Marathon

At 7:30 on Sunday morning, I hauled myself up and got ready for my niece’s baptism at 10am. I was alright on the 45-minute drive to the church. But as soon as I squeezed into the spot that had been saved for us, sandwiched between DH’s parents, I began to feel terrible. In the pew in front of me was Little K, staring up at me with her round blue eyes that no one else in the family but my DH has. In the front row was the other baby to be baptised, an 8-month-old boy.

And then, surprisingly, I broke down. In church. For everyone to see.

Most people around, if they saw my bowed head, may have assumed I was deep in prayer. If they looked closely, they might have seen evidence of grief streaming down my face and heard it collecting in my nose. The lone tissue in my bag was soon saturated with snot, rendered useless.

I noticed that the priest was a woman and that the choir sang beautifully. MIL, sitting on my right, grabbed my hand and squeezed it. DH, on my left, squeezed my thigh. By the time the baptism came I must have looked a wreck. I lifted my head and saw the little boy’s godmother was pregnant. Because, of course. Her 16-week belly didn’t make me more upset, but it carried my grief longer.

DH and I left the church immediately after the baptism, as planned — we had a Parents Via Egg Donation (PVED) meeting to attend in El Segundo, a two-hour drive just south of Los Angeles.

In the car, DH asked me what happened. No judgment, just curiosity and concern. I told him I didn’t know, but the more I willed myself not to cry and go with the “God is good” flow, the more I rebelled inside. And, I admitted, it’s still really hard for me to be around Little K.

I guess there isn’t much point in wishing it were different.

By the time we got to the venue in El Segundo, I was in a much better mood. We were 30 minutes late, as I’d known we would be, but things hadn’t really started yet. We were in the back room of an upscale café and when I walked in, Marna, the founder of PVED, greeted me. I introduced myself (she and I spoke on the phone a few months ago) and she gave me a huge hug. It was so good to finally meet her!

There were six tables of eight, but the only room for us was at the final unoccupied table. I sat down and took a shy look at the other people in the room — mainly women, but there were about five men, including DH.

Marna stood up and introduced herself. She has a 13-year-old son conceived via an egg donor and founded PVED six years ago so that no woman would have to go through alone what she did. There was quite a lot of cheering at that!

First there were a few questions: Who here is already a parent via egg donation? Most of the room put up a hand. How many of you are in regular contact with your donor? A third of the hands remained in the air. This is huge progress, apparently, as it used to be that egg donation was traditionally anonymous. And who here is on their way to being a parent via egg donation? A show of just seven hands, DH’s and mine included.

Next we all introduced ourselves. It was fascinating and heartwarming to hear all the stories of how people came to egg donation. Most women, it seemed, were in their 40’s by the time they met their husband. One woman even had her daughter at 51! Some had own egg (OE) children, others had adopted. All but one woman had experienced some kind of loss — social infertility, recurrent pregnancy loss, failed adoptions, multiple failed rounds of IVF. On more than one occasion I got quite choked up.

When it was my turn, I explained how this time last year I conceived spontaneously, but had a missed miscarriage. Then got diagnosed with DOR and told to proceed straight to IVF. Then, because my AMH was so low for a woman my age, 35, that additional bloodwork was ordered. Then, I was diagnosed with a pericentric inversion of chromosome 8, which means I am more likely to miscarry over and over again than carry a baby to term, but if I did, there’s a chance my baby would have Recombinant 8 Syndrome and that as recently as 20 years ago, such children didn’t live past the age of six. That in October I decided to DEIVF, we were matched November 1st, and, finally, I’m currently in cycle and take my first Lupron shot on Sunday. The entire room clapped and cheered. And I suddenly understood: whoa, I am part of this tribe!

The guest speaker was Carole Lieber Wilkins, who is a therapist specialising in infertility, PVED’s mental health advisor, and herself the mom via adoption and egg donation. She decided to talk about what the room wanted to talk about, which was mainly how to talk to your donor-conceived kids about their genetic origins. There were a bunch of different angles that people wanted her to discuss, so she asked if anyone had a question that was unrelated to disclosure. My hand shot up.

Can you talk about how to say goodbye to all the genetic children you’ll never have? Intellectually, I get it: we don’t bond through genetics, there’s so much more to being a parent than genes, but I’m having trouble letting go. Maybe it’s because I got pregnant so easily last year and now BAM! I’ve gone straight to DEIVF, it’s a shock. So, for example, we’re doing a two-embryo transfer, and if I have twins I’ll have to have a C-section. And at that point, because it will be elective, I will have the choice of having my tubes tied. I know I don’t have to make that decision now, but I’m just not sure I can do it. Even if it’s a one-in-a-million chance of having a healthy baby, I just don’t think I can do it. And I know that once I’m pregnant and especially meet the kid, it won’t matter, but right now, at this point in my journey, even though I feel good about our decision and am confident in our donor, there’s a lot of anxiety.

I expected Carole to answer the question in a way that was relevant to the majority of the room, but her response took me by surprise.

Getting a diagnosis [like my genetic disorder] in your 30s, when you expect to be able to have a baby with no problem, is very different than for a woman in her 40s who suspects she may have difficulties. Losing the genetic connection is a profound loss, tantamount to the death of a very close family member.

In that moment, my heart sang Yes! It was such validation. Not because I think my pain is greater than anyone else’s, but it is definitely more of a shock, I think — and that’s exactly what Carole said. (And she would know — she went through the menopause at a very young age and her youngest son was one of the first babies born via egg donation in the US…)

Carole gave me some good ideas on how to let go before moving on to the subject of Disclosure — a word she and Marna dislike, because there’s the connotation of sharing a secret / there’s a point in time when something was revealed.

And don’t forget that we DEIVF parents are wayyy more freaked out than our kids will be. As an example, Marna made the room fall apart laughing when she shared that her teenaged son has “‘…way more things to be mad at you for, Mom, than an egg donor!’ Like, having to wear a helmet, not eating candy before dinner, time on the Xbox. You know, kid stuff.”

Kid stuff makes kids mad! What a lightbulb moment! Carole put it simply: If you make it weird, it’ll be weird for your kids.

How do you not make it weird? Well, begin by telling your DEIVF story to your baby while you are pregnant. Then, after the baby is born, in quiet moments, start telling him or her the circumstance of his or birth. When someone wants a baby, you need a part from a man, and a part from a woman. [In my case] Mommy and Daddy wanted you very much, but Mommy didn’t have the right part. So we asked a nice lady, your donor, to give us the part we needed. Keep building from there. Celebrate all the non-traditional families around you — the families with two mommies or two daddies or one mommy or families of different races. The goal is for your child to perhaps remember the aha moment, when the biology makes sense, but not to remember being told about their donor. The ultimate goal would be to have a “Pass the Peas” conversation:

Kid: Mom, did my donor like basketball, like me? Pass the peas please.
Mom: [hands over the peas] You know, honey, I think she did. That must be where you get your talent from!

And of course, being honest with your kids about having a problem and being able to ask for help is another great value you can instil in them.

I think I learned a lot in that room Sunday afternoon and hope I get to put what I learned into practice one day soon! But one of the favourite moments was a conversation I had afterwards, with a woman who, like half a dozen women in that room, has an own egg (OE) child and a donor egg (DE) child. They all said, There’s no difference. The woman I spoke to one-on-one actually admitted that in some ways she loves her DE kid more because of all the extra trouble she went through to have her (her OE kid was born after 2 rounds of IVF, so that’s saying something!)

It wasn’t the first time I heard this, actually.  A friend of mine connected me with someone she knows who has an OE kid and DE twins. This woman confessed to me that she also loves her DE twins more — in the sense that by not having the genetic connection, she finds her relationship with her DE twins more pure. With an unknown genetic legacy, there’s none of the family baggage. Argh, he’s just like Uncle Peter when he does that, it’s so annoying!

I came away feeling so positive about our decision. It felt really good to be in a room full of people who cheered me on because they know exactly — and I mean exactly — what we are going through. And, yeah, I was at least five years younger than anyone else there, but that’s okay — I realised something because of this: I am still dealing with the aftershocks of getting three devastating medical diagnoses (miscarriage, DOR, genetic stuff) in a very short period of time. And that is what I need to nurse more than the genetic loss. I’ve also come to slowly realise that, in a way, my shitty 2013 may have been a blessing — for example, had I not found Dr. A’s business card in the copy of TCOYF I got at a book fair last April, I might only now be looking at DH and saying, Hang on, six months have passed and we’re still not pregnant, I guess we should see a doctor… instead of being matched with a donor I really like, about to stick myself for the first time on Sunday! Now I think it’s better to (oh please) get all the shittiness out the way in a short time frame than have it spread out over years. Just as long as it’s over for a while…

So, I’m going to stop using the words like ‘freak’ and ‘mutant’ to describe me. I am glorious proof of the theory of evolution! It’s like I am starting to run a marathon and I’m going to do whatever it takes to cross the finish line. I may be bruised and broken, I might even limp for long stretches — hell, I’ve already fallen several times — but as long as my eye is on the ultimate goal of a baby and I can blinker out other runners beating me to it, I’ll be okay. I have more than a roomful of strangers cheering me on! And when my own imaginary ribbon clings to my chest as I cross my personal finish line, wiped out and weak, I know there are going to be a bunch of people celebrating with us. I can’t wait.

You Might Not Be the Prettiest, But You’re Certainly the Bravest