I have a confession to make.
Even now, when I read a blog where there's a 40-year-old with stats worse than mine who conceives with her own eggs, I have a twinge of jealousy. You know the ones I'm talking about: the women who have spontaneous conceptions as they prep for DE cycles. Or the women who only produce two eggs on their first IVF cycle and still get pregnant. I knew it, comments pipe up, you didn't need donor eggs!
Maybe I didn't need donor eggs either. Maybe if I'd spent another year or that same $30K on IVF at a different clinic or with a different protocol, I'd have a kid with my own genes.
Don't get me wrong: I have no regrets. I don't love my son less than my daughter. DE brought me joy, when trying with my own eggs (after age 30, that is) did not.
But let's be clear: I didn't need donor eggs. I chose donor eggs, because I'd reached my breaking point. Because time was more valuable than DNA. Because 22 cycles was more than enough. I remember Dr. Gorgeous standing in a door frame saying to me I just don't want you to look back and say I've wasted X number of years. This is your LIFE. And LG's.
I found myself spinning about this stuff yesterday, again, on The Blasted Highway. And then last night when I couldn't sleep. There's a part of me that thinks I wasn't strong enough to keep going, to do just one more cycle on my own and see if it worked. And there's a part of me--the smarter one--that thinks not using DE would have been foolish. It would have been choosing infertility and loss over the possibility of joy.
I occasionally think about this too, with my two DE children, and I know that it will never just go away. However, the refrain I've taught myself includes a reminder about the odds of chromosomal (and other) defects with older eggs. I sit for awhile and recall the relief I felt when I realized I wouldn't have to do amnio. wouldn't have to do CVS, wouldn't have to worry every single day about what unforeseen anomaly might arise, ante- and post-natal. (Which isn't to say that such things can't come up even with sprightly post-adolescent donor eggs, but....) I know this may not be nearly as much an issue with you as with me, as I WAS nearly 40 when I began attempting to conceive. FOR ME--I can't stress enough how much this is my own thinking, not applicable to others AT ALL--I have come to think that pursuing a baby with my own eggs would have been a supreme act of ego, at the possible, even probable, expense of any resulting baby.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Heidi. To be honest, I don't think about that issue much at all. But the other part of what you say...about ego...I totally get that.
ReplyDeleteI get jealous at times as well. But at the same time, I am so happy to be pregnant via DE. I had such lousy luck with my own eggs, that I gave up after 2 IVF's. I had to wait 2 years to save up for one more cycle, and I wanted it to WORK! I don't have any regrets, but still have occasional pangs of what if? I try to focus on all the less favorable things that I won't be passing on to my daughter! Weird, I know!
ReplyDeleteWord verification is gone--thank you! Now I can comment again!
ReplyDeleteYou know, Gwinne, you seem happy though. You really do. I remember feeling such frustration for you with those cycles. And such relief when Tiny Boy stuck! And I think it was time for LG, too, in a way, to become the big sister. She is flourishing at her age in this new role!
ReplyDeleteI am so happy for you, Gwinne, and I don't think you have any reason to look back with regret...I can see how stopping by the clinic yesterday would churn these thoughts around, but you clearly made the right decision for you - and this darling boy would not exist if it weren't for your wise choices.
ReplyDeleteLove,
Maddy
Thanks, y'all. Like I said, no regrets. I *am* happy. Just niggling thoughts sometimes that in no way take away from what I feel for my son. (It really has to do with my relationship to my body, not with him.) And, yeah, Rebecca, LG was definitely ready to be a big sister. That was one of the hardest things...having her constantly asking for a sibling and not being able to give her that, which only added to my own sorrow.
ReplyDeleteAs someone who moved on to DE IVF without ever having done IVF with her own eggs, I can relate to the thoughts & feelings in this post.
ReplyDeleteMy husband and I made a calculated, mostly financially motivated, decision to skip to the treatment which had the highest probability of working for us, and DE IVF was it.
I am thrilled to be a mother, and I love our DE-conceived boys. I don't see how I could love children who shared my genes more.
I do think a small part of me will always wonder "what if" I'd tried IVF with my eggs. . . . but I did what I thought was most likely to make me a mother, and it did. I can't complain about that.