Marva Mullineaux and her fiancé Hussein are preparing themselves for a big moment.
They’re about to find out if they can start having kids right away.
“I’ll be 43 next month and I’ve been in school and working and all of a sudden, where did the time go,” she said.
So far, the couple has had many tries and much heartache.
“It’s very emotionally straining. You’re already dealing with a financial investment and heartbreak so it’s not something that you want to keep repeating,” Marva said.
The couple is trying a new method of fertility testing called CGH testing in hopes of getting better results. Through this method, doctors do comprehensive genetic testing on the embryos before they get implanted.
“So this new technology allows us to test all the chromosomes. When you transfer chromosomally normal embryos, the implantation rate is much higher. The pregnancy rate is much higher and the risk for miscarriage is much lower,” said fertility specialist Dr. Maher Abdallah.
Using laser technology, a doctor makes and opening in the embryo and takes a cell out to test it.
“It’s about 29 hours for us to analyze the DNA and determine whether that embryo is genetically normal or not. When we transfer two high-quality embryos that are chromosomally normal, we’re averaging over 83 percent chance at a pregnancy,” Abdallah said.
Marva and Hussein checked out their results.
Out of eight embryos that looked normal under the microscope, the testing showed only two of the embryos were genetically normal.
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