I’ve had a few people reach out to ask me what came of the exception request related to being eligible for the fertility clinic’s “baby guarantee,” so I figure it’s time for another update.
We learned in July that the Committee denied the request, which means I’m not eligible for the guarantee of a live birth. I’m still eligible for the 2 high-quality embryos (not tested) guarantee or the one euploid embryo (an embryo that has the correct number of chromosomes) guarantee. After some thought and some conversations with the clinic, we’ve decided to go with the 2 HQE guarantee — since we’re using donor eggs from “young” women, the likelihood of having issues with the embryos is smaller, and this gives us at least two HQEs to try with.
The way this program/guarantee works is this: We’re given full access to the Egg Bank to look at those donors who we can use as part of this program. Since the guarantee is through our fertility clinic, we’re limited to donors who donate through our clinic. Each clinic has different rules and programs related to IVF and donor eggs, and this is the rule our clinic uses.
The idea is that we look through the pool of donors (think of a really weird and super personal dating site). We read through their profiles (likes, dislikes, dreams, occupation, hobbies, sports ability, schooling, and a zillion other details), review their detailed medical history and their family’s medical history, look at photos of them as kids through now, read descriptions of their family members’ traits, occupations, illnesses, and cause of deaths, and review the donor’s genetic testing report — all to find “the” donor that we want to mix with my husband’s sperm to create the embryos.
I won’t lie. It’s really weird to look through the profiles and think “do we want this person to be our potential kid’s biological mom?” It’s also weird to try to answer questions like: Oh wow — this person is GREAT at sports. Maybe the potential kid would inherit that ability — would that be good (because it’s not like me or my husband can pass that along) or would it be too different from us?
And then there’s the question of looks. It’s hard enough accepting that my genes won’t be passed along, so ideally a donor might have some sort of physical resemblance to me (or their siblings/parents might have that), but what I’ve learned in looking at the donors available is that this seems pretty unlikely at the moment.
Side note: If you’re considering donor eggs, a question I wish I had thought to ask before moving forward with this clinic is this: How many full lot* (will explain this momentarily) donors are available at any given time, and might any of them look like me?
What I’ve discovered is this: The number of frozen egg donors available to me who have complete lots of eggs (6-9 eggs) rather than partial lots (1-2 eggs) is really small. Like, I have currently have 4 choices small. And of those four women, only one is Caucasian. The blond hair, green eyes for all of her family type of Caucasian. That doesn’t even come close to resembling me.
There are about a half dozen donor options with partial eggs, but most of those don’t come close to resembling me either, and I’m not sure I want to put forth money to take the chance with a single egg.
(*Why does it matter if there’s a full lot vs partial lot? It’s because not all fertilized eggs actually make it to becoming healthy embryos, so the more eggs you start with, the more likely it is that there will be a blastocyst available for transfer.)
Now, we haven’t given the clinic any money beyond that for bloodwork and various tests, but we have committed a lot of time and effort to getting things setup with them, and if we were to move to a different clinic we’d have to start from scratch.
I checked with the clinic (because I was kind ticked off about my lack of options) and they told me that new donors are added all the time. Having checked the site almost daily for 3-4 weeks and seen only 2-3 new donors added in that time period makes me question that “all the time” comment, but here we are.
Our choices are this:
Continue hanging out in purgatory — waiting to see if there’s a donor that is an obvious good match for us in personality, genetics, and looks
Set a timeline for hanging out in purgatory so if no “this is the one” donor appears by X date, we select from what is available at that time
Pick a donor now based on all other aspects except looks
Start over with a different clinic and make sure there are significantly more options from the donor pool before committing (for context, when I did donor eggs with the fertility clinic in Florida, there were at least 20 profiles to pick from)
And that’s what I can tell you.