How we found our egg donor

“We can keep going with these IVF treatment cycles if you really want to, but it would be medically and morally wrong of me to recommend it. My advice is for us to start exploring the option of an egg donor for you to continue on your journey to having kids”

They were the words of our (second) IVF specialist after approximately 2.5 years of my wife Amy enduring at least 10-20 IVF cycles of injections, tablets, acupuncture, herbal teas, massages, physiotherapy, egg collection surgeries, transferring embryos and in some cases a couple of weeks of embryos “taking” but not growing as we hoped.

Although finding an egg donor was always our Plan C and we were as prepared as you can be to hear those words, like most things in life that don’t go to Plan A or B, the gravity of the task at hand only really hit us when we got to that point. Consciously or not, I have always approached life in a “let’s just deal with what’s immediately in front of us” manner and not worried too much about what’s next. I’m not sure if that held me in good or stead or not for what was to come but you’re not here for a philosophy case study.

In this instance, the two options immediately in front of us were:

1.????? Go overseas for two weeks (anywhere from the USA to Spain to Ukraine to South Africa), find an egg donor at one of their clinics, align Amz’ cycle with theirs and cross our fingers it works; or

2.????? Find a donor in Australia.

Aside from the obvious travel implications, the key difference between these two options was that in Australia, you need to know your egg donor, as opposed to the relative anonymity of an egg donor from an overseas clinic.

Our first preference was to go with Option 2 but this is where the “fun” began. As well as having to know your egg donor, there are other mandatory and “strongly recommended” criteria you must meet before the donor can proceed with any egg collections/donations. These include:

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·?????? (mandatory) Amy, I and the egg donor (and their partner if they have one) must partake in three rounds of counselling. This includes both individual couple counselling and a group session. The purpose of this is essentially to ensure you are all on the same page and to be honest, although we all were from the start, it was an extremely worthwhile experience.

·?????? (strongly recommended) The donor has “finished” growing their family – i.e. ideally, they have children already and no plans for anymore.

·?????? (strongly recommended) The donor is under 40 years old.

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In theory, these sound pretty easy to navigate and, if anything, pardon the marketing lingo, enables you to laser focus on your “target market”. The problem with this is that both Amy and I were in our early 30s and practically everyone we knew didn’t fit the bill. Despite this, we still had a couple of incredibly generous offers from people close to us but for various reasons, we politely declined, mainly due to the uncertainty of them having “finished their families” or not.

To add one more layer of complexity, Amy and I also decided that we wanted someone who was “one step removed” from our inner circle of family and closest friends.

We now knew what we wanted and the ideal “persona” of our egg donor but “Hey, do you want to donate us your egss?” is hardly a question you ask someone over dinner, especially to those you aren’t extremely close to already. Therefore, it did feel like we were looking for a needle in a haystack.

The approach we decided on was to write an open letter to our friends and family that detailed our journey to date and encouraged them to share our story over dinner and drinks whenever the topic of kids, fertility, IVF etc. came up. We figured that donating your eggs isn’t something that naturally comes to people’s minds and the further we could cast the net through word of mouth, the higher our chance of finding that special someone.

We wrote that letter, had our counsellor review it (who played the role of editor), typed up the email and were ready to transition it from the Drafts to Sent Items folder. Before clicking “Send”, I reminded Amy of an offer we had whilst she was still going through rounds of IVF herself. It was essentially “If you guys ever do need to do go down the path of finding an egg donor, I’d be happy to help”. At that point, we were still fully committed to Amy’s IVF cycles and hadn’t revisited it since.

The offer had come from the wonderful Jo, who Amy met at a friend’s wedding about nine months earlier. They had spent the day/night doing what people do at a wedding, chatting, sharing stories, a few cocktails and just having a good time. Amy had shared our fertility story to date and Jo went home that night and said to her hubby, “If Amy and Will ever get to the point of needing an egg donor… I would love to help them… what do you think?”

Fast forward a few chapters, a few happy and humbling teary discussions when they first offered, and again when we asked if the offer was still on the table nine months later, and we had found our donor. It’s hard to describe how grateful we are for what Jo has done for us but put simply, she gave us the opportunity to have what we longed for most, and up until that point, we couldn’t have.

Our journey so far has taught and reinforced a few lessons for me:

1.????? If you can find a way to feel comfortable doing so, don’t be afraid to tell your story. You never know where help will come from as there are good people everywhere. In our case, if Amy hadn’t shared her story with Jo, we wouldn’t have Scarlett.

2.????? I don’t believe everything happens for a reason, but I do believe you can learn from every experience. Our experience of having Scarlett will mean that she will learn from a young age that people can be fundamentally good. Without an act of true kindness and selflessness, she wouldn’t be here, and we wouldn’t be the happy family that we are. How bloody good is that.

3.????? The IVF journey is f***ing hard and doesn’t guarantee success. When you combine the physical, emotional, mental and financial realities that a couple or aspiring single parent face throughout the process, and you don’t get the result you are after at the end of a cycle, the toll of it all adds up. I incorrectly assumed that once we started IVF, things would move quickly and easily, how wrong I was. We ended up getting to the destination we were aiming for, but not everyone does, so if you are going through your own fertility journey, share your feelings with your partner and those closest to you, so you can share the load whatever the results happen to be.

There is nothing we can ever do to reciprocate the most valuable gift we’ll ever receive, but raising money for a cause close to Jo’s heart feels like a good start. It’s for that reason, I am training for the Sydney Marathon and asking anyone who can, to help us reach our fundraising goal of $20,000 to help the good people fighting endometriosis and help more women who suffer from the disease manage their symptoms and achieve their own goals.

Link to the fundraising page is in the comments section of this LinkedIn post.