Maybe it’s all the talk about Easter eggs or all the trees blooming and coming to life that has me contemplating my own eggs and my quest to bring another life into the world. Lately I have been mulling over some of the options that my fertility doctor recommended if my husband and I want to move forward with our wish to have another child. When more than 92% of your eggs will lead to miscarriage, the options available are limited and require a great leap of faith. Over the next few weeks I will be researching and writing in greater detail about the three options available to me and my husband at this stage in our journey.
The first option that is available to me and my husband is finding an egg donor. This option would entail the egg donor taking stimulation medications, going through an egg retrieval surgery and then allowing her eggs to be used in an in vitro fertilization where the resulting embryo would be implanted into my uterus for normal gestation. My initial reaction to this option is slight horror. “My husband’s sperm is going to be mixing with another woman’s egg?” I know there are also lot of benefits to this route. But I will be speaking to Dr. Michael Blotner MD, Medical Director of Westchester Fertility, www.westchesterfertility.com, to learn more about this process.
The second option is embryo donation. Some couples who go through IVF end up having more embryos than they need or want. Certain people decide to destroy these embryos, others decide to donate them to scientific research, and still others, who feel that they can neither destroy nor give away their embryos, decide to put their embryos up for adoption. Couples like myself and my husband, who have a hard time creating viable embryos, can adopt these donated embryos and transfer them into the female's uterus. To learn more about this option, I will be talking to one of the leading organizations whose mission is to connect couples in need with couples who have leftover frozen embryos.
The last option open to us is adoption. There are many women in the fertility community, as well as the larger community, who have answered the call of adoption and have created their family in that way. I will be talking to Dawn Davenport, who created the nonprofit Creating a Family, www.creatingafamily.org , an organization providing education and support for infertility and adoption. She also wrote the book “The Complete Guide To International Adoption.”
In my heart I don’t think I am ready yet to start actively pursuing any of these options. I still am grieving our losses and our lost dream. But I am looking forward to researching egg donation, embryo donation and adoption in the next couple of weeks because I think that finding out more information is one of the first steps to seeing if any of the options are calling us to expand our family.
Looking forward to your exploration. You are so wise for researching the possibilities and recognizing that you might not be ready for them. I hope you get some great information - I love Dawn Davenport's book, by the way.
ReplyDeleteIt's wonderful how many different options there are, but I know it takes time and courage to get to that step. I know you'll find your way there. Wishing you the best
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