"The decision to use a donor was hard, who that donor was, was an easy choice."

I haven’t been writing much over the past year or so following our second miscarriage last year. We’ve spent the time grieving, processing and figuring out what might be in store for us next. In reality, although I haven’t been writing or posting alot on my blog, a lot has been happening. Many people have been asking, curious, hoping I suppose that we’re not giving up completely and hoping we have something in the pipeworks. I suppose those people know me too well. So I want to update everyone on what has been going on in our world.

The last year has been a difficult, joyous, and eventful. When we had our second miscarriage in June of last year, after our 11th round of IVF and 8 years of trying for a baby, not only did we have to grieve the loss of our baby, but we knew we had to move on to something else. We didn’t have any more embryo’s in the freezer and the thought of another stim cycle was overwhelming, we were exhausted, completely beaten, and we knew we couldn’t keep going on this painful merry go round.

After discussions with our specialist we decided our next step towards a chance of creating our family was exploring donor eggs.

We didn’t specifically know there was something wrong with my eggs. It’s not that I didn’t have any. We always had really good results with regards to egg retrievals. We had both been tested for everything possible, genetically, with no problems arising. But time and time again (11 in total) those little embryo’s have either failed to implant, or haven’t held on very long resulting in an early miscarriage. For our last cycle we tried genetic testing of our embryo’s but those that were able to be tested came back abnormal and inconsistent. It was clear something wasn’t adding up, but no one so far could figure out exactly what. As far as invitro technology has come in the past decades, there is still so much they don’t know about infertility and failed implantation. We just couldn’t keep going with the same again, we were exhausted, fed up and lacking hope. What was the point of continuing with the same recipe when it wasn’t working and knowing it would only most likely end in heart ache and more money. We needed to move onto something else, try something new. We discussed donor eggs with our specialist and we all agreed it was the next step.

Moving onto donor eggs wasn’t an easy decision to make. Whilst we knew logically it was the next step. There was a lot to process and consider. The whole time we had been going through IVF, I always knew that if we failed to have a baby with our own eggs or sperm (gamete’s) the next stage to move to was donor gamete’s. But at what point do you draw the line? On one hand we knew we couldn’t keep doing what we were doing, but were we really truly ready to completely close a door on our own genetic child?

This was a decision made with immense grief, particularly from my part. Whenever I had dreamed about the child that we hoped one day to have, that child had always been thought of as a combination of both of our physical features and characteristics. The things you dislike most about yourself you hope your child won’t inherit, yet the things you do, you hope they will. Family conversations are often based around inherited characteristics, genes, physical features, favoured or not. How did I feel about having a child who I had no genetic link to? Knowing I would never look at my child and quietly reflect to myself that they had my or my family’s eyes, hair or nose. This was heart breaking, not only would my child never take after me, but also no one in my family. This was something that honestly took months to consider. I had to grieve for the dream of my own genetic child that would never be, and close a door. It was an incredibly difficult time. But ultimately I knew that no matter what, having a child, was far more important to me than genes. I still had the opportunity to carry, and feel a baby inside me, give birth to, care for, nurture, feed and love a baby. With my genes or not, I knew I had love to give, together as parents we had so much love to give and this is what children needed most. We weren’t ready to completely give up on having a family of our own just yet.

We have been extremely lucky to have been offered the option of egg donation from so many selfless souls over the years. Particularly since I started this blog and started sharing our story. I have been completely blown away, time and time again by the kind people who have reached out to us and offered the most precious gift anyone could ever give. Some of these people I have never met, some have offered through mutual friends and some are our closest friends and family. I cannot begin to explain the gratitude we feel towards anyone who is willing to give someone the chance to have a family. The absolute ultimate gift, a child, hope.

There is so much to consider when choosing a donor. Will it be someone anonymous or known? Who is the right fit for your family? What relationship do you want to have with the donor? Does your donor want to be known to your potential child? Do you want your child to know they were conceived with donor gametes? Do you want someone who has similar physical features as you or your partner? Do you have the option of a family member who can donate to keep that genetic link if possible, if this is important to you. These are really important and very personal things to think about, consider and to discuss with your loved ones before going down this path.

We knew for a long time who we would like our donor to be. One of the first people to have offered to us, quietly, respectfully and confidently many years ago, one of our closest friends, Kat. When she first offered it was so many years ago, whilst at the time we were humbled, we weren’t ready, but it gave us so much comfort to know the option was there for us if we ever reached that point. As time progressed, after more and more failed cycles, we started to consider it with more depth and we knew it was the right decision for us. To be honest the decision to use a donor was hard, who that donor was, was an easy choice.

So after our miscarriage, discussions with our specialist, each other, time, tears and lots of support from our wonderful friends and family we began the process of Kat donating her eggs to us, to help us achieve our family. Formally once we actually made the decision this process took approximately 6 Months. I want to share with you what was involved from start to finish so those who are considering or are interested to know more can educate themselves. This is our experience only.

It all began with our intended donor going to her GP to seek a referral to our fertility specialist. Our specialist sent her for all the preliminary tests, bloods, scans, genetic screening, all in a hope to gauge from a physical perspective that she was a suitable donor.

Once our specialist was happy, we were referred to the IVF clinic to begin the process and formal screening.

We were required to have 5 counselling sessions with a fertility counsellor through our clinic. These sessions consisted of 2 sessions for our intended donor and her partner, 2 sessions for us (intended parents or recipients) and one session with all 4 of us together with the counsellor.

After the counselling sessions were complete, the paperwork lodged and accepted, screening tests completed, medication and cycle paid for we received the green light to go ahead, all up this took about 4-5 months. Next was the protocol for the cycle.

Things are slightly more complex with a donor cycle as it’s the aim to transfer the fertilised egg (embryo) from our donor to me, so we had to sync our cycles with the contraceptive pill so we were on the same timeline in the months leading up to the procedure.

In basic terms the overview of the plan was that we would both take the pill for a few weeks, then stop the pill on the same day, bringing on our period and the commencement of our cycle at the same time (hopefully). At this point our donor would start administering the stimulating (stim) hormones via injection, to grow her eggs. I would start progesterone to grow the uterus, she would ‘stim’ for several days/weeks (somewhere between 10-20) whilst being monitored with regular ultrasounds and blood tests to check the progression and growth of the follicles (where the eggs come from). I would also be monitored to ensure the uterus was developing nicely in time to accept the embryo. When our donors follicles had grown enough she would administer a second ‘trigger’ drug to release the eggs. 36 hours later they would then ‘retrieve’ the eggs through a procedure under anaesthetic. The mature retrieved eggs would then be injected with Rob’s fresh sperm in a procedure called ‘icsi.’ The fertilised eggs (embryo’s) are then left to develop and grow over a period of 5 days to ideally what is called a blastocyst stage and the strongest is then transferred into my uterus to hopefully achieve a pregnancy and any others are frozen for later. Easy right? Well that was the plan.

So the exciting day came where we both commenced our cycles Kat administered her first injection and we all celebrated the moment. It really was such an exciting and overwhelming time from our part. The future held so much hope and anticipation, the first time we had felt this for a long time. Things chugged along nicely, day after day of injections, scan’s, blood tests. I went along to most appointments, looking after Kat’s children in the waiting room whilst the doctors and nurses checked on the progress. After about 20 days we got the go ahead that the follicles had developed fantastically and we she was ready for the trigger injection and egg retrieval. The day of the procedure was so nerve wracking. Normally it was me putting my life on hold for surgery, and me who was taking all the risk, now it was someone else doing that for us. It was a really strange feeling for me to be a witness and passenger to this. I was filled with so much anxiety and overwhelming gratitude that anyone would be prepared to go through this for us. There was also lots of waiting, anyone that’s ever had a loved one go into surgery knows the pang of waiting for news.

Our amaamzing egg donor Kat ready for egg retrieval.

Next came one of the most emotional moments of my life. Having our egg donor tell us they retrieved 29 eggs! I could not believe it, we felt absolute joy. I couldn’t speak, only embrace her and say thank you over and over. 29 eggs is an unbelievable result. Almost unheard of. we were beyond grateful.

Over the next few days we received updates of the progress, of the 29 eggs retrieved 23 were mature enough for icsi, 18 of those fertilised. 18 became embryos! Then they leave them to grow and develop over the next few days, normally only half of the embryos’ will survive to a 5 day blastocyst.

After 5 days we headed to the clinic to have one of our beautiful embryos’ transferred, when we spoke to the embryologist we were overjoyed to hear that there were 19 perfect healthy blastocyst embryo’s. 19! That’s right not only had none of them died, but one, which was not counted in the initial fertilisation count had caught up to the rest and increased our numbers. We could not have dreamt of a better result. We had the best and healthiest embryo transferred and then spent an anxious two weeks waiting for the result. We were also lucky enough to have 8 embryo’s that were able to be frozen for another day. We have never had this many waiting for us ‘on ice’ before. Everything told us that we had made the right decision to progress with a donor IVF cycle.

Finally after two long weeks we received the call from the IVF nurse following the blood test. I was pregnant! The first person I told after my husband was Kat. I could not have got this far without her help. We could not believe our absolute luck, we felt like the luckiest people alive, finally after all the heart ache, years and years, the clouds and parted and sunshine was upon us.

All of our levels were fantastic, everything was looking great, after a few weeks of followup tests things were progressing perfectly. We started booking in scans and appointments, and the morning sickness kicked in. It never felt so good to be doubled over a toilet vomiting, we were bursting with excitement and joy. I was also due almost exactly a year to the day after our last baby was due.

Everyone told me not to get too excited, we had been in this situation twice before and it had ended in miscarriage, but it was so hard not too. After 9 years of immense pain and sadness it was such joy and respite finally to feel hope, to be excited about the future, to talk about ‘our baby’ finally, it was our turn. Instead of watching everyone else around me fall pregnant and give birth, we were next. It’s hard not to think about it when your body starts changing, every moment it’s telling something wonderful is happening and most of all your feel immense love for that child from the very moment you know of it’s existence.

But again, it was short lived, only days before our first scan I was hit with overwhelming pain and bleeding and we lost our baby. Again. This was our third miscarriage. Again, how cruel could the world be. Three pregnancies and still no baby. 12 cycles of IVF, donor eggs, 9 years trying, and again it happened. I told myself I was crazy to have gotten my hopes up, I should have listened to what everyone said. I shouldn’t have been surprised it happened again, of course it happened, this is what happens, everything for us ends in tears and grief when it comes to our dream of a baby. I’m not sure who took it harder, me, Rob or Kat. Each of us was equally devastated. We shared the grief, as we had three times before this, but this time Kat wasn’t just there supporting us through our trauma, it was her trauma too.

I’m not going to delve into the darkness that is miscarriage I’ve covered that before here. It’s the same, it doesn’t get easier. It’s dark, very dark, but after a while of putting one foot infront of the other and dragging yourself out of bed when all you want to do is curl up into a ball of nothingness, it gets a little easier, the days become less dark and you start to move forward. It’s still always there. It pangs when you least expect it, but you get on with things. What choice do you have?

After a few months we started to again think of our little embryo’s on ice waiting for us. The thought of them hurt, why expose yourself to something that inevitably ended in tears, but then after a little while longer, you think there might be a chance and we found ourselves again at the clinic for another transfer.

Over the next few months we did back to back frozen embryo transfers, but cycle after cycle, nothing but negative pregnancy tests. At the closure of 2018 we have now completed 14 cycles, we still have some embryo’s left for next year, who knows what 2019 will bring.

I will forever be eternally grateful to Kat for the gift she has given us. One day I hope to hold our baby in my arms and think of the wonderful selfless person that helped us become a family.

If you would like more information about the egg donation process in Victoria please visit the website of the Victorian Assisted Reproductive Treatment Authority donor conception page.