Donor Mum

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Last week while surfing through the TV channels, of which we have about ten and usually can't find anything to watch, we landed upon a documentary on ABC2 titled, Donor Mum: The children I have never met.

As written in my post last week, this topic is close to my heart and mind at the moment, so we watched intently.

The 2011 documentary follows the journey of Sylvia Barr, who was one of Britain's first anonymous egg donors, as she seeks to met the children that were born from her two donated eggs. Sylvia also has one child of her own, conceived using donor insemination.

Her journey started 19 years before filming, after the birth of her son, she decided to "give something back", so anonymously donated two of our own eggs. Sylvia then received a bunch of flowers from the recipient and a hand written card of thanks.

The lady that received Sylvia's two eggs, Joan, had devastatingly lost her first two children in a car accident and being unable to conceive again herself went down the donation path. As chance would have it, Sylvia saw a television programme about this devastating car accident and saw Joan's handwriting on a wreath laid on the grave of her two children. She realised that Joan was the woman she had helped. (What are the odds, right!!)

Joan gave birth to twins using Sylvia's donated eggs, a boy and a girl. At the time of making this documentary (2011), she had been divorced from her husband for 12 years. He was not a part of this program.

Through TV and paper reports and then FaceBook (arh, bless FaceBook), Sylvia was aware of the children's names and where they lived, long before she would meet them.

When the time was right and the twins had turned 18, Sylvia, counselled by a UKDL employee, wrote a letter to Joan introducing herself and asking if she would like to be in touch.

The letter was meet with enthusiasm from Joan. It seemed that she wanted nothing more than to meet the woman who had given her this great gift.

At first, Joan's daughter was hesitant to talk about her biological mother, even though she had known her whole life that she was conceived with donor eggs. This tore at Sylvia. She wondered if she should not have made contact after all and decided to back off. However, the daughter did eventually warm to the idea.

After swapping emails and phone calls, the group of five ended up meeting. Immediately they seemed at ease with each other and started comparing their physical characteristics. There was a lot of family resemblance between Sylvia, her son and the twins.

This documentary was hugely emotional, but for them it was undeniably worthwhile. This story was definitely one with a happy ending.

At the same time, Sylvia's son was liaising with UK DonorLink (UKDL) to find any adults or siblings that he may be genetically related too. Sadly, after giving a DNA sample, no matches were found on the database.

This documentary certainly pulled at my heart strings. The first phone call between Sylvia and Joan had tears streaming down my face. And when they actually met I was a blubbering mess.

I felt for Sylvia as she talked of how she struggled for 18 years to not contact her biological children, and how she always thought of them, wondering what they were doing, how they were. I also felt for her son who wanted to find his biological father and hoped that he had donated his sperm for a greater cause than just money.

It is such a hard decision to donate sperm, eggs, or embryos and one that stays with you forever. One that should not be taken lightly because one day a little person could be the result.

Deciding what to do...

with your stored embryos.

Is the first sentence on the letter that landed in our mailbox yesterday.

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When we started  IVF and completed the consent form, which asked questions about storing embryos and what to do with them when you no longer wanted them stored, I have to admit I didn't really think about having to actually make the decision.

You complete this form at the beginning of the treatment. When you have no idea if it will actually work or what the hell you are getting into. When there are is no baby in your arms and no embryos to store.

We are one of the lucky ones and we now have a baby in our arms and stored embryos. Every day I am thankful for IVF and the precious gift it has given us. If we lived in a different time we wouldn't have our beautiful children.

Now I look at this letter and feel sick about the decision that faces us.

There are five choices when deciding what to do with your stored embryos.

Keep them and pay $500 per year.

Discard, but use for training. The embryos would be thawed and then used by the scientists to continue to improve techniques.

Discard. The embryos are thawed and then disposed of. Some patients opt to collect their embryos once they are thawed to put them in a special place. A further option is to have the embryos transferred into the uterus at a time when pregnancy could not occur.

Donation to another couple. There is a lot of criteria that you need to meet to donate to another couple. If you meet this criteria you can choose a couple to donate the embryos to and your details are added to the NSW donor register.

Donation to research. The embryos would be thawed and then used in research projects. At the beginning of any research you are told about it and have the opportunity to say that you don't want your embryos included.

Hubby and I are certain that we don't want any more children. We are beyond happy with the two healthy happy children we have, our little miss and little mr.

Now that we are faced with this decision I am an emotional mess. My heart aches for our little embryos. Every time I think of them I see my kids and tears flood my eyes. I think of them as our little babies.

This will be one of the hardest decisions of my life.