Fertility Drugs and Multiple Births: Are They Related?

Around one in thirty births are twin births. As you may have guessed, a multiple birth pregnancy is not common. However, this rarity is becoming increasingly common as a result of fertility drugs and other fertility treatments. A multiple birth happens when there is more than one fetus that is carried through the entire term in a single pregnancy. You might experience different types of multiple births. Some women have carried as many as eight children safely to term. A multiple birth pregnancy is either monozygotic, dizygotic, or a combination of both. A monozygotic pregnancy happens when one fertilized egg suddenly splits into two or more embryos. These embryos will have the same genetic material. This is often the classification of identical twins. A dizygotic pregnancy includes more than one egg that has been fertilized. A polyzygotic pregnancy is a combination of both. For example, there may be a set of triplets in which there are two identical twins.

Fertility drugs are designed to stimulate a woman’s ovaries. By doing this, a woman’s odds of releasing one or more eggs at once are increased. Many women take a fertility drug that is either gonadotropin or clomiphene. When a woman takes gonadotropin, their chances of conceiving more than once child is increased by around twenty percent. When a woman takes clomiphene, their chances of conceiving more than once child is increased by between five percent and twelve percent.

Many women participate in fertility treatment in addition to fertility drugs. This may increase the chance of a multiple birth pregnancy significantly. Fertility treatments include vitro fertilization, gamete intrafallopian transfer, zygote intrafallopian transfer, and intrauterine insemination. Vitro fertilization may increase the chances of multiple births by anywhere between twenty and forty percent. It depends on the number of embryos that are placed into the womb. Intrauterine insemination is the process of injecting sperm into a woman’s uterus with a syringe. This is the only type of fertility treatment that will not increase a woman’s chances of a multiple birth pregnancy. However since many women undergo this treatment with fertility drugs, they may still have more than one child.

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