After 3 failed fresh IVF and 1 failed FET the doctors have advised us that my egg quality is the issue and that it wouldn’t be ethical for them to recommend another cycle using my eggs as they now put our chances of success at around 1%. This was what we were told at our follow up appointment after the last cycle back in July.
As you can imagine this was pretty hard to hear. It’s been a difficult few months for me to try to accept that we won’t be able to conceive using my own eggs and in all honesty I’m not still not sure that I have completely come to terms with this.
Having said that, we registered for the egg donor programme at our clinic pretty quickly as we definitely want to go down this route and my 40th birthday is creeping up next year... We were told it would take about 6 months to find a donor but amazingly we heard from them last week and they have 2 potential donors for us.
Looking at the details about the donors they both have characteristics in their descriptions which are different to me (for example one has blonde hair where I have dark brown hair).
For ladies who have been through donor egg cycles, how did you decide on the right donor?I’m not expecting everything to be the same as me but there are some things that I feel are quite important.
Just interested to hear how others have chosen donors? This feels like such a HUGE decision and I’m really struggling with it.
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We are also using donor eggs after being told that my own eggs weren't viable, pretty tough to hear and I did have to go through a grieving process before I even considered going down the donor egg route but now I don't even think about it, our desire to have a family is greater then having a genetic link to me.
We are having treatment abroad as the waiting lists where we live we're just too long. It took 2 weeks to match me up with a donor she is very similar to me in height, weight hair and eye colour and we even have the same blood type which I was amazed at as I'm ab neg.the clinic chose the donor for me based on all the information I gave them and I'm completely happy with this, all the very best to you xxx
Not sure if this will help, but we were on a donor egg waiting list after 3 failed ivfs. We were fairly relaxed about things like hair colour as figured there is always randomness in characteristics anyway. However, we were extremely lucky and unexpectedly fell pregnant naturally while waiting for our egg donor. Our now beautiful 10 month old boy has the Blondist hair despite me and hubby having dark brown hair! Turns out my grandad who I never met was very blond and must have skipped a generation! Also my friend had a redhead girl without any others in the family having similar.
I terms of struggling to come to terms with donor, I do remember being in that place and truly thought we would not have our own 'joint genetic' child. We had an amazing counsellor at our clinic who really helped - have they offered you this? The counsellor also talked us through the practical issues such as whether to let the child know. Also I would say don't rush if you are truly not ready. It is a grieving process you are going through and it is so hard.
Thanks, I know how kids sometimes have different features to their parents and sometimes feel like I’m being silly as after all you can’t predict how genetics will work! But I feel like if the donor is as similar to me as possible then the chances of being the same as if it was my egg would be the same...
We have had some counselling and we have more sessions arranged. We haven’t got into the implications bit yet - we are still discussing the grieving process at the moment...
Thanks so much for replying and congratulations - you are one of those magical miracles! 😁 xx
Hi there. It sounds like your situation is quite similar to my own. I don’t think you fully “get over” the inability to conceive with your own eggs but resign yourself to moving forward positively in a different direction than you had imagined for yourself.
Selecting a donor really does feel like a huge decision. At the start I was really stressed about it but when we had the donor profiles in front of us there were some we instantly thought “no way” and others we were both really drawn to. Almost like a gut feeling. We didn’t get too bogged down with matching my physical characteristics etc 100%.
Wishing you loads of luck in your decision making xx
I can't help you there really as I wasn't given a choice. How exciting to be getting further forward in your journey. Maybe the best thing to do is not to think about it too much, choose one and then don't think about the choice again.
What I would be most interested in is whether they have had a baby / donated successfully in the past, or what age they are.
I went abroad for embryo donation as there is no waiting list . I'm over 40 so I felt I didn't have the time to wait. I didn't get to worried about matching and using donation as I had also thought about adoption so for me embryo donation was a great compromise between having my own baby and adoption. I just made sure the donor was under 35 and healthy the clinic also matched blood type.
Our private clinic had no waiting list, whole thing took a couple of weeks to get a match. We only know our donor had the same physical characteristics, brunette and blue eyes, a college education, her age at donation and hobbies and that was it.
Our child will be able to request info on the donor when they are 18. For us, it was after a long journey of multiple fails with own eggs, grieving and counselling. Unless you're 100% ready, or at least THINK you're 100% ready, you may need more time.
There's always going to be little doubts, but when you get a BFP and see the baby on the scan and feel them kick, all the tiny doubts disappear.
A lot of the doubts were all about what we were feeling, very human feelings like that need to have a child with both our genes, that looks like a mixture of us, etc, but from the moment of creation, it's become all about them, questions like will you love a baby you carry around and give birth to are as silly as saying a mother who adopts a child can never truly love it, which is nonsense.
My husband and I are about to undergo our first round of IVF with an egg donor .
We we're offered multiple donors by our clinic .
I thought it would be easy to choose but it's utterly overwhelming. We would sit for hours weighing up height, eye colour , hair colour and which one would be the best match for us . However you do feel like you are choosing your child's fate and it's traumatising thinking what if you make the wrong decision.
After a couple of extremely anxious weeks we chose a donor who was most like myself . The donor then pulled out and this was another blow, as you start to imagine your baby and the way they will look etc.
I have learnt from that experience not to get emotionally attached to the donor / donor egg, and try to think more rationally.
We now have a new donor . And are synchronising cycles. We have become less picky but we do have certain parameters we will stick do regarding height and eye and hair colour etc .
I think chosing the donor is very hard, but the first step in an very hard journey .
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