Maternal movement early in pregnancy

lizmonster

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I've written a near-future SF story that includes, as part of its worldbuilding, full artificial gestation technologies. I've been digging into some detail about the sorts of problems that would need to be solved, and while I've found good information, there's one big question I can't answer:

What's the benefit of maternal movement, particularly in the first 6-8 weeks?

I found a bunch of stuff about (chicken) egg turners, suggesting motion affects vascular development (affecting nutrient uptake and oxygen absorption). This makes sense, but I haven't been able to find similar research on humans. Everything I've found on maternal movement involves exercise and the benefits of certain hormones, which (in a SF setting, at least!) could be provided artificially. And most of this research covers later development rather than the more fragile early weeks.

I'm not talking about exercise per se, but average day-to-day movement: standing, sitting, rolling over at night. The effects of gravity. Does it even matter in a situation where birth position isn't going to be a consideration? I suspect it does - but do we know (or suspect) why?

This being SF, I can "solve" whatever problems I want, but I'd like to be able to toss at least a little lip service to science, especially since I'm not casting forward more than a hundred years or so.

Anybody have links, or even better terms I can use to search? Throw science at me! I can take it. :)

TIA to all!
 

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If you are struggling to find answers about why movement is beneficial, is there any material on lack of movement - and whether it's harmful in any way - that might provide answers? E.g. pregnancy when the mother is comatose or immobilised.
 

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I've written a near-future SF story that includes, as part of its worldbuilding, full artificial gestation technologies. I've been digging into some detail about the sorts of problems that would need to be solved, and while I've found good information, there's one big question I can't answer:

What's the benefit of maternal movement, particularly in the first 6-8 weeks?

I found a bunch of stuff about (chicken) egg turners, suggesting motion affects vascular development (affecting nutrient uptake and oxygen absorption). This makes sense, but I haven't been able to find similar research on humans. Everything I've found on maternal movement involves exercise and the benefits of certain hormones, which (in a SF setting, at least!) could be provided artificially. And most of this research covers later development rather than the more fragile early weeks.

I'm not talking about exercise per se, but average day-to-day movement: standing, sitting, rolling over at night. The effects of gravity. Does it even matter in a situation where birth position isn't going to be a consideration? I suspect it does - but do we know (or suspect) why?

This being SF, I can "solve" whatever problems I want, but I'd like to be able to toss at least a little lip service to science, especially since I'm not casting forward more than a hundred years or so.

Anybody have links, or even better terms I can use to search? Throw science at me! I can take it. :)

TIA to all!

Interesting q. -- I don't think it would matter so much, as there have been a bunch of babies born to both comatose and literally brain-dead women who, afaik, have been fine. I remember one of the women later recovering and interacting with the then-toddler. By the time a fetus can self-propel, it does, so... *shrug*?

I could see stimulus maybe being important for neural development, like sounds, but as I type that, I just realized Deaf babies don't get that and it's not an issue so...

Also, just in case you don't know, we do this with lambs. Closer than chickens.
 

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You are all marvelous. :)

If you are struggling to find answers about why movement is beneficial, is there any material on lack of movement - and whether it's harmful in any way - that might provide answers? E.g. pregnancy when the mother is comatose or immobilised.

Two problems with this. One: it's a pretty small data set, and I haven't found anything specific on the long-term cognitive outcomes of the children involved. Two: in most of these cases, the mother was pregnant before she fell into a coma, and I want data on very early fetal development - the time when women often miscarry without even knowing they were pregnant to begin with. There's understandably not a lot of field research here.

Have you read the Vorkosigan books, lizmonster? IIRC, Bujold makes some reference to this with her gestational machines.

I have read Bujold. :) I need different specifics, though, for a number of reasons, not the least of which is she's way further in the future than I am, and can construct her problem/solution space pretty much however she needs to for plot purposes.

Interesting q. -- I don't think it would matter so much, as there have been a bunch of babies born to both comatose and literally brain-dead women who, afaik, have been fine. I remember one of the women later recovering and interacting with the then-toddler. By the time a fetus can self-propel, it does, so... *shrug*?

I could see stimulus maybe being important for neural development, like sounds, but as I type that, I just realized Deaf babies don't get that and it's not an issue so...

Also, just in case you don't know, we do this with lambs. Closer than chickens.

I have seen the lamb thing, which is cool for so many reasons. But while I was digging in to that, I found a quote from one researcher (which of course I can't find now, but I saw it in a couple of places) who asserted that we were far away from complete human ectogenesis because the early weeks were (paraphrasing) too entwined with the mother to be easily replicated in a lab.

I've been trying to figure out what specifically that means - is it just that fetal development has an element of randomness that a living organism responds to more quickly than machines can? Is it chemical interactions we just don't understand well enough yet? Which would make sense - we can't experiment on humans the way we can on sheep, and aren't likely to be doing so in the timeframe of what I'm writing. But I'm looking for more detailed information than "no, really, it's wicked hard."

Which doesn't specifically have to do with movement, I suppose? I think they'd probably turn the incubators as a matter of course, just because it's an easy thing to do. Whether they do it as a "just in case" or because there's solid medical evidence might not be important.

So I guess my real question is more general: what's so fragile and weird about early fetal development, and why is it so difficult to support in a laboratory setting? Maybe I should be looking at IVF and why they implant when they do?
 

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Isn't the early early still attached to the uterine wall? I'd .... think?.... it's that maybe, the process of attachment and growing an amniotic sac and placenta and etc., that are hard? I think (AP Bio maybe ftw, heh) those are all related to specific hormone infusions and stuff, which I guess you could replicate but they're probably more specific to individual bodies (where hormones are going to differ based on fat content, age, all sorts of things) than a regulated anything. I dunno how ppl could get from fertilized to embryo w/stuff.
 

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You are all marvelous. :)



Two problems with this. One: it's a pretty small data set, and I haven't found anything specific on the long-term cognitive outcomes of the children involved. Two: in most of these cases, the mother was pregnant before she fell into a coma, and I want data on very early fetal development - the time when women often miscarry without even knowing they were pregnant to begin with. There's understandably not a lot of field research here.



I have read Bujold. :) I need different specifics, though, for a number of reasons, not the least of which is she's way further in the future than I am, and can construct her problem/solution space pretty much however she needs to for plot purposes.



I have seen the lamb thing, which is cool for so many reasons. But while I was digging in to that, I found a quote from one researcher (which of course I can't find now, but I saw it in a couple of places) who asserted that we were far away from complete human ectogenesis because the early weeks were (paraphrasing) too entwined with the mother to be easily replicated in a lab.

I've been trying to figure out what specifically that means - is it just that fetal development has an element of randomness that a living organism responds to more quickly than machines can? Is it chemical interactions we just don't understand well enough yet? Which would make sense - we can't experiment on humans the way we can on sheep, and aren't likely to be doing so in the timeframe of what I'm writing. But I'm looking for more detailed information than "no, really, it's wicked hard."

Which doesn't specifically have to do with movement, I suppose? I think they'd probably turn the incubators as a matter of course, just because it's an easy thing to do. Whether they do it as a "just in case" or because there's solid medical evidence might not be important.

So I guess my real question is more general: what's so fragile and weird about early fetal development, and why is it so difficult to support in a laboratory setting? Maybe I should be looking at IVF and why they implant when they do?

Hi there!

As a midwife, I'm going to help you with your questions the best I can.
- What is so fragile and weird about fetal development, is that it has a lot to do with hormones and a whole lot of biological factors.
1 in 10 pregnancies end up in a miscarriage, oftentimes because there are problems with the embryonal development. Maybe there's a chromosomal issue, which means that something went wrong with the cell division and that the baby would not live if it would be carried to full-term. This is often the result of things we have zero control over: it happens at conception, when both the mother's and the father's genes come together. But it's also common that there's something wrong with the maternal-embryonal perfusion. You have to imagine that an embryo starts developing even before it attaches to the uterine wall. But if there's problems with the uterine wall, e.g. not a good blood perfusion. If there's no good blood perfusion between mother and baby, the embryo obviously can't attach to the uterine wall and it's impossible for it to develop, which will result in a miscarriage.
- With IVF, they bring an egg and a whole lot of sperm cells together (outside of the womb) and try to bring them together to conception. The conception often isn't the problem with IVF, but it's the implantation. Again, this is a matter of hormones, blood flow, and a "good" uterine environment. For example: a mother who smokes, drinks, is overweight, ... has a less optimal biological environment for the embryo to implant and grow.

Imagine that an embryo can only grow when there's optimal blood perfusion between mother and baby. If that's not happening, the embryo can't develop well (the embryonal development goes crazy fast in the first weeks, and after about 12 weeks everything is set and the embryo--then, fetus--only has to ripen and grow until full term). Imagine a mother not moving at all during her pregnancy, that is not an optimal uterine environment. With not moving there are risks of blood clots and/or less oxygen perfusion. In an alive woman, whether she's in a coma or not, that can be prevented by giving her medication to optimize her blood perfusion.

I don't know if this helps, but feel free to ask whatever you want if thins are unclear. :)
 

lizmonster

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As a midwife, I'm going to help you with your questions the best I can.

This is all marvelous - thank you!

But if there's problems with the uterine wall, e.g. not a good blood perfusion. If there's no good blood perfusion between mother and baby, the embryo obviously can't attach to the uterine wall and it's impossible for it to develop, which will result in a miscarriage.
- With IVF, they bring an egg and a whole lot of sperm cells together (outside of the womb) and try to bring them together to conception. The conception often isn't the problem with IVF, but it's the implantation. Again, this is a matter of hormones, blood flow, and a "good" uterine environment. For example: a mother who smokes, drinks, is overweight, ... has a less optimal biological environment for the embryo to implant and grow.

All this makes sense, but my question is this: Do we know, specifically, why implantation will fall in one situation but not another? Do we know it's because of lack of X chemical, or do we have a correlation with a collection of environmental factors but can't pinpoint specifics?

I'm trying to figure out if this is a problem we could theoretically solve in a laboratory setting, or if we don't understand the problem enough yet. Or if the problem includes so many variables there's no good way for machines to account for all of them quickly enough.

I may be falling down a fictional rat-hole here. :) But if I'm going to assert "we can't do X" or "X is not efficient," I want to make sure I'm not saying something that's obviously wrong or out of place.
 

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This is all marvelous - thank you!



All this makes sense, but my question is this: Do we know, specifically, why implantation will fall in one situation but not another? Do we know it's because of lack of X chemical, or do we have a correlation with a collection of environmental factors but can't pinpoint specifics?

I'm trying to figure out if this is a problem we could theoretically solve in a laboratory setting, or if we don't understand the problem enough yet. Or if the problem includes so many variables there's no good way for machines to account for all of them quickly enough.

I may be falling down a fictional rat-hole here. :) But if I'm going to assert "we can't do X" or "X is not efficient," I want to make sure I'm not saying something that's obviously wrong or out of place.

Okay so with implantation there are three important factors:
1) Maternal
2) Paternal
3) Embryonal

The maternal factor includes several things. You have the uterus as an organ in itself, is it "normal" shaped, is the endometrium receptive for implantation (i.e. is it "sticky" enough for the embryo to be able to implant, to state it very simply--this can be stimulated by injecting hormones and such, in preparation to IVF for example), is the microbioma (the bacteria, viruses, cells all throughout our body, and in the uterus and vagina as well) advantageous, and if it's not, is there anything that can be done about it (but this is a very specialist, immunologist process which we can't really say anything about in general, this is different for every woman and what doesn't work for one woman may not be a problem for another and vice versa). Or does the uterus contract when placing a fertilized egg into the uterus, because it wants to get rid of the "foreign" egg inside of it.

The paternal factor is mostly karyotyping, which means that they investigate if the paternal chromosome package inside of the sperm cells is normal. If there are abnormalities here, for example when sperm cells carry a deviation or abnormality of some sort, this could be the problem of the fertilized egg not implementing. This is a completely natural process, as I said before, because the body "gets rid" of a "faulty" pack of genes that would grow into an unhealthy or non-viable human being if the body would do nothing about it.

The embryonal factor includes mostly karyotyping as well. If there are problems in the cell deviation and therefore a cell abnormality occurs, the pregnancy is most likely to fail (or the implantation, for that matter).

So, theoretically, you could solve these issues if you know what the problem is. The most tricky part is the maternal microbioma, there are so many bacteria, viruses, cells, etc. that could be the problem, that this is a tricky thing to solve in real life. But, in your novel you could perhaps invent a thing that could easily (or more easy than irl) sense what the problem exactly is, so you could optimize the maternal microbioma if that is the problem you want to be solved.

Does this answer your question?
 

MaeZe

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Ooo ooo, I know, I know. Pick me. :hooray: [kidding, there are other good answers here]

If you are struggling to find answers about why movement is beneficial, is there any material on lack of movement - and whether it's harmful in any way - that might provide answers? E.g. pregnancy when the mother is comatose or immobilised.
Interesting q. -- I don't think it would matter so much, as there have been a bunch of babies born to both comatose and literally brain-dead women who, afaik, have been fine. I remember one of the women later recovering and interacting with the then-toddler. By the time a fetus can self-propel, it does, so... *shrug*?....

We move immobilized patients on a regular basis because stasis is dangerous for their vascular system. You can relieve pressure points with special beds, but a person, immobile or not, needs to change positions.

It's not the movement that matters, it is the effect of gravity, so positional changes are the issue. Birds need to rotate their eggs relative to gravitational forces. If this is in zero gravity space you'd have different issues.

There is every reason to assume if it matters for the postpartum person, it's going to matter for the fetus.

But in the first 8 weeks, there is an interesting factor of buoyancy involved. Who knew? ;)

The fetus cannot exercise like an astronaut: gravity loading is necessary for the physiological development during second half of pregnancy.
Abstract
On the basis of published Magnetic Resonance Images and the values of the specific fetal and amniotic fluid weights, apparent weight of the fetus from the 18th week of gestation until term was determined. Up to the 21-22nd gestation week the fetus is in conditions similar to neutral floating, while after the 26th gestation week the apparent weight of the fetus is 60-80% of the actual weight. Decreased effect of the buoyant forces that affect the fetus in human species during the last trimester has a number of implications for the colonization of the solar system. During space flight it is impossible to apply the existing countermeasures against microgravity deconditioning of the muscular and cardiovascular systems to the fetus. Absence of gravitational loading during the last trimester of gestation would cause hypotrophy of the spinal extensors and lower extremities muscles, reduction in the amount of myosin heavy chain type I in the extensor muscles of the trunk and legs, hypoplasy and osteopeny of the vertebras and lower extremities long bones, and hypotrophy of the left ventricle of the heart muscle. Because of decreased capacity of postural and locomotor stability, acquisition of the gross developmental milestones such as sitting, standing and walking could be delayed. In the authors' opinion, only artificial gravity (rotating platform) during space flight will allow physiological development of the human fetus. Independency of offspring's of the guinea pig as regards locomotion and nursing increases probability of successful breeding in microgravity compared with rat offspring's, and make this species a candidate for future experiments under conditions of microgravity and hypergravity. Examining the gestation of this species in different gravities requires first the experimental determination of the amount of buoyant force to which the fetus is exposed in physiological conditions.

The effects of gravitational forces on reproduction and development.

Making babies in space
According to Japanese biologists, defects in their microgravity embryos suggest that "fertilization can occur normally" in space, but standard Earth gravity may be needed for embryo development.

Conclusion: if the embryo is floating around, it will be changing its relationship to gravity without moving the container. Once the fetus takes up the space in the amniotic sack so that it can't float freely, it needs to be moved on a regular basis.
 
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Roxxsmom

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It's definitely true that chicken eggs need to be turned regularly during incubation. Reptile eggs (like snakes etc.), however, need to be kept stationary.

Being mammals, and developing inside a mom who moves around, I am guessing human embryos and fetuses benefit from a more dynamic gestational environment.

CJ Cherry's Cyteen books had birthlabs in them, and they had artificial wombs that simulated the sounds and movements and changes in chemical environment that would occur during pregnancy (and were manipulated to produce set outcomes). She wrote the first trilogy before the science of epigenetics was at all well understood, but the books sort of anticipated that (the idea that a person's temperament and capabilities emerge as a result of an environmental influence on gentotype, starting early in gestation and extending through childhood--actually, we now know things that happened during our grandparents' and great grandparents' childhoods affect our gene expression too).

I recall reading something a while back that suggested that the foods a mother eats during pregnancy could influence the tastes of the child later in life, because some flavor chemicals end up in the amniotic fluid. I also know some moms who claim (anecdotally) that their babies became restless in utero after they (the moms) ate certain things. This would be occurring later in pregnancy, though, after the fetus has taste buds. Still, it's hard to imagine that things like activity, food choices, and maternal stress (etc.) wouldn't affect an early embryo too, and that a completely "stress free" gestation could be as bad for a young mammal as a completely "stress free" infancy.

As for what optimal conditions would be, and as to when and how much movement etc. are optimal? I don't know how much of this is known, precisely. I am guessing there may be some animal studies (if a mother rat, say, is restrained for much of her much-shorter-than-human-length pregnancy), and maybe some correlational studies on humans, at least (if, say, a mother was bedridden or unconscious during the first weeks of gestation), but as we don't have artificial wombs yet, I think a certain amount of speculation on the part of the author is permissible here.
 
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Once the fetus takes up the space in the amniotic sack so that it can't float freely, it needs to be moved on a regular basis.

I don't know if this fits in the discussion, but it reminded me of another thing to possibly take into consideration. Developing babies probably need to NOT be TOO free floating in a too-big womb, because of muscle development. When babies are born prematurely, one of the things they have to do therapy with them on is often folding them back up into that fetal position and making them push and struggle a little against the pressure. (I mean, super gently, but, basically that.) That's, apparently, how they start off building muscle tone in the womb. Premie babies who don't get this are much floppier than they should be as they progress, less muscle tone or whatever.
 

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Evolution is a wondrous thing.

Myth busting? Effects of embryo positioning and egg turning on hatching success in the water snake Natrix maura
Nevertheless, it is assumed that within a few hours after oviposition, reptile embryos rise to the top of the egg and start adhering to the inner membrane of the shell18,21. Thus, if the egg is turned after the embryo has attached itself, the weight of the yolk could impede normal development or tear both the vitelline and extra-embryonic membranes18,22,23, leading to death or malformations18,21,22,23.
They don't really know.

But it is clear reptiles that lay eggs which are then buried have evolved not to need repositioning until hatching.
 
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MaeZe

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I don't know if this fits in the discussion, but it reminded me of another thing to possibly take into consideration. Developing babies probably need to NOT be TOO free floating in a too-big womb, because of muscle development. When babies are born prematurely, one of the things they have to do therapy with them on is often folding them back up into that fetal position and making them push and struggle a little against the pressure. (I mean, super gently, but, basically that.) That's, apparently, how they start off building muscle tone in the womb. Premie babies who don't get this are much floppier than they should be as they progress, less muscle tone or whatever.

Makes sense and probably needs consideration when growing fetuses to term in vitro. So many things the old sci-fi stories leave out while we modern sci-fi writers can show our stuff. :aliensmile:
 

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Evolution is a wondrous thing.

Myth busting? Effects of embryo positioning and egg turning on hatching success in the water snake Natrix mauraThey don't really know.

But it is clear reptiles that lay eggs which are then buried have evolved not to need repositioning until hatching.

Non avian reptiles are different from birds in this respect, because (generally) there is no maternal care of eggs. Pythons and crocodilians do guard their eggs, but I don't think they actively turn them. Birds turn their eggs, and there is evidence (in chickens, at least, that failure to turn regularly will create problems). Egg incubators change position every few hours.

Mammals are, by their nature, going to develop from the moment of implantation (and even before) in a dynamic environment, though. CF mentioned women who were brain dead who gave birth to babies, true, but not all have been successful, and the brain dead condition happened later in pregnancy. I don't know of any who became brain dead or persistently vegetative during the first few weeks of pregnancy and successfully carried to term (I guess I'm sort of an aberration, but I always thought that keeping a woman who is a long way from term breathing in order to gestate her baby is rather creepy--too close to acknowledging that women's main purpose in the minds of many is to serve as passive wombs, but that's an aside).

Also, it's possible for a baby to be born free of obvious defects but still to have had a less-than-optimal outcome in some ways. Before studies showed the ill effects of smoking and drinking during early pregnancy, many smokers and drinkers (including my own mom) had healthy babies, but we will always wonder if we may have been robbed of a few IQ points or if any of our less-than-optimal quirks of skill deficits that aren't in the range of disability but still frustrating may have resulted from our prenatal environment (note my mom always insisted she was a very light smoker at that time and I know she has always had only very occasional drinks as well).

Or maybe we were just lucky, because responses to environmental conditions also fall along a spectrum.

That's the problem with most studies on humans, actually. Ethically (or practically), we've been restrained from concocting double-blind, controlled clinical trials on lifestyle factors, so most of our data come from retrospective analysis of data based on self reports or simple observation. People are notoriously selective and subjective on their self reports and on their assessment of activity levels, diet and substance use.

Who really remembers exactly what they ate or did each day ten, twenty or thirty years ago (or even last week)?

I think Lizmonster has some leeway here, but if I were writing such a story, I'd probably indicate that the artificial womb environment provided movement and chemical and auditory stimuli to mimic a natural pregnancy and that, if relevant, the family or caregivers who would be taking custody of the gestating baby upon its birth) might even speak in its presence or provide voice recordings. I imagine many prospective parents would be interested in visiting their little "genetics project" as often as possible anyway.

If you're shooting for realism, you can even mention that interpreting research on outcomes in natural pregnancies was still confused and conflicting, but early work with artificial wombs suggest that a static environment resulted in more lost pregnancies, or something like that.
 
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I don't know of any who became brain dead or persistently vegetative during the first few weeks of pregnancy and successfully carried to term

Editing because I misread your comment. I see there is a difference between becoming brain dead early on, and already being so when you become pregnant, anyhow, on to my original comment...

This totally happens. It's mostly what happens when the nurses rape the patients at long-term care facilities. There was a big one in the news recently, she'd been in a coma for 14 years when she (surprise!) gave birth. Supposedly, no one noticed she was pregnant.

https://www.rollingstone.com/cultur...rth-woman-arisona-hacienda-healthcare-776902/
 
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lizmonster

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It sounds like as long as I've got gravity and enough floating space, the embryo is likely to be OK.

Which brings me back to why things go wrong early on.

The maternal factor includes several things. You have the uterus as an organ in itself, is it "normal" shaped, is the endometrium receptive for implantation (i.e. is it "sticky" enough for the embryo to be able to implant, to state it very simply--this can be stimulated by injecting hormones and such, in preparation to IVF for example), is the microbioma (the bacteria, viruses, cells all throughout our body, and in the uterus and vagina as well) advantageous, and if it's not, is there anything that can be done about it (but this is a very specialist, immunologist process which we can't really say anything about in general, this is different for every woman and what doesn't work for one woman may not be a problem for another and vice versa). Or does the uterus contract when placing a fertilized egg into the uterus, because it wants to get rid of the "foreign" egg inside of it.

The paternal factor is mostly karyotyping, which means that they investigate if the paternal chromosome package inside of the sperm cells is normal. If there are abnormalities here, for example when sperm cells carry a deviation or abnormality of some sort, this could be the problem of the fertilized egg not implementing. This is a completely natural process, as I said before, because the body "gets rid" of a "faulty" pack of genes that would grow into an unhealthy or non-viable human being if the body would do nothing about it.

The embryonal factor includes mostly karyotyping as well. If there are problems in the cell deviation and therefore a cell abnormality occurs, the pregnancy is most likely to fail (or the implantation, for that matter).

So, theoretically, you could solve these issues if you know what the problem is. The most tricky part is the maternal microbioma, there are so many bacteria, viruses, cells, etc. that could be the problem, that this is a tricky thing to solve in real life. But, in your novel you could perhaps invent a thing that could easily (or more easy than irl) sense what the problem exactly is, so you could optimize the maternal microbioma if that is the problem you want to be solved.

Does this answer your question?

I'm still trying to figure out if it's plausible to remove the human factor and get any consistency. I understand sometimes cell division goes wrong, not necessarily for any concrete reason; but I'm wondering if there's some optimal cocktail that will work for embryos that don't go wrong at the early cell division stage, or if that's research we haven't done.

Such research would be a massive ethical minefield, so I know why we don't do it. I'm just wondering how much we still don't know about all this, or if this is a case of "we can't mimic this with machines because X."

Does anybody know why IVF embryos are implanted (or frozen) so quickly? I assume it's because we can't keep them alive outside a maternal environment for very long - but maybe it's an ethical thing?
 

PiaSophia

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It sounds like as long as I've got gravity and enough floating space, the embryo is likely to be OK.

Which brings me back to why things go wrong early on.



I'm still trying to figure out if it's plausible to remove the human factor and get any consistency. I understand sometimes cell division goes wrong, not necessarily for any concrete reason; but I'm wondering if there's some optimal cocktail that will work for embryos that don't go wrong at the early cell division stage, or if that's research we haven't done.

Such research would be a massive ethical minefield, so I know why we don't do it. I'm just wondering how much we still don't know about all this, or if this is a case of "we can't mimic this with machines because X."

Does anybody know why IVF embryos are implanted (or frozen) so quickly? I assume it's because we can't keep them alive outside a maternal environment for very long - but maybe it's an ethical thing?

Well, IVF embryo's are implanted or frozen quickly, because otherwise the quality of the embryo goes down. After fertilizing the eggs, you wait about 3 days before implanting it. You wait about 5 or 6 days before freezing it (because you want to see if the egg evolves into a blastocyst, which not all fertilized eggs will do, and if they don't there's no point in freezing them anyway). With a microscope the embryo gets "graded" to see whether it has a good, average or low chance of ending in a successful pregnancy. You obviously don't want to wait too long to implant the egg, because the implantation takes place only a few days after the fertilization (which, in this case, takes place outside of the womb because of the IVF procedure). If you'd wait a few weeks, for example, the egg/embryo wouldn't have a chance to survive because it needs maternal blood perfusion to grow.

As to your other question: I don't think there's an optimal cocktail that works for all embryos to grow successfully. Yet. Otherwise we wouldn't have failed IVF treatments...
There is a thing called preimplantation genetic screening, which is used to find out if an embryo has a certain severe genetic defect (used in parents that have a high risk of conceiving a baby with such defects). This is still very new, and the only thing I personally know about this in detail is that it is highly controversial. Because in theory, you could abort any pregnancy that doesn't fit your every wish (e.g. you're having a boy when you really want a girl, or something like that). So they are very cautious with this and only use it in high risk couples. But then again, this doesn't guarantee a healthy and successful pregnancy because there's more to it than just the embryonal factors...