WWYD?

SandyEggo5

Hi ladies, I've been a lurker on this board in the past, but I stepped away for awhile trying to heal from my last 2 losses (short history in siggy). I've had a situation happen at my RE and I'm not sure how to react or respond. WWYD?

Let me first say that my husband and I's way of returning to "normal" after the poking, prodding, and bank account draining of infertility and IVF is to be team green during pregnancy. We've done it during all of our previous pregnancies (4 even though we only have 1 child), so we become experts at reminding everybody (nurses, doctors, u/s techs) that we're not finding out the sex.

My RE was well aware of our preferences considering she was the one who marked it on our PGS forms that we do not want to be told the sex of the embryos. Also, when she called to report our PGS results to us, I reminded her that we didn't want to know the sex. Then on the day of transfer, I made sure to remind her and the 3 other staff members in the OR that day that we wanted to be surprised. MY RE even had to fix our PGS results letter and black out the sex results AFTER they had already handed it to us (in an envelope). 

Even after all these notifications, right after the transfer was complete, our RE recommended that we name the baby a certain name. One that is not gender neutral. I couldn't believe what I was hearing, but she kept on talking about this name. How she loved it, how it would be meaningful to us, and so on. (We have [had] a great relationship with our RE, we travel out of state to use her). I think she finally realized what she had done because she quickly recommended the opposite-sex version of the name (which really isn't even a real name) and said she didn't remember what the sex of our embryo was anyway. Even though she had JUST blacked out the sex on the PGS results letter!

I am crushed that our baby's sex was revealed to us against our wishes. But I'm at a loss for how to react. In a way, I feel horrible that I'm making such a big deal about it because I shouldn't I just be happy to be pregnant? But after all that infertility has already taken from us, now this has been taken from us too. And especially since we had been so diligent in making our wishes known. What are your thoughts? How would you handle it? Am I over-reacting? Do I confront my RE? TIA for your input.

mdiblasi10

I am so sorry that happened. That's extremely frustrating. It's difficult because there is nothing that can change the fact that you now know. However, you could talk to her about it for your own piece of mind and to hopefully help another patient from having the same thing happen. My advice is to do what feels right for you. 

I don't know if this is something you want to do, but after we only had one normal PGS embryo, we did want to know the gender, to relieve some of the pain of only having one. But we decided to keep the name a surprise from everyone until she is born. You could keep the gender and/or name a surprise from everyone else. I know it's not the same thing, but just a thought