Gender selection… how does it work?

Tuesday, February 5, 2019

For as long as we’ve been making babies, women have been exchanging ideas about how to increase their chances of having either a boy or a girl. Today it is possible to choose the sex of a baby by advanced reproductive technologies, identifying the gender of your embryos before pregnancy is possible through IVF and Comprehensive Chromosomal Screening (CCS), sometimes referred to as Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis or PGD.

At Fakih IVF Center we can help you, we offer Family Balancing through Gender Selection in our branches in UAE.

In general, the technique PGD is the only method which can virtually guarantee the gender of your choice because embryos are tested for gender before they are implanted in the womb. These tested embryos are created for the purpose of IVF. The eggs are harvested from the mother and the sperm sample is taken from the father and the embryos are created in the lab for later implantation. These embryos are subject to a biopsy procedure on the third day of growth that allows a single cell to be analyzed for male or female chromosomes.

PGD is commonly used for couples with a family history of a genetic disorder and older mothers are more likely to have a baby with genetic birth defects. PGD is only tested for specific defects, parents should use other prenatal genetic tests, such as amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling. The success rates for this type of procedure are very high for accurate in couples seeking either a boy or girl.

The process of IVF works like this: You start taking fertility drugs so your ovaries produce multiple eggs (typically, just one egg is released during ovulation). At about mid-cycle, while the woman is under anesthesia, an ultrasound-guided needle is placed through the vaginal wall to retrieve the eggs. The male partner provides a sperm sample. The eggs are then fertilized with sperm in a petri dish and then reinserted into your uterus.

For the PGD part of the procedure, a few cells are biopsied from the developing embryos. These are sent for genetic evaluation. This is how it’s determined which embryos are XX (girls) and XY (boys).

The couple can then decide which embryos are transferred back into the woman’s uterus. For example, if she only wants a girl, then only XX embryos would be considered.

For More information about Gender selection, please visit https://fakihivf.com/treatment/family-balancing/