Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult

Author:Jodi Picoult [Picoult, Jodi]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9781439102725
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2011-03-01T08:00:00+00:00

An embryo is frozen at the blastocyst stage, when it is approximately five days old. In a sealed straw filled with cryoprotectant fluid—a human antifreeze—it is gradually cooled to –196 degrees Celsius. The straw is then attached to an aluminum cane and stored in a canister of liquid nitrogen. It costs eight hundred dollars a year to keep the embryo frozen. When thawed at room temperature, the cryoprotectant fluid is diluted so that the embryo can be restored to its culture medium. It’s assessed for damage to see if it’s suitable for transfer. If the embryo survives mostly intact, it has a good chance of leading to a successful pregnancy. Cellular damage, if not extensive, is not a deal breaker. Some embryos have been frozen for a decade and still gone on to produce healthy children.

When I was undergoing in vitro, I always thought of the extra embryos we froze as snowflakes. Tiny, potential babies—each one a little different from the next.

According to a 2008 study in the journal Fertility and Sterility, when patients who didn’t want more children were asked about their frozen embryos, fifty-three percent didn’t want to donate them to others because they didn’t want their children finding an unknown brother or sister one day; and they didn’t want other parents raising their child. Sixty-six percent said they’d donate the embryos for research, but that option wasn’t always available at clinics. Twenty percent said they’d keep the embryos frozen forever. Often, the husband and wife are not in agreement.

I have three frozen embryos, swimming in liquid nitrogen in a clinic in Wilmington, Rhode Island. And now that Vanessa has mentioned it, I cannot eat or drink or sleep or concentrate. All I can do is think of these babies, who are waiting for me.

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