Reactions to Our Using an Egg Donor

By now, at 18½ weeks, I have quietly shared the news that I am pregnant with plenty of people. I find myself grinning and often add It’s been quite the journey to get to this point! I should probably stop doing that, but for some reason I find it hard to separate the relatively short (12-18 months, depending on how you want to calculate it) but incredibly intense journey of getting pregnant from this pregnancy. Yet it sometimes breaks the ice for a more meaningful conversation.

For example, in the past couple of weeks, I have learned that a friend who I haven’t been in touch with for a while and my optometrist were both struggling with infertility after multiple rounds of IVF. It felt dishonest — and more than a little unfair — to let them assume I did IVF and got pregnant the first try. I cautiously shared that we used an egg donor and braced myself for their reactions. My friend was nothing but delighted for us and even shared that a friend of hers has a beautiful child via egg donation; and my optometrist, bizarrely, had never heard of egg donation and wanted to learn more about it. In both cases, it felt really good to connect.

But it feels very strange and uncomfortable when I overhear DH sharing the egg donation part of our story. He is, by nature, a fiercely private man (I don’t even use his name or post pictures of him on Facebook) and half-jokes that he’d rather wait until this baby is born before sharing our news with people. (Hey, I get it!) He doesn’t really do acquaintances, so his friends may be few but they are close. I have no problem with his telling them that a) I’m pregnant, and b) it’s thanks to an egg donor, yet for some reason I am half-paralysed with fear or shame when he shares our news and our journey.

The most difficult time was when I was in the car and he told his friend, A. It stirred up some very complex feelings — not helped by the fact that we learned A’s wife, L, is pregnant with their second child. I felt the blood drain from my face and listened as DH wished them a bright Congratulations! I felt sick when I learned that L is due in late October, just a few weeks ahead of me. Ohgodohgodohgod, what if I miscarry again, here’s another pregnancy-slap-around-my-face. DH broke the dizzying spell of fear with a nudge and mouthed that we should tell our news. Lauren’s also pregnant... and when A asked about our fears of having a child with Down syndrome or other chromosomal issue, I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and mouthed Just tell him. I sat in the car, slumped against the window, half curious, half melting in furious shame at the conversation DH had with his friend. It took a lot of restraint to not correct DH on a few things. Our donor is 26, not 27. The embryos were transferred, not implanted. We have tested for chromosomal issues, but that doesn’t rule out other genetic issues. I said hello to my inner control freak and acknowledged that DH is allowed to tell the story his way.

And I made a point of reminding myself hearing someone else tell the tale of last year, of all the shit that’s gone down, of all the acquired medical knowledge and crash course in genetics and epigenetics… it’s just really, really HARD.

All the more reason to talk about it, then!

DH and I have ongoing conversations about Everything That’s Happened and what it means that I won’t be passing on my genes to our child/ren.

Intellectually, I am at peace with using an egg donor. This is what I know to be true:

• DH and Nellie supplied the genes, but my body determines how those genes are expressed.
  • They supplied the blueprints, but I’m the one building the house — which is why I am considered the biological mother.
  • My body influences how big the house will be, how many windows it has, and I get to decorate it — but there are some things I can’t influence:
    • As DH’s are blue eyes and Nellie’s are green, Tiny will almost certainly have either blue or green eyes.
    • As DH and Nellie have the same blood group, chances are I know Tiny’s blood group already.
    • Both DH and Nellie are allergic to penicillin, so perhaps Tiny will be too?
• We don’t bond through genes.
  • If we did, we would procreate within our own bloodlines. Hah! Now there’s a clever retort, though I do say so myself!
• I don’t worry that I won’t love this child — I already do!
  • Although I think about our donor often, this is my baby.
  • I’m not as relaxed and blissed out as I was in my first pregnancy, but Tiny is making the journey worthwhile.
• And I don’t worry that Tiny won’t love me.
• I really like and respect our donor — even if I am still a bit hurt and confused that we never heard back from her after a wonderfully long and deeply personal email from her.
  • If I can’t pass on my own genes, hers are pretty spectacular:
    • She’s smart, kind, friendly, open-minded, tolerant, dynamic interests, creative, and super fertile
    • She has all the things I like about myself and wanted to pass on: a good head of wavy hair, a similar body type, striking looks, and, like me, she is a glamorous tomboy, not a girly girl.
• Our friends and family have been more than supportive of our decision.
  • Common initial reactions have been:
    • “It will be your baby.”
    • “It is your baby!”
    • “Your body will be the one growing and nurturing the baby, genes don’t matter.”
    • “Wow! They can do that?”
    • “That’s so cool!”
    • “You guys are going to be great parents!”
    • “It’s very responsible of you to not risk bringing a child into this world who will only suffer, for the sake of using your genes.”
    • And one of my favourite reactions came from NP-SIL. When she learned Tiny is a girl she said “Yeahhhhh! Another little Loreeeena!”

Emotionally, I’m still not quite there yet, although I’ve done 98% of the work. This was put to the test last week when I was on FaceTime with my brother and sister.

If you remember, my sister has expressed a desire to be an egg donor — when she raised the idea with me when I was in London, I took it as a sign that I would need one (a week later I would learn that I have a wonky chromosome). I think of that conversation as the one which opened my heart to the idea of egg donation, when previously I had been horrified by the thought, akin to a death sentence.

My 23-year-old sister, B, repeated that she still really wanted to be an egg donor for someone because It’s a beautiful gift to help someone have a baby. I have all these eggs, why not share them? Once again, I was struck by how simple she made it seem and the positive language she used surrounding alternative family building. Conversely, my 34-year-old brother seems to be, dare I say, slightly hung up on the idea that this baby has a “genetic mother” out there who might someday want to get to know “her children” and that, omigod, what if this baby wants to find her “real mother” one day because “it’s normal for people to want to know about their genes and where they come from.”

Amazingly, I didn’t feel my blood boil. I avoided correcting my brother on the term “genetic mother” because, like it or not, that’s what Nellie is. However, we will not use that term because the idea of having more than one mother is, in my opinion, extremely confusing to a young child. But I did make sure to tell him that just as some adoptees have no interest in finding their birth parents, some children conceived via egg donation have no desire to meet their parents’ donor. Some do, some don’t — it’s a very individual desire — which is why DH and I hired a lawyer to ensure that Tiny, and any of her brothers and sisters, have the opportunity to meet Nellie when they are older, should they wish to. We simply saw that as our first responsibility as future parents.

And then I smiled and said that I was actually fascinated by the different kinds of language each of my siblings use. I pointed out that my sister’s choice of words would make her an excellent candidate for egg donation, from a psychological perspective; whereas my brother’s clear emotional attachment to “the children” that he would be somehow giving up were he ever to consider being a sperm donor would immediately disqualify him. And I very gently reminded him that we don’t bond through genes — if that were true, he would consider B (a biological half-sister, as we have different dads) less of a sister to him than me. Perhaps he intellectually understood then, but I didn’t want to push it. These things take time to sink in — and I would know.

DH is still adjusting to the idea that I’m pregnant and it’s not our genetic child. It’s definitely more of a headfuck for him. I told him I think I am farther along in the acceptance process simply because I am the one carrying this baby, whereas it’s more removed for him. But, clearly, I still have a bit of work to do in this area.