Becoming a mother is a dream to most women, but sometimes the dream can seem like little more than a fantasy. Infertility problems plague many couples who want to start a family. For these couples, there are many alternatives to choose from to finally make that dream come true. Thanks to scientific breakthroughs, fertility treatments are more numerous than ever before.
Surrogacy
One of the options available to hopeful parents is to choose a surrogate mother to carry and birth their child. There are two types of surrogates: traditional and gestational. A traditional surrogate is a woman who supplies her own egg during the surrogacy and a gestational surrogate uses donated eggs. Surrogate mothers usually conceive through in-vitro fertilization, a process that involves using sperm and eggs from the parents or embryos from the father's sperm and donated eggs. Once fertilization occurs outside of the womb, a physician will transplant the embryo into the surrogate's uterus for implantation. The Centers for Disease Control states that immediately after birth, the baby is given up for adoption to the parents.
Artificial Insemination
Artificial insemination is when sperm is placed in a woman's cervix using a catheter. The sperm is first 'washed' to cluster as many live sperm together as possible, and then the procedure is performed. Since this procedure is used when a male is infertile or when there is no male present, a sperm donor will be used. Although this procedure was once relatively unsuccessful with a success rate of around 30%, EurekaAlert reports that the success rate has risen to over 50%. They also go on to state that the insemination process only takes place when there are "good" ova present.
Donor Eggs
If a woman is unable to produce her own eggs or has trouble with the eggs she does produce, it is possible to use donor eggs. The American Pregnancy Association says that more than 3,000 babies are born each year with the help of donor eggs. A healthy donor will undergo a series of medications to help her produce eggs, and the recipient will be placed on hormonal therapy as well. The reason a physician place the recipient on hormonal therapy is to get the two women on the same menstrual cycle so the recipient's uterus will be thick enough to support a pregnancy. Once the women are "synchronized" and the donor is ovulating, the eggs are taken by a doctor. The day the eggs are retrieved, the male partner will provide a sperm sample and the eggs will be fertilized by in-vitro fertilization. The fertilized eggs are then placed in the recipient's uterus to produce a pregnancy.
Embryo Adoption
When a couple has undergone in-vitro fertilization and successfully fertilized more eggs than they need, they can choose to allow another couple to adopt the embryos that will be discarded otherwise. This works exactly like adoption of a child, except it is done on the cellular level.
