To consider egg donation for third DC at 44?

[underlinethat]

Just that really. I have two beautiful DC, and have always been desperate for a third. I have had three losses in the past two years and have accepted that my eggs are not up to it. I am though pretty good according to past experience at getting and staying pregnant. I have been devastated by the losses we have suffered and feel strongly that there is somebody missing from our family.

I have started to consider egg donation, but somehow, for a third, this seems ... wrong. I don't know why - something to do with being greedy, and feeling that I should be satisfied with what I have got (for which I am very lucky). It feels as though if you have no children, or would like a sibling for one, egg donation is 'justified.' But for a third ... maybe it's a bit mad? Also ... I would be 45 by the time a child arrived, if, that is, it worked out.

What does everyone think? Please be kind if you can - recent losses have left me a little delicate!

I've done egg sharing on 2 occasions. I will be totally honest it was only for the free treatment ( only paid for drugs). Although I was happy to help. Situation exactly as described by a PP; my young with good eggs but husband failed vasectomy reversal. Unfortunately my treatment didn't work until a later attempt when I kept all eggs. It is only now that I have my own 2 children that I felt compelled to find out the results of the egg share which was that shockingly there have been several [vague] children born as a result of my donation. I'm glad I found this out as they will have the option to have my info and would like to make my children aware of the situation incase this happens.
I am delighted the treatment worked for the recipient and would be happy to meet the young people in future and obviously wish them all the best. I would say I am curious about them but maybe in the manner of a distant well meaning relative.
On the other hand I think I would have felt differently if I hadn't managed to have children eventually myself. It would have been incredibly difficult . Also the HFEA do specify the sex of the children when disclosing and rightly or wrongly I may have been envious if the recipient had the "other" sex child/ren to mine. But in my case they are the same. Just being completely honest OP.
Good luck with your decision.

You say you’re good at getting and staying pregnant but you had three consecutive miscarriages in the last two years, so I’m not sure how you worked that out. Do you know for sure that it was your eggs that were the problem?

At 44, recurrent pregnancy loss is almost certain to be an egg issue.

My clinic has a miscarriage rate of nearly 70% for women in this age group, compared to 22% for under 35s

I am 40 with 2 dc & 3 mc in last few years. I would love a Third but don't think it's going to happen.

It can become an all consuming obsession & if I wasn't already concerned & anxious about having another dc with additional needs as well as financial & practical matters, I may consider donation/IVF. I also feel greedy for wanting another when many struggle for a first.

Agree with PP though that you'd need to check the validity of your eggs before jumping to conclusions. Thanks for an interesting thread that really resonates with me. I'm extremely heartened to hear that the longing can disappear in a year or 2. I now believe this is possible rather than people learning to come to terms with it & am going to try to go with the natural way & don't think I'll have any regrets this way. Whatever you end up doing OP, good luck

Thanks 430West I had no idea. Well OP I think if you’re up for it and your partner has no issue then go for it!

Without wanting to rain on your parade OP at 44 and with a history of MC's I don't think it would be advisable. At your age and with assisted conception the risks are considerably higher anyway. I would count my blessings and move on.

No worries

OP, I've got to be honest, this isn't something I would do. I have one DD conceived through IVF (own eggs/sperm) and we are planning another cycle for a second DC.

We would have been ok with donor gametes in principle, but not to have one DC biologically ours and another that wasn't.

How do you think the DC would feel being the Odd One Out?

Somehow I think it would be worse to have 2 Bio and one non-bio. I would worry that the 2 would somehow gang up on the third - DC can be cruel and this has the potential to be a very hurtful weapon with which to be unkind to a DC.

At your age and with assisted conception the risks are considerably higher anyway

Not really, a donor egg means that the OP faces risks similar to those of a woman the age of the donor, not one of her chronological age.

The pregnancy might be a bit harder though, but that varies considerably between women.

OP one thing to consider is the emotional toll of IVF if it doesn't work. I have done several cycles of unsuccessful IVF, and I have also had a miscarriage, and I would say that in terms of misery and devastation they felt fairly similar to me. Failed IVF is utterly wretched.

Biology and shared genes may not matter to you OP, but they may matter a great deal to the child born out of this arrangement.

I also agree absolutely with posters who have said most eggs are not donated particularly willingly. If you remove the quid pro quo deal the donors have with their ivf clinic, would they be so keen to donate?

I'd say at 44 with two healthy children you should probably count your blessings and accept your fertile window has closed. It happens to every woman eventually.

Your perimenopausal hormonal brain desperately wants another throw of the genetic dice before the game is over. I think a lot of us struggle with that mid-life thing, having to realise that you will never again feel the flutter of life under your ribs, a newborn at your breast

This, times a hundred.

Also, I noticed you dismissed pretty glibly the post by hatchetface - a donor conceived child herself - presumably because her account wasn't what you wanted to hear.

If you remove the quid pro quo deal the donors have with their ivf clinic, would they be so keen to donate?

I'm sorry to go on, but you're missing the point here - if there were no quid pro quo, then the donating couple would probably miss out on having DCs altogether.

Every person I know who has participated in egg sharing viewed it as an incredibly fortuitous opportunity to access the IVF treatment they so desperately wanted.

What do you think would happen if egg sharing were banned?

*egg sharing as the donor

How am I missing the point? I understand fully why people donate when they're doing ivf - to get a discount on their treatment that they might not otherwise be able to afford.

What am I missing?

It's an entirely cynical move on the part of the ivf clinics to drum up more business.

Ivf is a racket, there's no reason for it to cost what it does other than a steady stream of buyers prepared to pay whatever it takes to have a baby.

If you remove the quid pro quo deal the donors have with their ivf clinic, would they be so keen to donate?

In this rather spurious argument.

If the quid pro quo arrangement were removed, they would't even be at the clinic in the first place.

drum up more business

Help more infertile couples to have children (there, just corrected that for you )

Are you suggesting the business plan is altruistic then? That they don't have marketing departments and accountants?

Hi all, thanks again so much for all your replies. Just to correct something, I have not had miscarriages - I have had three terminations for medical reasons. Different chromosomal issues but each time I have got pregnant seemingly easily and kept babies that were very sick, to about 13/14 weeks. The consultant said that most women would have miscarried these babies, but my body is good at holding on for some reason - or put another way, bad at rejecting these babies. It has been truly devastating and in one sense I am probably a little unhinged still! But anyway - just to say it’s my eggs which are faulty, which is not to say of course that IVF with good eggs would work.

Funday - what was glib about my response to hatchet? I think I thanked her for her comments, which i said I appreciated! I didn’t dismiss what she said, I took it on board!

I recognise the moral and ethical ambiguities of this, hence my original question. And I think I acknowledged somewhere else that the choice is taken away from the donor child.

Having said that, I still think that life is very complicated. I would imagine not every donor child feels the same about the circumstances of their conception. I believe Hatchet’s family also kept this secret which I would imagine must be highly problematic.

I certainly haven’t had the impression that gamete donations are a ‘cynical move’ by clinics. I have felt the opposite really. The donors write incredibly kind and insightful letters to recipients and potential children. I got the impression that they had thought carefully about the implications of what they were doing. I came away from the appointment where I was allowed to read about the available donors feeling complete humbled and overwhelmed, and wishing I had been as thoughtful and generous myself as a younger person. Some mentioned having witnessed friends and family members going through IVF and wanting to help others going through the same. Some already had children and said they wanted others to feel the joy they had experienced themselves. Who knows, of course, whether words on a page are sincere. Perhaps it is all stage-managed by the clinics. It wasn’t the impression I got, though. It would be very interesting to hear from any donors reading this thread about their motivations, experiences with the clinics etc.

I don't know what the age gap will be ... but I wouldn't want such a large gap between siblings.

Also being an old mum when your child starts school... you'll be 49/50 when they start reception.

Added to that are the risks of being an older mum.

If it was you didn't have any DC understand ... but in my hometown I know these kids who stay rows away from their parents in church because they are a bit embarrassed. Their dad is very old though... in his late 70s.

Sitting rows away from their embarrassing parents in church doesn’t sound terribly Christian sandy! Not sure if this is a primary concern - I had the most embarrassing (step)dad imaginable. 😉

I agree. But the kids were around 8 and 10. Dad was in his 70s and people thought he was their granddad.

You guys aren't near that age though.

OP it must have been devastating to have to terminate three pregnancies at a late stage because of chromosomes abnormalities. I think that's even more emotionally devastating than early miscarriages.

This makes it all even more difficult as in addition to the 'last chance saloon' emotions, there is almost inevitably the matter of dealing with your grieving.

If you had time the best thing to do would be to deal with the grieving process first but clearly that's a conflict as the longer you wait the older mum you become.

Still think that a few session with a specialised counsellor would be a good investment.