This morning as we were getting ready for work, I heard Matt Lauer giving the introduction on the Today Show (my favorite morning show by the way!), and one of the top stories was, "A woman has given birth to identical quadruplets without the use of fertility drugs!" What? Gasp! No fertility drugs for indentical quadruplets which means that a single egg and sperm spontaneously split into 4 babies! Yes folks, it could happen to anyone. If they had been fraternal quads, yes, they likely were conceived with the help of fertility drugs. I get so annoyed with the misinformed media and public for that matter (probably as a result of stories like these) on matters related to reproduction and conception. I didn't see the story, but I highly doubt that they addressed the difference between identicals and fraternals, i.e. single versus multiple eggs, and explained that identicals are completely spontaneous and random occurances. Of course Brad reminded me that if we hadn't gone through this, we would assume that they were a result of fertility treatments and he's maybe, probably right. I also know that there are many people who read this blog who are "fertile" who don't know all the ins and outs of conception and the infertility world (and they're certainly not going to learn it from the media), but that is one of my goals here - to try to educate. Another one that gets me are the people who say that because their husbands have twins in their families so they have a higher chance of having twins too. Uh, sorry to say but the husbands have nothing to do with it. They always have millions of sperm while it's up to the woman to release the multiple eggs or for the embryo to spontaneously split which again has nothing to do with genetics.
So, that's my little fertility lesson of the day. Stepping off my soapbox now...
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