As a married woman with no interest in making babies, I seem to have more than my share of friends who are determined to have children even though their doctors, and their bodies, tell them otherwise. After repeated attempts at all sorts of modern medical cures, surgeries, and pills, many turn to IVf (In Vitro Fertilization), or what used to be called “test tube babies”, a horrible term.
Now there is a news story on the BBC out called Others’ smoking harms IVF success. According to the report: “Smoke from other people’s cigarettes more than halved the likelihood that a transferred embryo would take and grow…It is already known that smoking can hamper a woman’s fertility, but this latest study hints that exposure to others’ smoke might be just as bad.”
When I think of the suffering my friends have been through in order to 1) determine this treatment might work for them, 2) qualify for the treatment, 3) pay for the treatment, 4) go through the treatment, 5) fail, 6) find more money, 7) go through the treatment again, 8) fial, 9) find more money, and 10) go through the treatment again and again until it works….how can anyone risk their future hopes on a baby with cigarrettes?
Yet, we have all seen more than our share of smoking pregnant women and women smoking around their children. During my mother’s visit to Mobile, Alabama, we walked on the beach at Dauphin Island in the 80 degree water, past two young mothers with children and obviously pregnant, chain smoking.
I guess I don’t understand.
But anyway, this research might help those who are smoking and desperately want babies to stop. Or, and this is what I really want if I were in charge of things, refused to provide IVF treatment to any woman (or participating man, if I really had my way) who smokes. There are ways of testing if there is nicotine in the system, I’m sure, like any other drug. I don’t know how long it takes to get out of the system, but any woman who has been smoking within one year of attempting IVF should be refushed treatment.
Honestly, if you are trying so hard to get pregnant, then you should want to do EVERYTHING within your power and beyond to make sure your baby has the greatest hope and home.
Well, I can dream and wish, can’t I?