Hi all,
My only sister is in her mid-30s and has never been pregnant. She and her husband have been TTC for a while (unexplained infertility), have had some IUI without success and are now waiting for IVF.
She seems to feel that the infertility is all "her fault" and the IVF won't work (I think this is because they have had trouble getting her to make follicles on the IUI cycles? and sperm counts etc are fine)
My mum, who is also finding this really hard, says my sister is also sad because everyone around her is pregnant/ having babies, and she (sis) doesn't understand why no one has offered to donate eggs to her. Mum is saying this to warn me, not to shit-stir. My mum is desperate for sis to get pregnant- she will be a great mum, and is really struggling with this.
I'm a bit older, and have children already. I'm not planning to have more, lots of reasons including having had life-threatening complications around delivery. Obviously I am first person to turn to as a donor. My gut reaction is that I can't do it. I would give a kidney to my sister or parent or child at the drop of a hat, but in my heart I know that if she had a child using my donated eggs, I would always look at that child as being mine. I don't think I could watch him/her being brought up by someone else. I don't want to have a child "with" my BIL, and I don't want my children to have a half-sibling who doesn't live with them. My husband feels similarly and doesn't want me to do it.
My sister says that if she had to use donor eggs she would only want to do this from a known donor so that she could tell the child about their donor. I think this is really brave and said with the best motives, but I really worry whether this would be confusing for the children involved.
Sorry- this is really long. I feel guilty and awful for not wanting to do this, but I can't help feeling that I wouldn't really be doing my sister a good turn if I felt like this about her child. But I'm worried that she"ll be devastated if IVF fails and then she approaches me about being a donor and I say no.
Can those of you who have been through this help me? Would I even be able to be a donor as I have had Obstetric cholestasis and So I'm not sure if the IVF hormones would be safe for me?
I'm preparing myself for some less than sympathetic replies, as I know that most of you on here have experience of infertility, but I hope you can help.