when you stuff, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll see. But yeah, that is from Paul Roney. And
Speaker 1: good for you for fighting ship co. Yeah and pursuing
Speaker 1: your dreams. Mr Roney, congratulations and you're doing a good
Speaker 1: job that since you're beautiful. So uh, if you want
Speaker 1: to let us know about how you stuck it to
Speaker 1: the man, you can tell us via Twitter at s
Speaker 1: Y s K podcast on Facebook dot com slash stuff
Speaker 1: you should know, uh, through email. It's stuff podcasts at
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com and check out our website
Speaker 1: while you're at it, Stuff you Should Know dot com
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot com.