All Eggs In One Basket

Welcome back, friends! I wanted to give a little update with what is going on with me fertility-wise, since like that’s the whole point of this blog, right? (Although, I had my first-ever MRI this week and I will be back to regale you with my tales from that because I’m not claustrophobic by any means, but have you ever been in one of those tubes? And that story has NOTHING to do with IVF.)

So yeah, not much has been going on with my fertility journey since last summer when I got the call with the negative pregnancy test. I actually took a break for a whole plethora of reasons. One, Covid. I mean it felt like maybe it was a blessing that I didn’t get pregnant then to avoid having to possibly get Covid when I was pregnant. Second, and the biggest, was money. Because once transferring my own embryo didn’t work, I knew that my next move was going to be moving on to donor eggs, instead of my own, and that’s expensive as hell and not covered by insurance.

So that’s where I am. I’m not sure I ever talked about this before. But after I got the results back of my embryo and that it was mosaic, and deciding whether or not to do another egg retrieval with my own eggs, I had a great conversation with my acupuncturist. This was back in April LAST YEAR, in the height of the pandemic. I had found out that I didn’t really have IVF insurance coverage for another egg retrieval, so the choice was to wait, which wasn’t really an option at my advanced age, or to spend $20,000 to try again with my own eggs. And let’s be honest, after trying everything I could to increase my egg quality (supplements, acupuncture, diet change, reducing toxins, etc.), I still only got three eggs retrieved and only one made it to blastocyst. And while there is a possibility that a different medication protocol could have produced more eggs, who knows if the results would have been any better? And was that uncertainty worth another $20k loan for a slim chance of it working? I wasn’t so sure.

My acupuncturist mentioned donor eggs. Because while nothing is guaranteed, at least using eggs far younger than my own, the odds of it resulting in a live birth are much, much higher. But it was something I never thought of. I always assumed it would work with my own eggs. So it never crossed my mind. And when she asked me about it, my initial reaction was NOPE, NOPE, and a lot more NOPE. But she pressed me a bit (she’s like a second therapist, I love her so!) and I was like “but then the baby won’t look like me!” And she essentially gave me a socially distant head slap and said “so you pick a donor that looks like you! Duh!” 

And then it clicked! Apparently the hang up in my brain was worrying about the baby looking like me. I don’t know why. There is a strong chance that even with a sperm donor and my eggs, the baby wouldn’t look like me at all. Genetics are weird, yo. I look nothing like my siblings, so it’s all a crapshoot, no matter whose genetic material you use.

But I think it was because I was so worried about this future child so much already, for growing up with a single mom and not knowing their dad and getting teased on the playground and not having someone to go to the Father/Daughter Dance with her, that adding in looking nothing like me would just be one too many hurdles. 

(Oh yes, friends, I do already worry about those things for my future child. Even though we didn’t even HAVE Daddy/Daughter dances when I grew up and I turned out just fine! I mean, old, crappy eggs notwithstanding.)

So then I decided to look around online at egg donors. I decided that I would do frozen eggs. It’s a bit cheaper than finding a person and paying that person to do their own cycle. It takes a little bit of the uncertainty out of it, in that they have already cycled and got eggs. And it was very eye-opening and so helpful. There are so many women out there who donated their eggs that you can find almost anyone that fits your needs. And once it got down to it, my requirements were that basically the woman was pale and had a round face. I was hoping for someone taller, since I’m 5-11, but turns out there aren’t a lot of tall egg donors out there. And if they are, they usually charge more, which I can’t really blame them.

In the meantime, I talked to my doctor about moving to donor eggs and they were like “hey! We have an in-house agency that does egg donors and they work right with our clinic!” and I was elated! After my first call with them, I felt very at ease. They were just starting a frozen egg bank, which meant that I could take advantage of a lower price and they could do all the searching for a donor FOR me. All I needed to give them was my requirements (see above: pale and round face, and preferably tall). I found a donor I liked, and she was due to cycle in the coming months, which was perfect for me because I needed some time to save up the money.

That was all in the fall last year and I had told them I wasn’t planning anything until probably March of 2021. I wanted several months to save some money, get my credit score up a bit and hopefully be vaccinated for Covid before trying.

They reached out again in January and we were going to move forward. But the last call I had with them left me in tears and throwing out cuss words every other word in our Zoom call. Turns out while they were willing to work with me on the price of the donor lot of eggs (yay! Price matching for egg donors, who knew?!), there was then all these added fees and talk of hiring a lawyer, all things previously not mentioned and also fees that were all included if I went with a donor egg bank.

When it came down to it, while I understood the additional costs and hiring a lawyer, it also just didn’t sit well with me that they were like “what’s another one to three thousand dollars?” I’m sure that’s not how they meant it, but that was 100% how it came across and it left a pit in my stomach and the one thing I have learned through all this is to trust my gut. I’m spending TENS of thousands of dollars already. Also even $1,000 is A LOT of money. Even if everything else was free.

So I’m back with the original frozen egg bank that I first reached out to last April. I spent a weekend searching for donors and picked my top 5. It turns out that I do have another requirement besides pale with a round face, I need proof the eggs work, so I limited myself to people who have either had kids of their own or their donated eggs produced children.

My top pick was 5′-7″, which is kind of tall, so I was really excited about her. One of the requirements of my clinic is to meet with a genetic counselor to make sure that the donor sperm guy and the donor egg woman aren’t carriers for the same diseases, which can increase the chances of the future baby having the disease. My sperm donor (the same one I used for my egg retrieval) is a carrier for one rare disease. My top egg donor choice wasn’t screened for that disease and so I was like “how bad could it be?” And the genetic counselor was like “well, actually….” which is never good. Turns out this disease leads to a shortened lifespan of about 38 years and a very decreased quality of life. So even though the odds were super low that the egg donor was a carrier for this, it wasn’t worth the risk. So it was on to donor egg choice number two.

Choice one and choice two look like they could be related. So I was fine with either one. And when I went back to look at Choice 2 again, I actually liked her a lot more. 

So now it’s just a matter of my doctor giving the go-ahead to purchase these (I have an appointment on Tuesday), and then pulling the trigger on the egg lot! Right now I’m aiming for a embryo transfer at the end of May!

Stay tuned!