Rose
IVF with Donor
Eggs
Rose’s Story: IVF with Donor Eggs
I had always been extremely healthy and my cancer diagnosis came as a huge shock to me and my family. I immediately had to start chemotherapy. I was told my fertility would probably be affected, but I didn’t have a chance to freeze my eggs. Everything happened so suddenly and it was too much to think about going to the fertility clinic on top of everything else. At the time, I was more worried about my health and what was going to happen with my treatment. I just remember feeling really overwhelmed.
About a year after I finished treatment, my oncologist told me that I should see a fertility specialist to have my fertility checked if I was interested in having children. The evaluation showed that I was in acute ovarian failure – basically that I was in menopause and didn’t have the option to have a baby using my eggs. I was devastated. I had known all along that there was a risk of this happening, but to hear a doctor confirm it hit me harder than I expected it would.
Then the fertility doctor told me that it is possible to create an embryo using my husband’s sperm and an egg from a donor, and that I could carry the pregnancy. They had to run tests to make sure my uterus was healthy enough to carry a pregnancy safely, due to the radiation I received. I remember feeling a mix of emotions – sadness about being diagnosed as infertile, but also gratitude that I would still be able to experience pregnancy.
My baby won’t be genetically related to me, but I’ll be able to experience pregnancy. At first, my husband thought it sounded weird. We talked about the pros and cons of using donor eggs or going for adoption instead. We talked about what if IVF didn’t work and we needed to do multiple cycles; how the costs could really add up. In the end, we talked about ways we could save and budget and we decided to go for it. We might consider adoption for a second baby.
We found an egg donor agency to work with, which connected us with our donor. We completed the screening process and signed a donor agreement contract. The donor went through an IVF cycle to retrieve eggs and we got 15 eggs. There are a number of hurdles they have to survive during the process, but in the end we had 4 healthy embryos frozen and waiting for us.
It cost us about $50,000 to pay for these first steps – the agency fees, the donor compensation, and the donor’s IVF cycle to retrieve the eggs, my husband’s sperm collection, creating the embryos, genetic testing, and storage fees to save our frozen embryos. Eventually, we’ll also need to pay for me to get pregnant using IVF, which will be another $16,000 per cycle at our clinic. So far in order to raise money, both my husband and I have increased our work hours, we’ve sold a car, and we’re planning to run a half-marathon in hopes of people donating towards our family-building. We hope to cover the rest from our savings, but if not we will take out a small loan.
This was the best decision for us and we are so excited.