![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Zoe - ScienceBaby (3/365)
Zoe - ScienceBaby
1. My ovaries were not producing enough eggs, even with high doses of medication so we chose to use donor egg IVF. This is a pretty amazing thing - an anonymous donor takes all the drugs, has all the scans and finally goes through an egg retrieval under general anaesthetic for a baby that they will not meet for 18 years, if ever.
2. One of the options at the IVF clinic we used is that instead of observing the growing embryos, you can pay for an extra where they use time-lapse cameras to observe the embryos without disturbing them. As a side benefit of this, they sent us a short video of the embryo-that-would-be-Zoe changing from 4 cells to a morula (which looks like a blackberry) to a blastocyst (which is a compact ball of cells which forms the baby and a large empty zone that firms the placenta. It is really *weird* to watch the little cells develop and know that will be Zoe!
3. When she was born, we donated her cord blood to
Anthony Nolan because apparently, they can do amazing things with it.
1. My ovaries were not producing enough eggs, even with high doses of medication so we chose to use donor egg IVF. This is a pretty amazing thing - an anonymous donor takes all the drugs, has all the scans and finally goes through an egg retrieval under general anaesthetic for a baby that they will not meet for 18 years, if ever.
2. One of the options at the IVF clinic we used is that instead of observing the growing embryos, you can pay for an extra where they use time-lapse cameras to observe the embryos without disturbing them. As a side benefit of this, they sent us a short video of the embryo-that-would-be-Zoe changing from 4 cells to a morula (which looks like a blackberry) to a blastocyst (which is a compact ball of cells which forms the baby and a large empty zone that firms the placenta. It is really *weird* to watch the little cells develop and know that will be Zoe!
3. When she was born, we donated her cord blood to
Anthony Nolan because apparently, they can do amazing things with it.
no subject
Egg donors are very impressive, huge respect to people who do this.
I love that you get to see video of would-be-Zoe at a stage most people never see.
Hurrah for you being able to donate Zoe's cord blood to Anthony Nolan, passing the SCIENCE forward for others.
Some brilliant narrative here for Zoe growing up.
no subject
no subject
Go you and Zoe for donating!
no subject
Zoe got given a certificate and a badge and an Anthony Nolan muslin which all say "Little Lifesaver!" on them.
no subject
I glanced at the Anthony Nolan site and the Modern Slavery statement caught my eye, so I read through it. Another one of those things that SHOULD be a given, but really needs to be spoken out against in such detail.
no subject
no subject
no subject