So you may have seen recently that Chrissy Teigen (John Legend's wife) recently and quite casually announced that she chose to implant a girl embyro during their IVF process. As you would expect, the internet has responded very negatively and very positively. Of course, one side is outraged that she chose to "play God" because she thought her husband would be a better father to a girl. And the other side feels it's no big deal and none of our business.
So of course it begs the question, what do I think? Okay, probably no one else is asking that but me. But I thought I would share my opinion. My opinion is somewhere in between.
My husband and I had to use IVF to conceive both of our children. With our daughter, we did not know the genders before implantation. We happily took what we got. When we conceived our son, we had the luxury of also knowing the genders before implantation. However, we chose to not find out. Only the embryologist and doctor knew what we chose. Why you might ask?
If you've never gone through the IVF process before, it is in short, nerve-wracking. You show up the day of implantation not knowing at all what embryos have survived (if any) to that 5th day. You have no idea what the quality of the embryos is. All you do know is you have spent a ridiculous amount of money and you desperately want to be pregnant. They suit you up in your medical attire and give you a Valium (thankfully) and then you sit and wait. Wait for the embryologist to come in and tell you what your options are. And then 10 minutes later, they will wheel you into the surgical room and implant your hopefully future child.
So you have 10 whole minutes to make critical decisions about the future of your family. Can we live with multiples? Do we risk not being pregnant at all? And if you choose the gender, do we want a boy or a girl?
My husband and I agreed ahead of time that if we were fortunate enough to have a 2nd child, it did not matter what the gender was. We were going to choose the best quality embryo we had and hope for the best. We decided this for a couple of PERSONAL reasons. First, I did feel like choosing the gender was like playing God, and I wasn't comfortable with this. Second, imagine if we said we wanted a boy and then found out the boy embryo was the 3rd best quality embryo. Then, the IVF cycle failed - well, did it fail because we chose the a lower quality embryo? Then, did we have to use a 2nd choice frozen girl embryo? Would this somehow create weird feelings with us or the child? I just didn't want to face this type of complex situation. We were giving it our best shot and the rest would play out as genetics had planned.
However, having said all of this, I should tell you another important detail. We chose to try IVF in the first place because we found out we were both carriers of cystic fibrosis, and we wanted to minimize the risk of our children having to cope with that awful disease. (We later found out we also had significant ovarian reserve issues too). That meant all of our embryos were screened for CF before implantation and we had the ability to not implant the CF positive embryos. Is that playing God? I'm sure some would say it is.
In addition, we had endless number of unexpected decisions we had to make throughout the IVF processes. For example, one cycle we only had 3 embryos and suddenly our doctor who had previously said she would never implant more than two embryos recommended implanting all 3. What? I had 10 minutes to decide if I could live with triplets. We had one cycle where there was only one embryo that was possibly viable, and it was possible it was chromosomally abnormal. Again, we had 10 minutes to decide if we wanted to implant it or not. Talk about stressful.
So what I learned through this whole process is that infertility and IVF is very complicated. It is an emotional roller coaster to say the least. And until you have walked in someone's shoes, you really can't say what you would do in the same situation. So I refrain from judging the Legends. I certainly hope they made this choice with great thought (even if the PR statement seemed cavalier), but at the end of the day, the law still states it's their choice. I don't think I would have made the same choice, but it's not my place to judge. At some point, the law may decide it's their place to judge, but that's up to our court system...not me.
Congrats to Chrissy and John!
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