Egg donor and recipient stories

An egg donor's story

I am an egg donor, proud of it, and will continue  to be so!

What is it like to be an egg donor? Well, the first word  that springs to mind is amazing. Forget all the talk about painful procedures. What really matters is that by being  an egg donor you are giving the ultimate gift to an  infertile couple – life. To me, that shadows any discomfort – that’s right, discomfort, not pain.

At the end of the day, it is a simple procedure with extremely high rewards. I was recently an egg donor for the third time in twelve months and the only pain for me was the fact that, when I donated the second and third time, they were not able to retrieve as many eggs as the first time I did it.

That was the only thing that hurt. I don’t actually mind the injections. You get used to an injection every day for up to 14 days. There is no real pain and sometimes I thought that the hormone injections gave me a somewhat radiant glow!

The egg collection procedure was pain free for me. You still have to wear the open-back gown and you are sedated, but those were really the only clinical aspects of it. The egg collection lasts about 20 to 30 minutes, after which you are brought round in the recovery room.

As soon as you feel well enough, you can go home. I came round from the procedure and half an hour later I was getting ready to go home. For the small amount of discomfort I had to go through, I may have helped someone create a family.

Anonymous

An egg recipient’s story

I often think about the woman out there who will help me. I call her my “Donor Angel” and I wonder what she is like. I know that inside she is noble and I know that she has the power to hear the heart break of women like me.

I, probably like so many others, never dreamt that I would  not be able to conceive when I had passed all the other milestones we women dream about. I had found the man  I loved and who loved me, married in happiness and built  a home around ourselves.

Going for IVF treatment was, in the end, the only path open to us. When our pregnancy test came back positive we were over the moon.However, after a seven month struggle to keep the baby and spending months in bed to trying to stop the bleeding, we had to dash to the hospital in the middle of the night due to a threatened miscarriage. Our baby girl died at birth due to a serious chromosomal problem. As I held her, I looked into her tiny face and was absolutely overwhelmed by grief. I would have died in her place, if only it would have given her a normal life. The tears and anguish of both my husband and our families lasted for what seemed like an eternity. It was a bereavement of our hopes and plans. We could not risk again inflicting such severe malformation on another little one.

So, armed with all the baby clothes and equipment,  we decided in time to find an egg donor. If we could find another woman who would help us, we could still have  our dreams come true. Having carried a child, I had all  the maternal longings. A child is such a precious gift, as I’m sure most people are aware. Those of us who cannot have children without help know it all the more. Women who  have lost a child know that they have lost the most precious gift on earth.

I have met other women who also never expected their infertility. One lady I know started menopause in her twenties and another has no ovaries due to a car accident in her teens (though they saved her uterus). I believe that there are kind women out there who would help us if they knew how much their help is needed.

Anonymous