Donor eggs

[JessieMcJessie]

I am 41 and having no luck TTC naturally. IVF success rates with own eggs at my age are horribly low.

We haven't yet tried IVF with my eggs but I am starting to wonder if our only chance would be IVF with donor egg. However I still feel very strongly that part of my motivation for having a baby is to make a person who is half me and half DH. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has been through the psychological adjustment to the idea of donor eggs, and how you come round to the idea.

My very best friends are a gay female couple who had a lovely boy with donor sperm and the one who did not carry him feels very much his parent. But they were of course starting from the point where it was never physically possible for them to make a baby together. Maybe I need to accept that for us it's effectively the same situation, just age rather than gender that's the obstacle?

[Heels99]

I was on the waiting list for donor eggs having had three unsuccessful Icsi cycles with my own which were poor quality. I was at the top of the waitiNg list when my 4th cycle worked. After 3 unsuccessful cycles and facing the prospect of never having children I was beyond caring that they I may end using donor eggs. But you have to have counselling befor donation and I found that hard just because I was so distressed about the whole thing.
I will be honest, at 41 time is not in your side I would crack on with your own eggs but get in wait list for donor and consider international donation where there are less or no waiting lists.

[purplemeggie]

Hi Jessie. 41 is quite late, but women can and do have babies into their mid-forties, so it's not an absolute. Difficult to answer your question without further info - have you had any investigations into why you're not conceiving? How long have you been trying? If you embark on IVF, are you limited by funds to one, two, three attempts?

Assuming that you haven't had any investigations, it would be worth you starting with AMH and FSH levels, as these can be done for approx. £200 and will give you a reasonable idea of your chances. And consider a lap and dye too to see if your tubes are open. Then you can make an informed decision about whether it's worth trying with OE.

If you've got funds for a few goes, it's probably worth trying at least once with OE. DE is not a magic wand - I had two fresh cycles and one frozen cycle last year with OE, and have had two failed DE cycles this year....seems I have an implantation issue, but nobody really expected this because I have a 7yo ds who was conceived naturally (infertility was caused by a botched C-section).

Good luck....hope it works out for you.

[18yearsoftrying]

Hi OP,

My DD is donor egg & sperm. Initially we were only aware of needing sperm so we had counselling as I felt like you do currently.

I was told that the child wouldn't be ours genetically but would be ours biologically. This helped me see it clearly.

For me personally we chose donor egg to eliminate a genetic disease carried on my side.

I went through a reay angry phase that the baby wouldn't look like us, wouldn't be a blend of DP & me. It took a very long time for me to accept it but I did focus on the positives & got there in the end.

My AMH after 18 years of trying was abysmal. 0.52. The longer we kept trying for, the worse my fertility became. Vicious cycle.

Wishing you every success in your decision

[JessieMcJessie]

Thanks for the replies. There's a horrible article in today's Daily Mail about donor children.

My question was really about the psychological side of donor eggs. No question that we will try OE first. My AMH and FSH are fine for my age and we have conceived naturally once (mc at 5 weeks) so tubes should be fine. DH unfortunately only has 1% normal morphology though, that needs more investigation but we are joping ICSI will be the solution. However my fear is that ICSI into an old egg is less likely to work than using a donor egg.

[18yearsoftrying]

I wasn't aware of the article but I assume given it's in that paper I wouldn't give it the time of day to be honest. Doesn't have the best reputation for being factually correct or morally right.

My genetic/bio eggs fertilised via ICSI over many cycles & only a few got to blasto stage but these didn't lead to anything hence the need for DE.

Fragmentation even if they do make it to blasto is another hurdle that needs to be overcome by the fertilised egg. It's very much like IVF & ICSI itself....you clear one hurdle & another load jump in your way.

There's no doubt that mentally you do have to be in "the right place" to accept a donor. It took DH a long, long time to accept it would be our only chance. It came down to the fact that it was the only way I would become pregnant.

We did discuss using some from someone we know but decided against it.

If you don't mind me asking, are you worried about not bonding/not accepting him/her?

[JessieMcJessie]

Yes, I should not really admit to reading the Daily Fail. I only look at it to see what drivel they are peddling so I can be more ready to challenge it when it comes up in conversation. Honest.

That said, the main person upon whom the article focussed was a woman who had been born as a result of sperm donation and had successfully campaigned to change the law on whether children can find out the identity of their genetic parents when they reach 18.

Don't mind you asking at all about bonding fears. Yes, I very much see parenthood as DH and me creating a new life together. While I can of course appreciate that carrying the baby and bringing up the child is a huge and absolutely essential part of creating that new life, I think that I would struggle if I knew that he or she had nothing of my genes in him or her. This is partly because my brother will not be having children and so if I do not either then our family line is at an end.

I know I'm slightly getting ahead of myself given that we haven't even tried with OE yet, but maybe just as well that I am thinking about it since Heels has highlighted that there are waiting lists for eggs and I wasn't aware of that.

[Darkchoc]

I too read the article in the DM and did not view it as inherently horrible. It raised some very interesting points from the "donor child's" perspective. What I did find disturbing, however, were the horrifically nasty comments posted at the end by members of the public.

As a woman myself who is using donor sperm with IVF, I had an interest in the article and I believe that it is every child's right to know who their biological parents are at the age of eighteen, if not before - though laws of different countries frequently prevent that. The fact that one of the women campaigned to remove total donor anonymity, is in my opinion, a giant step for children's human rights.

I also felt it was brave of these women to voice their own personal experience of having been conceived via the donor route, not just because it revealed the impact upon their own lives, but also that of their parents. Research is starting to emerge, as I was informed by my IVF counsellor that couples often struggle emotionally after conceiving with donor gametes, often resulting in domestic violence for the first time, and then separation and/or divorce. Certainly some, though not all, of these issues were touched upon by the article. As for the DM...it always has a contentious, moralizing axe to grind.

[JessieMcJessie]

Sorry, I should have perhaps been clear that I too believe that it is a positive thing for the child to be able to contact the donor in the future.
However the reason that I described it as "horrible" is that one of the interviewees seemed to be saying that she was so messed up she wished she hadn't been born.

[Persipan]

Yeah, but it's the Daily Fail so I'd take it with a bucketload of salt that she actually said that, or anything approaching it.

[18yearsoftrying]

Jessie, I could have written your posts. You're welcome to browse through my history!

One of the reasons it took so long for us to commit to using donkr was due to one of your reasons. DH is an only child & it was his hesitation in the whole 'It won't be our genepool' minefield that stalled us.

In the end we decided that the child was ours regardless, that it was a means to an end. We didn't work so hard to achieve so much to then leave it to third parties in our Wills that wouldn't necessarily appreciate it.

On my part, I finally came to the two deciding factors that were a) I knew I would love him/her unconditionally b) S/he wouldn't inherit my dodgy gene that causes disability in the longterm. I tried to see the positives and in my case they outweighed the 'I don't want a child' option.

[18yearsoftrying]

Donkr?! Is that a new word I made up?!

Donor, obviously

[Pocket1]

When DH and me (then both early 40s) realised we needed donor egg in order to become parents it took as a very short time to decide to go ahead. We were very pragmatic and have never looked back - we now have the most beautiful DD who is almost 2. She is the image of my DD but she's like me in personality. She is my everything. I'm thankful to the angel egg donor who helped us. But she is definitely 100% my daughter

[JessieMcJessie]

Thanks for the replies 18years and pocket. I guess we have a little bit more breathing space if we use DE so the thing to do is to focus on trying with our own eggs and sperm now while I am marginally young enough for it to be possible, then take stock again if it doesn't work. Really appreciate your insight and congrats on your DC.

[18yearsoftrying]

If your lining is good each month then yes, you're in a good position but please bear in mind the waiting list for DE. I ended up going overseas as I wasn't prepared to wait in the UK.

Please keep us posted, I would love an update xx