Surrogacy had been on my mind ever since I was told by doctors during my Brisbane family egg donor cycle in January 2010 that the lining of my womb was extremely thin and not conducive to implantation or a successful pregnancy. Surrogacy was increasingly featuring in the print media in both Australia and Ireland. Altrustic surrogacy legislation had been introduced in my home state of Queensland, Australia in February 2010. This had prompted my Aunt, my sister and an old high school friend, all of whom were aware of my attempts to become a mother, to separately mention the new law to me as a possible option.
Despite being due to commence adoption training after our failed egg donor cycle (using my cousin's eggs), I found that during the quiet moments I had to myself, that I could not quite give up on trying IVF one more time with my own body in the hope of a miracle. Whilst I had almost given up on the idea of being able to use my ovaries by this stage, I could not easily surrender my dream of being pregnant and carrying my baby, rather than adopting someone else's. A few days after the second negative pregnancy test result from the Queensland Fertility Group cycle, (in a half crazed state of mind), I started surfing American egg donation websites. In between suffering bouts of insomnia and weeping with bitter disappointment and rage at the latest failed IVF, I typed the search terms "egg donor agency New York" into Google at 3.45 am in the morning. I surfed countless egg donor agency websites. Website tracking software soon figured me out and started suggesting fertility treatments and agencies to me via pop-up advertisements (gotta love those cookies!).
Why was I looking at American egg donor websites when less than a month earlier I had my heart set on familial egg donation? Well…..although my cousin had offered to try with us again - to donate her eggs again - as we had no frozen embryos from the donor cycle - we did not feel like it was something we could ask her to do again. If we were to find an anonymous egg donor that we could pay a fee to, like those in America, we would not have to worry about Wendy feeling any emotional obligation to help us have a baby. I would feel less guilty and less anxious. I worried about imposing on my cousin, who has the sweetest nature imaginable. A part of me also realized that perhaps surrogacy was not such an off-the-wall solution to our long running battle with infertility after all. It was also not particularly practical or economic to consider surrogacy in the USA when my egg donor cousin and her husband lived in Australia and we lived in Ireland.
The USA struck me as the centre of modern day surrogacy and surrogacy, if not commonplace, was certainly tried and tested there…In my, admittedly, desperate state of mind, I thought that if DH and I were to find a suitable egg donor in America then we might be well placed to pursue surrogacy there. The notion of pursuing surrogacy in America had been pure fantasy to us….fantasy along the lines of, "well... if we won the lotto we could try surrogacy". However around February 2010, I stumbled across a random documentary on the Irish language television station, TG4, late one workday evening on the growth of commercial surrogacy in India. After that, all I could think of was India and surrogacy…surrogacy and India. Around the same time, an Irish friend had told me about a gay friend of hers and his partner, living in Northern Europe, who had conceived twins through an Indian surrogate. Many Australians were now also openly discussing their experiences of parenthood through surrogacy in India in the Australian media. Almost all of the articles in Australia were positive, despite predictable media caveats on concerns about 'exploitation' of third world women. I emailed Nayana IVF in India in 19 February 2010, a clinic I had found through a Google search to ask whether they had facilities to accept embryos from abroad. Without having even discussed it with DH, the idea was forming in my mind of doing an egg donor cycle in the USA, (after enough time had elapsed since our last IVF in Australia to to cobble more cash together) and depending on the number of embryos resulting from a donor cycle in USA, arrange to transport those embryos to India for a surrogacy cycle with an Indian woman.
The idea of surrogacy increasingly seemed less off the wall than it had seemed 6 months earlier, as we had also started to seriously discuss selling our home and downsizing to an apartment and somewhere less suburban where we did not feel like the stick-out infertile couple surrounded by a sea of houses with Mum and Dad and 2+ kids in each. Our mortgage payments would be much lower if we sold our house and would free up funds for more fertility treatment and possibly, surrogacy. The downside to this plan was that Ireland was in a deep recession and our house had fallen in value substantially and we would likely lose money on a sale. But something had to change in our lives. We either had to push on and try something new - something radical - or else we had to accept our situation and finally get on with our lives. We also started discussing childlessness in earnest at this time, as well as the prospects of any countries being open for adoption after the new Adoption Bill was enacted….Virtually nothing seemed within our control. At the end of February 2010 I deactivated my Facebook account because I could not bear any longer to see 'selfies' of euphoric-looking mothers with their beautiful babies in their laps. My pet hate at the time was FB friends who changed their profile picture to that of their baby…..something so innocuous but oh so painful to an infertile and childless woman like me….
Approximately two weeks after our failed Brisbane egg donor IVF, in early March 2010, I contacted an egg donor agency in Boston to request a login to access their advertised database of egg donor profiles. Almost all of the egg donor agencies in the USA require you to email their contact person before you are granted access to egg donor profiles and the initial contact person requires that you give a brief overview of your need for an egg donor. I wrote out our tale of woe in an email- mostly our full medical history - several times to various agencies and waited for a response. At least I felt like I was doing something. Better than sitting on my arse and crying. Although I was also doing a lot of that too. At the end of March I emailed the Rotunda Centre in Mumbai to enquire about their surrogacy programme. By this stage I had discussed surrogacy in India with DH and he was very much against the idea. This did not stop me emailing however! I also went so far as to telephone the Irish Embassy in Delhi from my office one day at work, on the pretext that I was 'a family lawyer anonymously inquiring on behalf of a client' as to how an Irish passport could be arranged for a baby born to Irish parents in India. I was emailed 'draft' Department of Foreign Affairs advice from the Embassy warning couples about the legal uncertainties of surrogacy in general and in India in particular. But, although legal uncertainties and loopholes were cause for anxiety, it appeared these obstacles could be worked through and were perhaps less daunting to me, as a lawyer than they would appear to someone else. Certainly some brave Irish couples were already attempting to make their way home from India with their babies. I found it heartening that I was not alone in my desperation. Both Irish and Australians were turning to surrogacy in India as inter country adoption dried up altogether. But my research was still all just a futile distraction….a desperate scrambling for a solution that MUST be out there somewhere…..as I could not give up. And we were feeling very desperate. Something that cannot be over-emphasised. We were so desperate that we were quite vulnerable...both emotionally and financially.
By the end of March I was feeling extremely bitter. A new form of bitterness had descended upon me (and DH too, for that matter and I knew things were bad when he was feeling negative, it not being in his nature). I could not even bring myself to write 'congratulations....' on the new arrival/birth cards at work for colleagues anymore. I felt so cut-off from all my friends and family and like the better part of my life was poisoned - poisoned by crushed hopes and bitterness. Bitterness and desperation were constant. My desperation was such that late one evening I wrote to an old friend of mine who had once mentioned the idea of having a baby for me, to ask whether she would still consider being a surrogate for DH and I. She had her own 10 year old child and had experienced a trouble free pregnancy and safe delivery. Not my proudest moment, but it demonstrates the despair I was feeling. Almost as soon as I had sent the email I wished I could retract it. My dear old friend took several days to write back - her response was very sweet and considered. She said that she seriously thought about it but that she did not think she could handle the guilt and responsibility if anything were to go wrong after we had already lost three pregnancies. Of course I understood - it was inappropriate of me to have asked..... it was wrong of me to have done so.
The despair went on until late one evening on 23 March 2010, after I had received a login to one of many American egg donor agencies, I found donor profile CN26.12 . I had selected the following features from drop-down menus within the database- Hair Colour - BROWN - Eye Colour - HAZEL - Complexion - FAIR Build - SMALL. The two features I was obsessed with really (and 'obsessed' is an apt description....) were brown hair and hazel eyes. It really mattered to me to find a donor with the same physical starting points as myself. Hazel eyes are less common but I wanted a donor with hazel eyes, like mine. This reduced the number of profiles that were available but I kept trawling through them. Most of the profiles were fairly off-putting - the majority of the pictures left me with the strong feeling that I could never, ever, select that particular woman to donate her eggs to me for the sake of creating a child that would be both DH's and my child. Some of the women who had submitted profiles seemed not to understand that what intended parents wanted to see in a potential donor was different to what a modeling or talent agency may want to see in a portfolio for work. Some of the photos were kind of 'sexy'....., not in a lewd type of way, but in a way that you could not possibly imagine the donor as a genetic substitute for yourself....the photos were like model shots. I wanted to be able to find a natural, nice every-day woman. And so it was that the photograph of donor CN26.12 appeared to jump out at me from the computer screen after I had clicked on her profile. This egg donor....her face and eyes in particular immediately struck me - she looked like she could be my sister or cousin - the shape of her face, her freckles, her pale skin and hazel eyes and the sincerity that radiated from her eyes as she smiled into the camera were so striking. She was pretty and sweet and open-looking. And I liked her description of herself…she came across as interested in and passionate about a lot of things. Things that I felt an affinity for, like travel, all things Italian, cooking and photography. She seemed from her description to be a hard worker and self-motivated. The profile also had details of family medical history but to be honest, I did not dwell on that. I have since read some excellent advice for women to consider when choosing an egg donor....look out for someone that from their profile you could picture being friends with....someone you have things in common with and perhaps reminds you of yourself. Blogs and articles that I have read about egg donation also mention making a choice of an egg donor based on a feeling of a certain woman just "feeling right".
It is hard to describe or explain, but I certainly experienced a strong sensation that she was the one - she felt right. For the first time, after viewing many, many profiles (sometimes with dismay) and considering egg donation from a stranger on and off for years I had discovered a donor profile that I could actually picture as a genetic substitute for myself. She was 24 years old and was a proven egg donor, having donated eggs before. She was listed on the database because she was happy to donate again. Wow. DH had not yet gone to bed that night, and within a few minutes of discovering the profile, I lugged the laptop into the room where he was watching tv and said "I want to show you something…..". I had already shown him one or two profiles earlier in the week but he said very little. I held my breathe while I waited to see what his response would be to the profile of donor CN26.12. "Wow" he said. "She looks like you". "Yes ...yes!", I said. A few moments later DH asked me…"How would you get in touch with her?". My heart lifted. Oh joy, joy, joy! DH green lighted me contacting the agency to inquire about the donor despite the fact that we had no money whatsoever to pursue an egg donor cycle in the USA at that time. For the first time in 6 weeks I felt a upbeat. I emailed the agency, based in Boston to make an initial inquiry. Firstly, was this donor available to do a donation cycle and secondly, did I know whether any IVF clinics in Boston could arrange to medically courier embryos to India? Based on my initial research, DH would be the genetic father of any baby born and at worst, I could apply for step-mother adoption once we had the baby back in Ireland.
By 28 March 2010 we received the amazing news that donor CN26.12 was agreeable to doing an egg donation cycle with us in the USA!! And the agency also agreed to help us to find an IVF clinic that would arrange to transfer embryos to India if that was what we wanted in due course. In the 5 days that had elapsed since I first found her profile, DH and I had worked out that we would need about 20,000 euro to proceed. The donor would receive USD$10,000 for her eggs, the agency would charge USD$5,000 and the cost of IVF with a US clinic on the East Coast was likely to be around the USD$20,000 mark. The exchange rate worked in our favor at the time. We were able to borrow 20,000 euro from family and commenced making immediate arrangements to send deposits to America and execute a contract with the agency. Easter 2010 was once more, a time in which our rollercoaster was on the ascent....the downward plunge of the rollercoaster after the failed January/February IVF was quickly fading as the promise of a fresh chance at parenthood appeared before us. We assumed that a young egg donor would mean a high number of embryos and planned to try an embryo transfer into my womb, this time using very aggressive hormone treatment to thicken my uterus (as if the previous cycle was not aggressive enough!). We decided to try something called "staggered IVF", in which the embryos were created and frozen with a vitrification (rapid freeze) process that meant that a frozen embryo transfer was just as likely to succeed as a fresh one - in fact some studies from America were showing that staggered IVF was producing higher pregnancy and live delivery rates. DH would travel alone to the USA for the donor cycle IVF and I would go over for a frozen embryo transfer later in the year. If the frozen embryo transfer did not work, we would then have 2-3 years to save up for surrogacy in either India or the States...and finally, ....adoption as a final back-up plan, which looked as though it would take 5 years to get a referral for anyway.
We signed on as patients with the SHER IVF Clinic in New York City on 21 April 2010, as our donor resided in New York State and also to the fact that SHER was a country-wide IVF clinic throughout many states in the USA. It had a clinic in California, a state with some of the best surrogacy laws (which I had also been researching) and so we could arrange to transfer embryos to California if and when we might ever be able to afford surrogacy in the USA and need it. Once again, DH and I had an initial consultation with a new IVF clinic, this time via teleconference. The doctor seemed very experienced and confident and we felt assured that we were doing everything possible to finally shift the odds in our favour. A good New York IVF clinic, a young proven egg donor. We did not communicate directly with our donor at all during the period in which we chose our IVF clinic - all communication was managed by the egg donor agency. Once our egg donor had passed initial infectious disease and hormone screening at SHER, arrangements were made to enter into a direct contract with our egg donor and money transferred to the agency to pay her an initial amount. IVF cycles, being as they are, must be planned around screening tests, baseline ultrasounds and menstrual cycles and so a tentative date of mid-June was scheduled for the IVF procedure, which would require DH to fly to USA for his part in the process.
Around the end of April, a volcano in Iceland erupted, which seriously disrupted flights to and from Europe due to the perceived risks of volcanic ash getting into aircraft engines. The Icelandic ash cloud had prevented an American surrogacy agency, Circle Surrogacy from flying to Ireland to present information sessions. Circle Surrogacy had been due to be interviewed on the Pat Kenny radio show and a neighbour had slipped a small clipping from the RTE Guide into my letter box about it. I later told her how significant her doing this turned out to be. It was a small thing, she thought, on her part and she afterwards worried that she may have over-stepped the bounds. Because of the clipping from the RTE Guide, I googled Circle Surrogacy and discovered that they were due to present an information night to prospective intended parents at The Westbury Hotel on 18 May 2010, the following month. As DH and I were in the middle of arranging our egg donor cycle in New York and were considering surrogacy, we did not hesitate to put our names down for the info night.
Around the same time, as part of egg donor contract arrangements, we had negotiated with our egg donor agency for our egg donor to waive her anonymity (and we waiving ours) so that we would have the name of our egg donor in the contract between us. It seemed a fairly straight forward thing to request - after all, we lived on opposite sides of the Atlantic to each other. It was not like we were going to run into each other at the shopping centre or share acquaintances. The adoption training we had attended up to that time had highlighted to us the potential for any child born as a result of egg donation to, perhaps, have a strong desire to learn more about his or her genetic heritage. We had completed a full module on issues for adopted children as they grow older and the issue of tracing and seeking information about birth parents. All the research and reading I had undertaken on egg donation suggested that children born out of egg donation did not appear to suffer the same angst that children given up for adoption experienced (mostly because they do not feel that they were unwanted or 'given away'), but that nonetheless, they may have questions about where they came from, which surely they have a right to have answered. I, in particular, did not want to deprive any son or daughter of mine of the information they may or may not want 20 or 25 years in the future and so it naturally came about that we asked if anonymity was a big issue for our donor. In the USA, it is up to the individual parties to decide as to whether they wish to be anonymous or not. Not long after making our request through the egg donor agency, I received an email to say that our egg donor was more than happy to waive her anonymity - I received her name a few days later and I whispered it over and over to myself - I thought it was a perfect name for a perfect angel - Maria.
The Circle Surrogacy seminar left both DH and I with a positive impression. We left The Westbury Hotel, after two hours of presentations, hand in hand and I asked DH, "Well...what do you think?" He said, "I think we should go for it." I had done preliminary research on the laws in various US states on surrogacy and knew the rough costs in US dollars, however the founder of Circle, John Weltman, absolutely convinced DH and I that evening that surrogacy in the USA was the way forward. John was himself a father though surrogacy and a champion for gay fathers in the USA and many other countries. DH and I found it refreshing and reassuring that he had a confident, positive answer for every anxious question the potential parents in the audience raised. One person asked about whether it was possible for state welfare agencies to take a child into custody once a couple returned to their home country? This is something I too worried about, knowing the intrusive nature of the screening required to adopt, let alone the stance Irish welfare authorities might possibly take to surrogacy. As a foreigner living in Ireland I felt uncomfortable about the influence wielded by Catholic fundamentalists in so many public spheres of Irish (abortion being a prime example, which remains illegal). The "draft" advice I had received from the Department of Foreign Affairs when making inquiries about surrogacy in India seemed to strongly imply that engaging in commercial surrogacy might be considered 'child trafficking', which I consider offensive, but is illustrative of how partial Irish authorities might be. But John responded that, even in countries where surrogacy is illegal, such as Germany and France, no state authorities have ever had the audacity to take a child away from a couple - gay or straight - where one of the parents was the genetic parent of that child. I asked about pre-birth orders declaring parentage and the risks of not getting one and not being able to get your child back to the country you lived in. John's response was straight forward and a light bulb moment for me....Yes - the process is difficult and there are legal risks with the paperwork, but Circle never have had a single surrogate who asserted parental rights or tried to claim custody. The worst thing you may have to deal with is legal hassles and a delay in getting home....perhaps, for some jurisdictions, intended parents might be forced to adopt their own baby from the surrogate for the purpose of the existing legal framework, but at the end of the day, all intended parents made it home with their babies. Crucially John put a rhetorical question to the attendees "....Isn't it all worth it if you get to bring your baby home? And you finally become parents?" I answered him in my head "Yes!....Yes! it is......".
Circle talked about the screening process of matching couples with surrogates and how selective they are. All potential surrogates must have completed their own families and have a history of trouble free pregnancies. Potential surrogates must have criminal records checks, drug and alcohol testing and psychometric testing and interviews with registered social workers. Prospective parents must also be screened and interviewed by Circle social workers. John Weltman also had interesting advice about egg donation, which Circle could help to arrange too. His view was that anonymous egg donation was not a good idea - his own two children knew their egg donor - he pointed out that in the USA, there is a national egg donor matching database that allows children to search for their genetic sperm or egg donor 'parent' and that in another 10 years or so, the Internet and fertility clinic laws will likely make anonymity a thing of the past. His statements confirmed to us that we were doing the right thing in having an open and transparent relationship with Maria. Finally, John Weltman and another speaker from Circle who was a parent through surrogacy, reinforced to us that there is no other country in the world like the USA for first class medical treatment for both your surrogate and your baby, that you could have a meaningful, open and wonderful relationship with an American surrogate who speaks the same language as you and that Circle's average time between couples signing on with their agency and their baby being born was roughly 18 months! Imagine having your very own new-born baby, to hold moments after their birth in 18 months....? The idea seemed like a dream after spending months of adoption training being prepared for a 4-5 year wait to adopt, after which if you were lucky, you may get a referral to adopt a two year with special needs.
DH and I both felt uplifted by the Circle seminar. For the first time in what seemed a veeeerry long time, there appeared real hope that we may become parents via surrogacy if all else were to fail. What was also heartening was the attendance of the seminar by a good number of both gay and straight couples, as although I felt anxious about surrogacy, I could now see that other couples were prepared to pursue this path too. Although engaging in surrogacy would require some bravery for a straight couple like DH and I (I worried about what people would say and think about our choice) it was even harder for gay couples due to the prejudice against them as parents. If they were brave enough to try surrogacy.....surely we could try too. John Weltman confirmed that as at May 2010, Circle had helped over 12 couples in Ireland to have children through surrogates in the USA. We were told these couples tended to guard their anonymity (and the privacy of their children) and did not want to speak publicly about their experiences, as surrogacy, whilst not illegal in Ireland, falls into a vortex and is completely unregulated at present. DH and I put our names down on a Circle marketing list to receive further information about arranging a private consultation with a Circle social worker that night. From that night onwards, we gave no further serious consideration to India for surrogacy (not that DH had ever). It was 3 x times the cost to pursue surrogacy in the USA, but no matter what it might take, even if it took years of paying down the debt, the opportunity to have an open relationship with an American surrogate, that you could chat on the phone to and visit and get to really know, outweighed all other considerations.
The day after the Circle seminar, on 19 May 2010, SHER IVF clinic emailed me to say that Maria had been into them for screening tests. The IVF nurse said "your donor is beautiful and a very lovely person too!". My heart did a somersault....I had the strongest feeling about Maria being so right ...I was starting to wonder if this gut feeling was a fantasy of mine.... but no.....here was a nurse who I had never met, with no reason to bullshit me, confirming that Maria was indeed someone special. On top of everything else...........her Follicle Stimulating Hormone (used to gauge ovarian reserve and egg quality) was 3.5!!!! I rang DH to tell him and we both laughed and laughed...DH (who was by now well versed on the significance of the dreaded FSH test results) said ..."I didn't know it came that low!". I said, "I KNOW!!!! Can you believe it?". We felt high, high, high over Maria's low, low, low FSH.
Three days later I found out that my younger sister was pregnant after her 5th IVF, which she had done back to back to back with the Queensland Fertility Group in the space of 12 months. My little sister was able to pursue an aggressive course of IVF with a more experienced Australian doctor at a younger age than when I first started IVF, largely due to knowing my history from the outset. She was able to immediately get aggressive treatment due to a confirmed family history of premature ovarian failure. Rightly or wrongly, I could not help but feel that she benefited and indeed, appeared to have struck the jackpot, due to my bad luck and crappy experiences with doctors that were less than world best practice at treating premature ovarian failure. Don't get me wrong, she was tough and brave and showed real tenacity to keep fighting and doing back to back cycles. She had been told the 5th cycle was a waste of money. My initial thoughts when I received my sister's text? Part of me was intensely relieved for my sister and in the knowledge that part of my mother's DNA would live on and that my family was not doomed to oblivion but the other part thought, "always the bridesmaid....never the bride...". The news was certainly easier to take knowing that we had an egg donor cycle with Maria planned in the near future.
DH had to fly to New York 6 full days in advance of the scheduled egg pick-up date due to some crazy Federal Drug Administration rules relating to the regulation of human tissue to guarantee that he would be tested for Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (Mad Cow disease) and other infectious diseases like Hepatitis and HIV and the clinic have the results back from the lab before any embryos were created. This mad cow disease test was only a requirement for people who had lived in Europe during a certain period - as if we did not have enough complications to take into account on top of constant worry that his flight would be cancelled or delayed due to the Icelandic volcano starting up again! DH departed on 14 June and was due to return to Dublin the following Monday. Luckily, he was going to stay with American cousins in Connecticut who were lovely people and great hosts, so I knew he would not be lonely and would be well taken care of.
We got regular updates from SHER after our egg donor attended each ultrasound. I felt so grateful after hearing each report that she was stimulating well. It was amazing to me that Maria was so committed to the whole process, notwithstanding that she was receiving compensation for the process. Injecting yourself with needles and turning up to fertility clinics to be probed by ultrasound is not exactly fun when you are a desperate infertile woman dreaming of becoming pregnant but to do so when you have nothing vested in the outcome or personally know the intended parents is a sign of someone with a very big heart. DH was told to attend the clinic to give his sperm sample early on the morning of Sunday 20 June, which was also the day of the egg pick-up for Maria. We were impressed that SHER performed surgical egg collection on a weekend, as none of the clinics we had attended in Ireland or the UK would ever schedule egg collection over a weekend and get women to coast on injections or hold over injecting the final 'trigger' shot to a time that suited their timetable. In the USA however, there seemed to be a view that egg collection should be done on the optimum day, whenever that happened to fall and this seemed to bode well. I, for one, was always looking for portents of good fortune. And Sunday 20 June was indeed a day of good fortune for DH and I - DH telephoned me in the afternoon in Ireland to let me know, with evident excitement in his voice, that apparently 23 eggs had been collected from Maria! 23 eggs!.....23 eggs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OMG! The best I had ever produced was 3! And....DH went on.....he sounded so happy.....he had also inadvertently met Maria whilst waiting to be let into the clinic that morning. There was no plan for DH and Maria to meet and anonymous donors are not supposed to cross paths with the intended parents at the clinic but it was a quiet Sunday morning and DH had recognised Maria from her profile photograph. He was unsure whether he should say anything to her but he plucked up the courage to say, "I am not sure if I am meant to ask, but are you Maria?! and she said, "yes!" and smiled and hugged him and told him how excited and happy she was to be donating to us and that she wished us the best of luck. Maria had been waiting in the reception area with a friend. DH said to me "oh she is lovely.....she is so sweet.....well done for finding her.......she is perfect....! she even looks a little like you!". My heart leapt. I had such a strong feeling about Maria for many months....but to now hear DH instinctively had such a positive feeling and sense about her confirmed everything. I felt high that Sunday afternoon in Dublin. All I could think was "23 eggs! 23 eggs! ...."she is perfect!"".
DH flew back to Dublin the next day with the news that all 23 eggs had fertilised, which meant we had 23 embryos! On Wednesday of that week we received a phone call from SHER to give us an embryology update. Of the 23 embryos, on day 3, which is the cleaving stage, we had 4 x 2 cell embryos, 3 x 3 cell embryos, 2 x 4 cell embryos, 7 x 5 cell embryos, 5 x 6 cell embryos, 1 x 7 cell embryo and 1 x 8 cell embryo. The nurse told me that by day 3, SHER "like to see embryos with 5 cells or greater". I calculated that we currently had 14 embryos that had a chance of making blastocyst and figured we were on track for my dream of around 8-10 blastocysts. With between 8-10 blasts, we could try a transfer one final time with my uterus and if that did not work, still have the chance to do between 3-4 transfers with a surrogate through Circle Surrogacy (which practically guaranteed us a baby). I thought the numbers given to me were a fantastic result and positively skipped through St Stephen's Green on my lunch break that day. I was so naïve. I never took too much of an interest in the science of embryology during past cycles, perhaps because my crappy egg quality would have made that a very depressing exercise. But had I paid attention to what is considered optimal embryo growth I would have known that most IVF clinics like to see day 3 embryos with between 6-10 cells. At best, we had 1 x 8 cell.....I think the nurse felt a little sorry for us and probably wanted to keep our spirits up, which is why she referenced "5 cells or more" as being ok, so that 7 more of our embryos would appear viable to us when clearly they were never going to make it. Ignorance is bliss and DH and I had a happy weekend waiting to be told the number of blasts that were frozen over the weekend on the following Monday 28 June 2010.
Monday 28 June 2010 is a day I will probably never forget. It goes down as one of the most devastating experiences on our entire infertility journey. Not quite as bad as the day that my fallopian tube ruptured and we lost our third pregnancy, but a shocker nonetheless. I had to email SHER to get the numbers of blasts frozen and was actually on a difficult conference call at work for a client when an email popped up on my screen from the nurse to say "2 blastocysts made it to day 5 and were frozen yesterday". I was astounded. All I could do was to try to refrain from sobbing out loud, stay on the client call and attempt some intelligible input to what was being discussed. When I finally got off the call, I could not even make it from my desk to the door of my office to shut it before my body was racked by violent and embarrassingly loud sobbing. I could not control my emotions. I felt so shocked and absolutely devastated. The thoughts that whirled through my mind were "nothing ever works....we keep trying and no matter what we try....nothing ever works....how could this have happened? we are screwed.....the odds are still against us with just two embryos...." I kept thinking about the fact that we had effectively gambled 25,000 euro on this donor cycle with the belief that we were know on to a sure thing after years and years of battling poor odds. I had FINALLY accepted egg donation, which is held out by all IVF clinics and fertility doctors as THE ANSWER to premature ovarian failure and even this, seemingly, would not work for us. A friend at work very sweetly tried to comfort me. I will never forget it. I cried as she hugged me and said over and over again "I am never going to be a mother...". Poor results on a donor cycle are such a blow because you undergo such a painful process to accept that a donor cycle is the only way forward. You grieve. You give up on your genetic baby. The consolation is that egg donation is meant to be a sure thing. It is a knock-out blow when it turns out not to be.
Within a few hours, the Dr T from SHER had emailed me to say that he understood that I was "disappointed" with the result but that it appeared that the poor outcome was due to "egg quality issues". He could not provide any further information. He gave me the standard (bullshit) IVF line, "all it takes is one...." and actually lied by stating in an email that one of the blasts was "perfect" which I later discovered not to be true, as neither of the embryos were the top grade. I think one was B and one was B- (which were both Grade II under the SHER system). I was at a loss. Total despair. It felt as though we might as well have set fire to 25,000 euro in cash. I decided to break the bad news to DH face to face and went home on time that afternoon to tell him the news. I emailed the egg donor agency to express my grief, anger and despair at the outcome. I was angry at myself for not ever asking "what does proven egg donor mean?" Did it mean live births? I did not blame Maria for any of it. I felt she had been let down too. DH and I both cried that night and proceeded to anaesthetise our pain with alcohol. The following day DH telephoned Dr T in New York to try and get more out of him as to how things could have gone so disastrously. Dr T now suggested to DH that sperm quality or unknown chromosome issues on DH's side were "likely" to be a factor, due to the egg donor cycle with my cousin also not producing high quality embryos. It sounded to us like SHER were making things up as they were going along and I began to suspect, more and more, that there had been some catastrophic failure in the embryo culture used and that something had gone wrong in the lab....an embryology screw-up. Trust us to have such bad luck. We felt seriously constrained as to the questions we could ask or what pressure we could bring to bear on SHER to provide more information, as in the meantime, our two precious frozen embryos were in storage in their facilities. We requested a call with the embryologist but received no response. In the meantime, now panicked and fearful about potential chromosome issues with DH's genetic material, we now embarked on getting an appointment with a private geneticist at Crumlin Hospital in Dublin to get an opinion on how to proceed. Around the same time, I found out that my pregnant younger sister was expecting twins.
I randomly found your blog searching for something else. I'm curious to know what happened after this but can't find any later posts. Hope you are going well.
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