Assisted What?

So I found out today that in IVF#1, Ye Olde Fertility Clinic did Assisted Hatching on George. Who knew?

Well, my financial services coordinator knew. My nurse didn't know, though.

I had called to find out the status of my account, make sure I didn't owe any more money (because based on the EOB's I've gotten from my insurance company, it looks to me like I should owe another couple hundred dollars in addition to the deposit I gave them last month), and to find out what my deposit for IVF#2 should be. The financial services coordinator said that they're just waiting for the insurance company to pay for the transfer and the assisted hatching.

I'm sorry, the... the what?

The assisted hatching.

Um. What assisted hatching? Yeah. So apparently George had a little extra assistance. Which is fine and all. I'm just sayin'. A girl should have been told. And maybe I would have been told if I hadn't had my huge FREAK OUT over SuperDoc's little joke about transferring eight embryos they might have told me. But probably it got lost in the shuffle of my panic attack. So I'm not assigning blame here. But seriously. Assisted Hatching? Why?

A girl needs to know! So you can be darned skippy sure I'll be asking that question next week!

And, I mean, no big deal, right? Except, um, there's the small little detail of assisted hatching increases the risk of monozygotic twinning. And I get that it's still a minute little tiny itty bitty risk. But any little itty bitty increase in that risk, I want to know about! Just sayin'!

(All this being said, one of the things I agreed to in my consent forms ahead of time was that if the doctor and embryologist believed it was necessary, they could go forth with assisted hatching without seeking additional consent from me, based on their medical opinion, knowing that there may be additional expense to me. So no one did anything wrong here.)

Meanwhile, I may still owe a little extra money for IVF#1, but the total amount is unknown as they're still waiting for the insurance company to pay up, but I did pay my deposit for IVF#2 today. Gah. Like I needed to spend more money today.