When you Fall of the Horse, Get Back On

Well we are mid cycle again…with a new donor. I know I’ve been absent for a while. It was a little tough to say the least. But my husband and I decided to try one last time. And this is why I thought it’d be worth another post: not to to say we are trying again but how we chose because, at least from my experience, choosing a donor is hardly easy. And for us on this journey we originally started in our minds wanting the donor to be as like me as possible and now we went for the donor who would maybe be most like our daughter. To be clear: I am small boned, straight hair, hazel eyes, fair skin. The new donor is: small boned, wavy hair, dark brown eyes and olive skin. Did I care if she was arty as I had last time? Nope. In fact she actually made an x in the no box on the part that said any artistic ability. Did I care if she was musical as I did last time? Nope. In fact she seems, at least on paper to be more inclined to math and science proclivities as foreign to me as another language. What she does have is two children and two previous successful cycles (last one with twins) and at this point that’s what makes a good donor for us. A proven one. How did we find this donor who actually looks like our daughter especially when she herself was a baby? I turned off the selection that said white. Yup, and there she was, our donor. Amazing. And she is white but with olive toned skin (like my husband). Imagine that. So yeah, I have now let go of any illusion that the donor looks like me and finally I really don’t care. If nothing else this journey has shown me that the love I have is not bound by genetics so it certainly wont be bound by looks.

As for my daughter whomever we picked would have the same dad so they will have similarities and in this case we did choose someone whose children had similar features to her own as well.

Keep you fingers and toes crossed for us again if anyone is still reading. HCG shot for the donor should be middle of next week.

What Control?

So all is set for a transfer this coming Tuesday. Our donor had 25 eggs retrieved and we get the fertilization results tomorrow. Great right? Yes and we are now, of course, agonizing about whether to put on or two back. Twins would be a lot. And then we think, but my gosh could we actually be that lucky that two would take on the first go? And of course this is all so hypothetical and all about this illusion of control over details when you have a child this way. Details that we have no control over whatsoever. Tuesday will be transfer. I’m up. Our obgyn said, given my past pregnancy (the one with our first donor cycle) she things, besides some possible discomfort toward the end, I should go for two embryos as we would have more of a chance of a pregnancy that way. Maybe I was looking for a medical reason not to try two, I don’t know. At any rate I think, at the moment, our feeling it to go for it because well, we wont try this again. Its sort of our last shot. I would love to expand our family, am satisfied with what we have, and well, this is sort of it . Also not getting any younger. I turned 42 last month.

So there it is. If anyone still reads this, please send your good thoughts our way.

Going Gattica

Do you know the movie? You know the one where “In "the not-too-distant" future, genetic engineering of humans is common and DNA plays the primary role in determining social class and ethan hawke plays a guy who fools everyone he being born without the help of genetic tinkering is discriminated against etc…anyway…where was I. Oh yeah, finding a donor.

As my husband and I looked at the donor selection – trying to minimize photos by asking the two agencies we were working with to send us PDF sans images…we started to get caught up in the stories – not the whole I like this, or eat that but the story of I paint, or I’m good at math, or I studied this and my siblings do X while my parents do Y – getting caught up in whose story is most similar to mine…and then the epiphany came…these are just stories and it really doesn’t matter what these people do (direction is so much determined by home life/circumstances/chance etc) – I see how much we influence our daughter now, see how different she is from her cousin of the same age in many respects because of how we are raising her and while genetics are responsible for a predisposition and her looks we help to guide that and foster or negate certain qualities which bring me back to this: in the end we threw out the stories of the donors just as we’d thrown out the images and went to who is the healthiest, who doesn’t have cancer, and has perfect eyesight etc (see Gattica above) and then it was easy there was only one who had such a clean slate. So we picked her. And in the game of pretending we can control anything we feel like we have someone who at least on paper will give our possible baby the best chance for a long disease free life. That and we had the nurse who chose our previous donor take a look at the photo of this donor to let us know if she thought she was compatible not with me but with the donor for our daughter. And she is. To back track I sent photos of our daughter to the agencies and had them select donors for us since we didn’t want to see the images.

And there we have it. We will do a cycle at end of August/September.

Fingers crossed.

Searching

We have decided to see if we can find another donor. Last time we didn’t look. The nurse who we had worked with for two years just called and said “ I have the perfect donor for you”. And that’s who we went with. This time that donor is done donating. We have asked the nurse again to look out for us but I’m also now contacting donor agencies which is bewildering…maybe a little odd to be flipping through images of people. I actually never saw our donor and don’t have any desire to see the next one. Anyone know of a great East Coast donor agency? Let me know.

So that’s where we are at. Although if we don’t find a donor in the next four to five months we will stop searching. We are very happy with our family as three and while it would be an incredible blessing to have another we are already so blessed we will be happy to keep our family the same size.

letting go

Kami has a very interesting post at Are We There Yet – discussing her feelings about being a donor recipient. Certainly for me coming to terms with this has not been fluid…I’ve mourned the genetic loss and occasionally still do even as my own history of never knowing my biological father and being adopted by my non genetic dad makes me realize how unnecessary genetic continuity is in creating a family. I get angry or resentful of people who seem so cavalier about pregnancy – this time I want a girl, or the just we wanted to have a baby and two months later voila, preggers…or even the we want more children…all the things the “fertile world” says. I resent the way they take their fertility for granted even as I understand that it’s totally normal to do. Why should you ever think it could be a problem? But it can be, it is. And then I think that this experience, the losses, the trying, the pain and sadness that my husband and I have gone through, that has made us appreciate this precious growing life in a way I don’t know we would have been able to do had we not gone through all that we have.

Finally I really believe as I posted on kami’s site:
To me it seems natural to mourn or be angry at the genetic loss while understanding that genetic code is only one part of what makes us who we are. it’s important to make peace with conceiving through DE. For me it’s an ongoing process (part of which I deal with by telling people about it). That said I know in my heart when our little one is born (hoping that all continues to go well) the fact that we used DE wont make one bit of difference.

Thankfully love is not based on genetic code.

On our little one front: more movement. i had a moment of panic the other day when i thought when was the last time i felt anything...instantly morbid thoughts flooded my brain...it is so easy to get pulled into those dark thoughts...the trauma of infertility has a long reach.

The Cat’s Out Of the Bag

So we had a great family therapy session with my family regarding “telling”. As I mentioned before it was my immediate family’s first response of “why tell anyone including the child?” that prompted us to go in the first place. And I’m so glad we did. It really cleared the air. Sometimes you really do need a third person involved so that what is being said really gets heard. I must say my parents made a HUGE leap by the end of the hour in their understanding of why it is not only important for the child to know it’s AMAZING FANTASTIC HI TECH DESIGNER BABY origins, but for the people closest to us to know too. Can you imagine the scenario of the future little one saying to Uncle xy “did you know three people made me, I’ve got a special piece?” And Uncle XY not ever hearing the word donor before saying something like “what, no! you’ve got it all wrong” or something like that….anyway you get the idea.

As for the mister and his hesitation at telling others – once he understood how uncomfortable I was feeling when people close to me were asking certain questions that I felt I was responding to in a lie (maybe it would have helped if i'd told him about these things), and once we both realized that you don’t even want to have a whiff of shame associated with what we are doing, it became clear that telling a circle of other people was/is as important as telling the future little one.

And what about the world knowing? Well if the world ends up knowing that is fine too. But it’s not our mission to tell every stranger on the street, or person we are not in close contact with. Rather it is our mission to have this be open information that is familiar and comfortable and essentially just a part of our story so that when the future little one does encounter someone who says something negative the little one has the confidence and knowledge to either respond or not care.

We are proud of the technology that has enabled us to become pregnant. All the things we went through to get here as individuals and as a couple have made us stronger and made our capacity for love even greater.

Is your family supportive of the decisions you make/have made regarding donors and telling?

s/he looks just like you

certainly not a comment a donor recipient expects to hear, although i have read that it does happen.

my husband and i decided a while ago on full disclosure to our child (if we should be lucky enough to have one). i know this is not the usual way that one has a family, but there are so many different permutations of families these days...we're not quite sure how we will say it -- someone we know who is a mother from donor egg began telling her daughter almost immediately the story of the nice lady who helped create her.

that said I don't know that we plan to tell everyone -- certainly the obgyn who we work with will know -- whether we tell all our friends? the stranger on the street who says "s/he look just like you!"...maybe to them i'd just nod...i don't know.

there is no stigma attached to this, at least i don't think there is -- but it does require a little explanation and i don't know we will always feel like giving it. moreover at some point it will be up to the, now imagined, teenager if s/he want to tell people.

on the other hand -- there are people we will tell -- we don't want to inadvertently become the poster couple for IVF finally working...they tried 8 times and now look! so for those people we know who find themselves down the IVF road and having it not work we will/would absolutely spill.

genetics does not a family make...and yet without the donated genetics we would not have the possibility of a family.

so yeah, we plan on telling the story right from the beginning -- getting practice saying the words so that later they wont seem so awkward.

do you plan to disclose? have you thought about it?

ready to launch