Have you been considering IVF for reasons of gender selection? You may not know that this industry is heavily regulated by laws and not everyone is eligible for gender selection processes. Please read the following if you are thinking about baby gender selection procedures to expand your family.

Who can choose their baby’s gender?

There is technology available to choose the gender of your baby, but it is a costly and elaborate IVF procedure. In the year 2012, 61,000 babies were conceived via IVF. That result is just 1.5 per cent out of 3.9 million births within the United States of America. Gender selection is not offered in all countries. If you don’t have fertility problems, then you most likely won’t be eligible for IVF treatment just for the sole purpose of choosing the gender of your baby. Even in IVF, the screening procedure which can show the gender of the embryos is an extra, which can cost between $1000 to $5000. You are looking at between $25,000 to $30,000 for each IVF treatment attempt.

What are the common reasons for family balancing using gender selection

There are some common reasons that prospective parents prefer to balance out their families via sex selection. These may include but are not limited to the following.

• They belong to various cultures or religions that favour males as the firstborn
• They have several children of a specific gender and want the final child to be the opposite sex
• They are parents who have lost a child and want their next child to either be the same or different gender
• They are older and only have time for one child, so they prefer to control the gender

The best option for those above is in-vitro fertilisation that has genetic screening for gender selection. If it is combined with a preimplantation genetic diagnosis, it can detect any chromosomal abnormalities that are due to ageing or where there has been recurrent pregnancy loss or sex-based genetic disorders.

The gender selection process

Parents that are seeking family balancing services don’t often have fertility issues, but they will need to go through the same treatment and protocols as those who have fertility problems. Women will undertake ovarian stimulation with their fertility medication to produce multiple ovarian follicles. When the medication phase has started, the women will be monitored closely with bloodwork and ultrasounds to find out the optimal time for ovulation.

The fertility physicians will extract the eggs using ultrasounds for guidance. The eggs will then be fertilised with the father’s sperm, and the embryos will grow to the 200 cell blastocyst time of development on either day five or six. The embryologist will then remove the cells from the trophectoderm, which is the outer layer of the embryo, so it can then be sent to a specialised lab. Here they test them for gender, genetic diseases and chromosomal abnormalities. For the parents who want a baby of a specific gender, one will be chosen with high-quality embryos if they are there available.

IVF sex selection is not available to everyone, and you will need to pass specific criteria. In some countries, it is illegal to choose the gender of your baby through IVF if you don’t have any gender-specific genetic disorders, abnormalities or problems getting pregnant. If these problems are not occurrent, then most likely you won’t qualify for gender selection.

Consider speaking to your doctor about your options and what treatment may be available to you. Your doctor will refer you to a specialist if they believe that you may qualify for the IVF treatment.