Twins are adorable! I mean how can you not gush over double the cute, double the sweet and half the cost?
Intended Parents often come to Proud Fertility with dreams of having multiple embryos transfers to their Surrogate Mother’s womb. Future Parents want to have multiple embryos transferred to increase the likelihood that the IVF process will result in a pregnancy, to get the infant stage over in one shot, and to save the financial and emotional challenges of undertaking a surrogacy sibling journey at a later date.
We understand the appeal. Every IVF procedure is costly and potentially heartbreaking. Surrogacy journeys are complicated, and it can cost as much as $100,000+ to reach your goal of holding a child in your arms.
Here’s the problem: The lives of the Surrogate Mother and your babies are at risk when you choose to have more than one embryo transferred at a time. Twin pregnancies are considered high risk for good reason. When a woman is pregnant with more than one baby she is at a significantly increased risk of:
- Gestational diabetes
- High blood pressure
- Pre-eclampsia and Eclampsia
- Obstetric Cholestasis
- Anemia
- Bleeding before and after delivery
Not only is your Surrogate Mother at a higher risk of complications if she becomes pregnant with twins, your babies are at significant risk, too. Twins and multiples are 5X more likely than singleton babies to die within the first month of life. If a healthy child is your goal (and of course it is), transferring more than one embryo is a bad idea (unless your IVF doctor suggests otherwise).
Twins and multiples are at a very high risk of health complications including:
- Increased possibility of infant death
- Significantly increased risk of prematurity
- Increased risk of low birth weight
- Birth defects such as cerebral palsy
- immature lungs, brain, gut, and bleeding in the brain.
While planning for twins can be cute, cost-effective (as long as they don’t require a long hospital stay after birth), and efficient, the risks involved just are not worth it. Twinning happens. When it happens on its own it is very different than when a woman’s life and the lives of the babies she carries are put at risk.
If you have multiples on your mind, have an open discussion with your agency and your fertility doctor. While #twinning is all the rage, it just isn’t worth it.