If you are a mother, did you feel potentially feel more inclined to donate to this before you had children?

[RickiTarr]

I’m just watching the BBC documentary series about surrogacy and thinking how my attitude to gametes and generic inheritance has changed since becoming a mother.

The first “traditional” or “straight” surrogate interviewed in this programme seems very blasé about her relationship with her own eggs. It’s just made me wonder.

Egg donation was never even on my radar until we decided to TTC no.1. Since then and especially since having our DC I do feel a lot more inclined to donate. However I am unlikely to do so because from what little I know, it's quite a rigorous process involving taking time off work/pain etc and I can't see a time when in the foreseeable future where I would be able to fit that in really. I've mentioned it to DH and he would be fine with me donating eggs but he can't countenance donating sperm. I suppose I think that's a shame as I cant understand his feeling on this given I don't feel the same about my eggs, but obviously his choice completely.

So potentially one could do this, their attempt fail and the recipients be successful, that seems a difficult circle to square.

Omg...that would haunt me...and sadly, sometimes your IVF doesn't work and you are forced to come to terms with it. To imagine your possible children out in the world would make that a greater struggle, I imagine. My sister struggled for years with infertility and had one child via IVF (her egg, her husband's sperm). Pretty sure she wouldn't be so grateful today if that single egg hadn't become her DD yet knowing another mom had her child.

One thing I have noticed about surrogacy is how it is falsely shown on TV shows (admittedly the lightweight comedy shows).

In Friends, Phoebe carries the embryos created by her brother and his wife. The storyline is that the wife (Alice) is too old to bear a child. An almost identical storyline was shown more recently in Superstore, where Dina acted as the surrogate mother for a baby created from the embryo of her boss and his wife, Jerusha, who was also too old to bear a child.

In each case, Dina and Phoebe were ‘just’ the incubators, who gave the children back to their biological parents after birth. Of course, in reality Alice and Jerusha would have been unlikely to have had viable eggs. The issue with older women having children is not so much the physicality of gestating and birthing a child, but egg quality. In reality, the children conceived through IVF and surrogacy would have had no relation to Alice or Jerusha.

In fairness to Superstore, it did very lightly draw attention to the issue of low-paid workers being more likely to be enticed by commercial surrogacy. It also lightly touched on the issue of pressure applied by a boss to his employee - the boss originally tried to get another employee to do it and she felt uncomfortable saying no - but ultimately it all had a happy ending, with no problems for either Dina or the baby.

And remember how Phoebe tries to get Rachel to convince the brother and his wife to give Phoebe one of the triplets? Cause it's really, really hard to give up a baby after birth. Even in a comedy show, they got that part right.

That's really awful about your daughter being targeted for her eggs at such a young age @Delphinium20
I think it's far worse in the USA where egg donors (we really need a better word for this, egg vendors?) are paid a hefty sum, maybe $10k.
Of course that is a huge temptation. Anyone without private wealth would find that a tempting offer I think.

In the U.K. compensation is limited to £750 but seeing adverts specifically mentioning holidays and travel makes me think that (if we are ever able to travel freely again post Covid) there is likely to be room for a more "flexible" approach, perhaps a holiday in Greece and a larger payment whilst there?

Regarding egg sharing, I have looked at this, checking prices on the local private fertility clinic (Care Fertility are one of the big players with lots of clinics in the U.K. Remember many NHS hospitals, such as my own, do not offer IVF but will contract out to the local private clinic for those who qualify for NHS funding). Their website quoted a flat rate of £1000 compared to the quoted cost of IVF at £3,750 not including drugs and other add ons. ie a discount far in excess of £750.

And as pp have pointed out, there is the risk that IVF will be unsuccessful for the donor whilst another woman successfully has a baby using her eggs which must be desperately hard to bear. They are entitled to find out about this, not sure about when. And of course children will be entitled to track down their genetic parents at some point in the future.

Something I have tried to get to the bottom of, with correspondence with the HFEA, is whether egg sharers have different IVF treatment and are more aggressively stimulated with higher drug doses. I don't know enough about it and haven't successfully got answers from the HFEA - in truth, I don't think they know, they don't monitor individual treatments. So for instance, listening to interviews with American egg donors on podcasts, they commonly have around 40 eggs collected per cycle. Now an individual woman having IVF would never need 40 eggs. I take a look at threads on the infertility board here to try to learn and understand more. Several women have said that their consultant reassured them that all they needed was one good egg, and in some cases that was what happened - only one egg but they got a baby! It was all they needed. Which brings me to another point. What is a good egg? Apparently some eggs are better quality than others. Can the clinic be trusted to give the egg sharing woman her good eggs if there are only a few and the others are lower quality? Or does the paying customer who is buying a donated egg get the best ones? I don't think this can possibly be policed, how would anyone know except I suppose the lab technicians at the clinic maybe. Only a whistleblower could shed light on this.

*IVF using donated eggs is quoted as £6,300-£10,750 on the care fertility website. No idea if NHS pays for any of this.

@FannyCann excellent questions! If I wasn't leaving for a vacation (isolated cabin in woods) in moments, I'd be digging into these questions for the US as well. Might shed some light on UK lab practices.

Will hope to follow up in future.

Care fertility can let you know about any children born from your egg donation.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist but it was about 18 months ago that I saw their quoted costs re egg sharing. I had screenshots which I have now lost/deleted but used them on Twitter and probably on Mumsnet. A little while later they had removed details of egg sharing from their website. Those quotes aren't there now.

Have a fab holiday @Delphinium20 That sounds bliss. Will you be in bear country?

I will be very interested in anything you find out in the future!

IVF using donated eggs is quoted as £6,300-£10,750 on the care fertility website. No idea if NHS pays for any of this.

I wonder though, if by the time a couple are at the stage of thinking about egg donors they will have already exhausted their NHS funded cycles. Obviously some it will be obvious they require egg donation, but maybe for many the egg quality (or lack of) won't be picked up until the cycles are done.

Good point AfternoonToffee

I found this on Care Fertility:

"We decided to look in to egg sharing at CARE Manchester, which reduced the cost of our ICSI cycle from £4,000 to £1,500."

"Please note: egg sharing is no longer available at CARE Fertility"

No idea why this is so, or if it is still available at other clinics. That explains why the costs are no longer quoted.

That's really interesting Fanny why would a fertility clinic that previously advertised and provided egg sharing (it really isn't sharing so much as giving away) have since removed that service and therefore that income stream.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist either rebut it makes you wonder why that would have happened. As a private business it's not often you stop doing something that makes you money, and from very little anyway. With egg sharing all the drugs and the harvesting process is being done anyway, there is no extra cost to the business to make it possible. I wonder if there were complaints on anything happened to make them stop?

If there were higher does drugs used to stimulate the ovaries for egg sharing clients and it resulted in several cases of OHSS I suppose it might give them cause to reconsider.

I watched The Fertility Business last week and it looked specifically at fertility clinics in Australia but the questions posed by the documentary makers seems applicable to the U.K. industry too.

When I was 20 I responded to an advert about egg donation (the advert was targeted to me as a Cambridge student, which I now think is a bit gross in and of itself), because it said that I could be paid £600 (iirc) and that seemed like loads of money to me and I thought I wouldn't mind donating at all. Fortunately the clinic said straight away that they didn't think I'd be a good donor as I was so young and hadn't had my own children. I look back and shudder at what could have happened if they had been less ethical about it - I was completely naive, had no real idea about the physical process and how gruelling it is and had no idea at all about how I'd feel now if I knew that I might have more children than my own two out there.

And that quote on the screenshot

"One of the multiple ladies who I have my eggs to shared my eggs has twins so their dream came true"

...she says in the context of having her own IVF successful and she got her second son.

Saying that though the fertility business is hardly going to share stories of women who had failed cycles but their eggs made babies elsewhere.

Imagine it ending "after seven gruelling cycles we were left without a baby, just debt, but this other woman she got twins and I'm so happy for them."

Not going to happen is it?!

@ChattyLion

I feel that because pregnancy and birth are so trivialised, the change it makes to women is trivialised. That has all kinds of negative consequences for women. I’m not surprised that women might feel differently about something after such an intense experience as pregnancy and birth.

I am not saying the only way to be a mother or to do mothering for a child is after pregnancy and birth. These are two different things.

There have been a lot of changes to the way we think about pregnancy and birth.

Some are, I suspect, because most people just don't have as much experience around pregnant women and babies. For many the first baby they ever hold is their own baby, the first pregnancy they have closely observed as well.

But also, we treat children generally as a commodity, albeit a very special one. But having children is seen as a lifestyle choice and many people don't see the greater community as having much or any obligation to them.

If you already see having a child that way, commercialising it explicitly seems natural.

@FannyCann Brown Bear country is for the summer! Spring we just go to Black Bear country (black bears are tame).

Very true SmokedDuck

More about egg sharing here:

www.completefertility.co.uk/fertility-treatments-services/fertility-treatments/egg-sharing

Egg donation carries serious risks and side effects and takes a massive toll - I'd never have known that pre children and now would do anything in my power to persuade DD not to donate eggs under any circumstances, should she ever be asked to. Nobody should ask that of a young woman, especially one who hasn't completed her own family, yet of course it's young women's eggs they want.

Oh my goodness @Delphinium20 To us in the U.K. where the worst danger to be found in an isolated cabin in the woods is finding a mouse in the toaster (happened to my sister. Mouse was toast. Toast was not available due to fused toaster.) a casual acceptance of wandering bears is awesome. Gorgeous animals that I don't want to share garden space with!

I have never wanted to donate eggs. Aside from the invasive medical element, it always worried me that a child of mine could be brought up in a way I didn't want eg violent or ultra religious family.

Surrogacy was always something I knew I couldn't do, even before wanting my own kids. I could not mentally separate a baby growing in my body as being anything other than mine. I never gave it much thought about other people doing it. If anything I found it noble. Even after I had my first child my opinion hadn't changed.

After child 2 is a different matter though. I have pregnancies that are very un fun to go through. Among other things, hyperemesis, huge sensitive bumps, obstetric cholostasis and two cesarean that weren't blue light emergencies, but definitely had to be done with much haste. The effects on my body are going to be life long and I am lucky enough to live in a country with a state health care system. What about women in commercial surrogacy countries that have post birth complications? The new family are hardly going to be paying for prolapse surgery years down the line. Or the care if a woman's existing children if her injuries mean she can no longer work such long hours or at all.

Dp actually did donate as a student, so there are potentially half siblings out there for my children. He was just on holiday and after quick cash, but now with all the dna websites, it would be easy to track him down if a vaguely close relative joins, or one of our kids when they are older. We would absolutely welcome them if that ever happens, but not all would feel the same way. It is such an ethical minefield and the more I think about it, the less I approve of surrogacy and probably even donation.

I'm not sure if my attitude has changed or not. Sorry not 100% sure on the technical terms.
Surrogacy when the embryo is biologically the couples or at a push a Aunties egg or Uncles sperm, I don't have a major issue with.

Egg / Sperm / Embryo donation, sorry I just think that could lead to issues later with the child questioning their origins or the non-biogical parent(s) questioning their relationship to the child.

The Surrogates body is put through a heck of a lot to birth the child. I'd do it for my sister but nobody else.

I struggled with infertility, I totally get the pain involved. The second a couple decide to try for a child, they create that child in their minds. They plan for the future, who will it look like, dream of family days out.

I don't know how the surrogates feel at the end, do they grief like the mother of a still born baby with 'empty arm syndrome'.

I certainly wouldn't like my bio child being out there and I have no clue about them.

NICE guidelines re: ovarian stimulation.

"Limit the use of ovulation induction or ovarian stimulation agents to the lowest effective dose and duration of use."

This is why I have concerns about dosing for egg sharing. They surely want more eggs and that must mean higher dosage?

Lack of long term follow up and research is also noted.

"During the course of the review for this guideline update the GDG commented on the paucity of long-term research on the subject, despite the fact that the treatments have been established practice for over 30 years. The longest length of follow-up in the studies reviewed was 20 years, and the larger studies had shorter follow-up periods."

When I went through IVF, I did read the bumf about egg sharing. They did warn that not all women produce enough eggs too share.

I can only talk for my experience but ovary stimulation isn't easy daily injections and harvesting really intrusive including sedation. It's certainly not as simple as getting sperm, head to a room carrying a pot and looking at the provided magazines.

Prior to IVF I tried medicated IUI, they over did the drugs and caused OHSS, I'd around 40 follicles which matured at the same time. It was horrible I could feel my ovaries as I walked.
Deliberately trying to get that many eggs from one round of drugs is irresponsible.

Re embryo donation definitely not something I'd do or consider. But I ended up with a couple spare, couldn't allow these tiny sparks of life to be binned either, I'd she'd tears over embryos only a few weeks older. I eventually permitted for them to be used for training.

The OP referred to surrogacy but it has been discussing egg donation for IVF as well. I would never have considered doing that. It seems completely wrong to me. I thought that before I had children and still do.

I have been inclined after having a baby to be much more wary about surrogacy, and now opposed to all stranger surrogacy, because I became much more viscerally aware how pregnancy can kill you and/or leave you disabled. It's not "work" like any other work. And I'd have died anyway, rather than have someone trying to take my baby away.

The risks of pregnancy and labour aren't really spoken about. It's seen as natural.

The NHS does a fab job of mopping up the mess so we don't really talk about the real risk. If people do try to talk its seen as scaremongering. Although I'd never try to scare a pregnant woman I definitely think anyone considering being a surrogate should be given the full stats on the risks of pregnancy, and labour and c-section.

Turn the clock back a 100 years people would have been much more aware, they'd know family's who lost their mother in child birth. They'd know women who died of infection during pregnancy.

Few people realise pregnancy itself lowers your immune system. I found that out the hard way. I also found out the hard way what causes hemorrhage and how they deal with it.

The true risks just aren't spoken about.
Nobody mentions longer term damage done to a woman's body weakened pelvic floor, prolapse etc. Those are embarrassing 😳 and just not spoken about.

So really there are multiple aspects of surrogacy that needs to be fully discussed.

The impact on the physical and mental health of the surrogate mother, during and after pregnancy.

The impact on the physical & mental health of the egg donor, and maybe not so much physical health but mental health of sperm and Embryo donors (I'm assuming the embryos are IVF spares).

The eventual impact on the MH of children conceived by donors. And how they feel not knowing about their biological family.

People have become much more aware of MH in the last 5 years that it really is time for a rethink.

Assuming everything goes well. Baby is born healthy and handed over.

What happens if that child ends up in the care system for whatever reason, should the surrogate or donors be informed?

There are so many What If's that the whole thing needs a rethink.