Mary's Donor Egg Journey: Part 1
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Sat in a gloomy office in London, its grey outside and drizzling, the weather is matching my very melancholy mood today. So it’s probably a good day to reflect back on my TTC journey of the last 3 years.
We initially went to our fantastic doctor, who referred us to the NHS sub-fertility unit in Leatherhead, this was in Jan 2012. All they could offer me (due to age reasons) was 3 months of the breast cancer drug Tamoxifen, this apparently has a side effect of increased fertility. This took me through three months of hell! I was incredibly fatigued, tired, grumpy, dazed, moody and didn’t have the energy to raise a smile let alone anything else to try and concieve. The three months didn’t work and we had to wave goodbye to the NHS and set about on a costly private journey. The only positive about the NHS I could add is that for our private treatment they allowed us to do all the blood work for nothing, for that I am very grateful to my doctor.
I am very fortunate to be able to afford private treatment, it by no means has been easy, but I can just afford it – and I am so grateful to have this job at this moment in my life, sometimes that’s when I think sometimes you really can be in the right place at the right time. Looking for private clinics, we were looking for somewhere with a good reputation as well as an easy commute to. I didn’t want a London clinic as my treatment would have been over the Olympics and potentially a nightmare to commute to (as it happened commuting in London during the Olympics was an absolute breeze! Typical!) – so we ended up at a clinic in Woking, still a good half hour drive away but still doable.
The nurses were incredibly friendly and we were put at ease and actually quite excited about the IVF treatment that had been recommended. The doctor though was quite cold, he would refer to my other half as ‘Sir’ and not really refer to me as anything. More about him later.
I started my down regulation drugs, injecting was a little scary at first and by the end of it I was an absolute pro, then I went on menopur to make the ovaries create many eggs! Hopefully! Had all the scans and I had produced 8 follicles in total, which I know now it’s not great – but kept being told that it was quality rather than quality. IVF was August 2012 and I am not glad of the naivety I had then as to the mindset I am in now. I just assumed this would work; you have no other thoughts really, you trust the nurses and doctors and the whole process.
I had made some good contacts on Twitter in the same predicament as me by this time and saw BFP on a daily basis on my timeline, it was looking good! These people were and are still my absolute lifeline, they are able to support you and offer advice in a way that they only those in the process truly understand – they know the raw feelings, of joy and hopelessness, the misery of the medication and handling other people’s reactions/comments around you. I would recommend anyone reading this who hasn’t reached out to others in social media to do so.
The egg collection took place on a Friday and I was more petrified by being knocked out (I’d never experienced this before) rather than the actual egg collection. Little did I know that being knocked out was awesome, and I would go back for more if I could especially after a night of bad sleep. I woke up crying in a ward with another woman who was laughing – talk about different emotions! They had got 5 eggs from my old withered ovaries and told me that I would be taken back to my room where would wait to be told by another nurse how many had fertilised. I thought at the time ‘how many had fertilised?’ I would have thought they all would! Yes that’s the naïve me talking from my clueless days! Well, the nurse did arrive a few hours and a free lunch later to say that only one could be used, wow – our jaws could have hit the floor. What happened to the other four? We were then told that we would have to wait three days to find out if that one egg had survived! She said she would phone if it hadn’t. On the Monday morning I got a call and recognised the number with my heart in my mouth, apparently the egg had survived! Oh Joy! And I was all set for my ET that day. We drove back ecstatic and made our way to the hospital to have the ET.
For anyone who doesn’t google pregnancy symptoms in the 2ww must be hard as nuts, I googled every day and thought I felt things, and checked for symptoms. Agh, its absolute misery… then my bleed happened, and boy did it! I ended up in hospital as I lost so much blood. I won’t go into it or name the hospital but they left me for four hours in a room, clearly forgotten about. The WTF appointment in the clinic was quite interesting, not only did I learn that out of the remaining eggs 3 had fertilised – two of them they believed had too much sperm in them, and the other egg divided into two and died, the last egg didn’t do anything.
After a few months we decided to go for IUI, this is much gentler and felt right for us to do. I couldn’t explain why really, I just knew I couldn’t go through IVF again. Only menopur this time seemed great! In fact I didn’t think my body could go through IVF –mentally as well as physically. This didn’t work either. Second attempt was Feb this year, this didn’t work. During the IUI procedure the doctor had advised me and my OH that if I overstimulated to the drugs we were not allowed to try ourselves as it could be too dangerous, this I understand and would never want to myself in any danger of course. He then spoke to my OH to advise that ‘women are sneaky and would lie to a man to sleep with them to get pregnant’. I hope in some way he is reading this now as it’s the most unprofessional comment I have ever heard and I was too stunned at the time to say anything. My OH calmed me down afterwards telling me the guy was an eccentric and to ignore it.
After a good long think, we came to the decision to go for donor eggs and I started researching in Spain.
Giving away my chance of having my own biological children was not been an easy decision, and at times I have been through hell with this, thinking that all my family history on my side has died. But with a history of heart disease in the family and my grade 3 crappy eggs, this is the best decision all round for a healthy baby. My DNA can live through my niece and also my genes will imprint in the embryo, which has given me great comfort.
The clinic in Woking recommended a clinic in Barcelona, they had been there and said the facilities were amazing. So I emailed them to request costs and details, and they emailed back £8,000 – no thank you! I then checked with other clinics and saw some good reviews about a clinic in Marbella, had English nurses too, seemed great and cheaper. We booked a quick trip over in early July to check out the place and was thoroughly impressed. We had a very detailed explanation by the nurse of how the birth mother’s genes imprint into the embryo, they are not just the incubator but actually there is more involved than that – there is some research that shows where complete pony embryos are put inside a race horse, they come out much bigger and stronger than a regular pony – not comparing myself to a race horse but so grateful my genes will make a difference. This research is very new, and with IVF still a fairly new thing in itself, god knows what we will learn with research in upcoming years.
The doctor could not be more polar opposite than the doctor in Woking (oh, forgot to mention Woking charged me £40 for my case file which I had to take to Spain!) he was warm, friendly, just such a nice person. Went through a dummy transfer, and he showed me a small fibroid that had grown – nowhere near anything important he reassured me, as well as small ovaries at 2.5 cms, they should be 4 cms apparently. Going through my file too – it showed that I had crappy grade 3 eggs, and it became all too apparent that the 2 x IUI’s I really didn’t have a chance. Talk about daylight robbery. The doctor explained further how his clinic works, if a woman fails one IVF at 37, he would then go straight onto donor eggs rather than performing anything else, he explained that it was their policy (rather than slamming the other clinic).
So here I am now, I have all my meds (which were sent from Italy as the clinic in Woking didn’t have time to do any scans or help me with meds! Yep charming!), been taking the pill – had a non-stop bleed for one month which absolutely wiped me out, however that’s all stopped now. I start with progynova soon, as well as a prostrap injection, and will take pessaries after ET. We have our donor, a 21 year old. Hopefully her eggs are good!
The reason why I am in a melancholy mood is that I remember the worries/obstacles of the previous IVF, what happens if the donor doesn’t respond, what happens if they don’t fertilise, what happens if they don’t survive 3 days to transfer. It’s slapped me round the face today and it’s something that will be at the back of my mind as we proceed into this by the end of September.
I truly wish all the very best of success to anyone reading this, I wanted to give you a frank, honest account of my own TTC journey. There is so much positivity that has come out of great sadness at times, my relationship is stronger than ever, in fact we are engaged now J I have now met personally some of my closest confidants on Twitter, it’s really made my day or year in fact! Another thing that I am so proud of is me, the fact that I have persevered through the storms and will continue to do so. I am proud of what my body and mind have endured over the last three years and I won’t stop until we achieved our dreams.
2 Comments
Kim Carberry
August 20, 2013 at 12:44 pm
Wow!! What an interesting read…
Emily
August 21, 2013 at 10:30 am
Thanks Kim x