I've learned that my body doesn't want to make babies naturally. Infertility is fairly common, but very few people talk openly about infertility. I am.  

Getting the Donor Egg Process Started

It’s been two months since my last blog post. Here’s the TL;DR version of what’s happened in that time. We:

  • selected a donor and paid the clinic;

  • sorted out the timing of the fertilization of the donor eggs, coordinating around our crazy schedules (work, travel, and availability of dog sitters);

  • drove to the clinic for my husband to provide his part in everything (fertilizing the eggs);

  • received the Day 1 update post-fertilization this morning (4 of the 6 eggs made it to day 1 in the embryo growth process);

  • are now waiting for the Day 5-7 update (coming Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday of this week), which will tell us how many, if any, embryos made it to the blastocyst stage and are transferable;

  • are also waiting to see what happens with Tuesday’s election and hoping the outcome doesn’t mean that IVF will become impossible/illegal in Georgia (like it has in other states following the overturning of Roe), since the current governor was caught on audio saying something to that effect.

THE LONGER VERSION OF THE UPDATE

Selecting a Donor
Two months ago we were still in a holding pattern, trying to find a donor that felt “right” to us. In early October, we finally found one. The person selected has similar-ish traits to me in terms of interests, and while she doesn’t exactly resemble me, she and her family have hair/eye color that is close enough to mine to make me feel comfortable. I know not every child resembles their parents, and I know that looks aren’t the most important thing. However, the donor egg process is hard — it requires accepting that I won’t ever have kids who have my genetics, so I’m searching for the small things that make the process a little bit easier for me.

In any case, we selected the donor. That meant submitting a form to the egg bank saying “Hey, we’d like this donor and her lot of 6 eggs! Please remove her from the site while we work out the logistics.” After they received that form, the egg bank sent us paperwork we had to digitally sign agreeing to all sorts of things: that we wouldn’t ever try to identify or contact the donor, that the sperm used to fertilize the eggs meets certain criteria, that genetic screening isn’t perfect and we can’t hold the egg bank liable for anything, that the donor’s medical history is self-reported and there’s no guarantee about accuracy, that we waive any rights to legal action or class action suits against the egg bank, etc. Just the sort of thing you always think about when trying to have children, right?

After those forms were signed, the egg bank reached out to the fertility clinic, and then the clinic sent us a bill to pay for the eggs and the entire transfer process (excluding medications). After we paid, the clinic’s business office had to process its own paperwork and tell the nurse side of the clinic that it’s okay to reach out to the patient (me) to start working on next steps. It’s supposed to only take a day or two between payment and being contacted about next steps, but for whatever reason, it took a week. And yes, I followed up with the clinic every two days to make sure the paperwork didn’t get lost.

Prepping for Fertilization
Once the nurse’s side received the okay, they reached out to me to start the conversation around the timing of everything. Since the donor eggs were already located at our clinic, our post-payment process started with fertilization. The egg thaw needed to be carefully timed to coincide with the sperm collection so both were ready at the same time. Our clinic only does sperm collection before 11am, and since they’re located on the other side of Atlanta from us, it meant we had to drive up the evening before and stay in a hotel to make the morning appointment (leaving super early in the morning is not an option for us).

We had to coordinate this around our work schedules, my job’s potential travel, the availability of dog sitters, and starting everything early enough so we could do a transfer before the clinic’s end-of-year closure. To ensure we could control the timing of the transfer, I started birth control (again) when I got my most recent period, which meant I ended up with a three-day on-and-off-again massive headache while my body got used to the extra hormones again.

Fertilization
This past Thursday, after a full work day (back-to-back zoom meetings from 9am-4:45pm for me), we packed, prepped the house for our dog sitter, and then drove the 3+ hours to the hotel. We got stuck about 15 minutes from our destination (which was also 15 minutes from the called-in dinner waiting for us at a restaurant) because traffic was stopped by police cars so tow trucks could clear an accident off the highway. Vehicles that were three cars ahead of us made it through and past the accident area before the highway was stopped to be cleared. We finally made it to the restaurant, picked up our now-cold dinners, and went to the hotel to eat and collapse.

The appointment on Friday was simple enough. We arrived, checked in, my husband did his thing, and we left, detouring a bit to get lunch in the city halfway between us and Atlanta before going home.

Fertilization Update
I was told that a nurse would call me this morning between 9am and 10am with the Day 1 update — letting me know what survived the thaw and what fertilized. Of course, I started looking at my phone around 7:30am to make sure I didn’t miss a call. At 10:45am, I borrowed my husband’s phone to call the office and was trying to figure out how to reach a person since the clinic isn’t officially open on weekends and this doesn’t really qualify as an emergency. As I was listening to the prompts and trying to decide which one to choose, my phone finally rang.

It was good news for this first step:

  • All 6 eggs that were thawed were mature and fertilized using ICSI (a fertilization process)

  • 4 of the 6 fertilized eggs made it to the first embryo stage in terms of growth

Next Steps
Now I’m waiting for the Day 5-7 update — it will come sometime between this Wednesday and Friday — which will tell me how many, if any, embryos make it to the blastocyst stage and are transferable. And yes, I’m sure I’ll be checking my phone every 2.34 minutes starting 7:30am Wednesday morning.

After that update, I’ll talk with the doctor (a telehealth appointment scheduled for the Tuesday following the update) to hear his recommended transfer protocol: the timing, the medicines, etc. The following day I’ll have a call with the nurse to confirm the pharmacy the prescriptions should be sent to and answer the questions I know I’ll have. My guess is that I’d start the transfer protocol right before Thanksgiving, but that is highly dependent on whether or not any embryos make it to a transferable stage.

My next blog update won’t be until after the consults, unless nothing makes it to blast stage and we’re back to square one.

Prepping for Transfer

In a holding pattern again