MY EGG DONOR STORY

MY EGG DONOR STORY

In stories, we HEAL.

As I sit here thinking about the first time I was approached about using an egg donor, I can vividly see myself sitting at our dining room table looking shocked and staring into the backyard of our North Vancouver home.

Before that first call, we had experienced a twin pregnancy and had to TFMR [ termination for medical reasons ], several miscarriages, 2 failed IUIs and had just started our IVF journey when we were told that my body didn’t respond well to the drugs and that we should think about alternatives.

The doctor that was supporting us on our journey had the worst bedside manner and I know that my PTSD was triggered and thus I didn’t feel safe with him.

He called us and asked to be put on speaker so that my husband would be able to hear the news. He went ahead and said that the drug protocol didn’t work and that IVF would be a hopeless cause. He didn’t even pause or wait for our response as we processed the news.

He went straight to ….. have you thought of egg donor.

He said this ALL on the FUCKING PHONE as well! [ still angry about this as you can tell ] I would have LOVED to come but again he wasn’t my favorite doctor.

I WAS IN SHOCK AND DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO DO. I LITERALLY WENT INTO FREEZE MODE.

What do you do with that information!

Honestly, if you can see me now I’m shaking my head in disbelief.

What did I do?

I froze and then I fleed. I didn’t want to talk to him anymore and I didn’t want to continue this shameful, hurtful journey. I sank into my depressive thoughts and I started to withdraw from my friends and family and began to isolate myself.

Looking back now, I realize that I had PTSD [ Post-traumatic Stress Disorder ] stemming from our termination and the near-death experience of having a blood clot due to the best rest, pregnancy and ill care after my D + E, hence why I went into survival mode and felt paralyzed.

I always wonder why I didn’t see it but of course, we don’t see our trauma whilst we are being traumatized repeatedly and our minds are solely focused on getting pregnant and having a baby.

A few months passed and we moved to London, UK. We started to look into using IVF there but sadly every time we were about to start a cycle, I found out I was pregnant and then miscarried.

It wasn’t till we moved to Seattle and saw our doctor here that our world changed for the better.

I remember going in and discussing our story and having to repeat our story over and over again. You would think it would be a healing experience to share, but I was still very much in survival mode and I wasn’t feeling safe - so there was no healing…… yet.

I did ALL the physical and blood tests again.

We sat down with him and after a long discussion about the test results, as he created a safe environment to share and for me to cry our doctor kindly asked if we had thought about egg donor.

I was READY. We were READY. This time it felt DIFFERENT.

We decided to have a fresh egg donor cycle. They gave us a data bank of photos online with profiles and we opened a bottle of wine and started to choose our egg donor. We found a lovely 19-year-old student who could be my younger sister because we looked similar. We were excited and over the moon that this was happening.

She started her drugs and everything was going well.

Then we got the call that her body didn’t respond well to the drugs even though she had a lot of follicles, she didn’t have any eggs.

You guessed it. We thought. Seriously. WTFF.

The clinic and I remember this clearly, said ‘this has NEVER happened in our 25 years of being open and we feel horrible. We would like to gift you 7 eggs from a super egg donor.‘

We said thank you and accepted quickly.

After the fertilization and testing, we had one embryo - a GIRL.

I was pregnant with our GIRL in September 2016 and we named her Loey.

Loey was our stillbirth angel and she gave us the courage and faith to keep going on our fertility journey when others told us to stop. I want to share that …

We had the choice to stop or to keep going and our choice was to keep going.

We must respect everyone’s choice on this journey.

After a few months and I have no idea how we did this, we went back to the clinic and went through the whole process again and found our egg donor for our rainbow baby.

I knew at this time that

1. I wasn’t going to get pregnant and we were going to find a surrogate

2. Loey was watching over us and moving mountains for her baby brother

Our egg donor graced us with 5 eggs and 2 healthy embryos.

One of those embryos is our beautiful son Milo who is turning a year old next month and the other is our daughter who we are hoping to meet in 2021.

My dear friend, if you were going to ask me what are the THREE things I learned from this experience, I would say …

1. I needed to feel SAFE in order to make the decision of moving forward in using an egg donor. Thus, I encourage you to advocate for your feelings and needs. Take your time in finding the right Doctor and Clinic that will create a SAFE environment for you.

2. I was feeling shameful that I couldn’t use my own eggs and didn’t tell people for a long time which increased the shameful feelings I had. I believe that it’s because I didn’t have the best support system and we as humans need the support of people that have been through the same and understand. So find a coach, a community and a friend.

3. I love my son more than anything in the world and I don’t even think about how he is not genetically linked to me.

4. [ one more ] I am incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to use an egg donor and live in Seattle where this is accessible.
   

   My hope in sharing this with you is so that you can learn, reflect and advocate in your egg donor experience and that you are not alone.

   If you have any questions please let me know HERE or on the GRAM

   WIth love ❤️