Do I have to answer that? Jeez. Well. I just do.
That was my first answer, when I began to ponder this question. And that may be answer enough for a lot of women who decide it's time to have a child, and who do so with little difficulty.
But I think infertile women owe it to themselves to dig a little deeper. Back when donor egg was something I could only think about sideways, for about five seconds, the answers to this deceptively simple question could have helped me decide: How far should I go in trying for a baby with my own eggs? What would life be like if I -- go on, say it -- considered other options?
I first thought and wrote about this question months ago, in response to another woman's post on a support board I frequent. You can read that post and the rest of that excellent discussion if you like, though I've made free with updates here. With nothing else to do but sweat under the influence of Lupron, I thought it might be useful to revisit my list of reasons.
We get so caught up in the process of infertility treatment that we rarely stop to consider why we're doing it. Why are we fighting so hard to become mothers? What need speaks so loud inside us that we can't accept this limitation of our bodies without a fight? We must ask ourselves, as Dr. Phil would put it, "What's the payoff?"
And there is a payoff. Some kind of emotional cash we put in our pockets when we finally achieve our baby dream. We don't like to admit this. We are Americans and we belong to the Cult of Mom. Whether we worship or revile the flesh-and-blood woman who is our mother, we share a common idea about what makes a Good Mother: She puts the kids first. It's all about them.
And when we become mothers, we tell ourselves, we will be Good Mothers. No question. We infertiles, in our deadlocked bargaining sessions with God, think things like this: "If you will only give me a baby, God, I will be the best mother ever. I will give up my daily mocha latte or my smokes or whatever my jones is, and with that money I will buy Hooked on Phonics and Baby Mozart. I swear."
So it goes. Our ideals of motherhood mean we have a hard time admitting that mothers get something out of the deal. But c'mon. If we truly got bupkiss in return for being parents, we wouldn't do it. They'd have to pass laws to make us do it. To quote Carol Burnett: "Giving birth is like taking your lower lip and forcing it over your head." And, kids are hard work. They're expensive, even if you're fertile. They can drive you absolutely crazy, and they're a lifetime hitch. No parole, no retirement, no time off for good behavior.
Now, do I think parents get more than they give? No. Not by a long shot. But for me, when I first allowed myself to think, "Maybe I could do donor egg...." it was really important to define why I wanted a baby in the first place. Knowing that, I could figure out whether being a donor egg mother would meet my needs. Yes, I write that proudly: My needs. I've got 'em, and you do too.
It was hard to tease honest answers out of my brain. I found to my faint embarrassment that quite a few of my motivations are less than noble. But here is . . . cue the music . . .
Why I Want to Have a Baby
1. I just want one. Trying to not want a baby would be like trying to be left-handed. You're supposed to have a baby. It's instinctive. An animal thing.
This one might have a grain of truth buried in its neurosis. But I also know, way down deep, that there's no use fighting it. There aren't enough therapists in the world to make me budge on this issue.
2. I want to give and receive love in the special way that is unique to mother and child.
Whew. The Good Mother speaks. Hope she's around when I give birth.
3. I want to enrich our family with the presence of a child, and with all the experiences that come with raising a child. I feel this need every time I look into the small, smiling face of one of my nephews or my niece.
Go, Good Mother! You rock.
4. I want to have a baby so that I will feel I made a difference in this world after I'm gone.
This, despite the fact that after I'm gone -- as in, dead -- I'm unlikely to care one way or the other. But these reasons don't have to make sense.
5. I want to have a baby because I know that if I don't, I will always feel regret and sorrow, as if I missed out on something essential.
I am very good at kicking myself. So, best to go ahead and have a baby, if I want to avoid a black-and-blue ass for the rest of my life.
6. I want to give my husband a baby so I won't be "less of a wife" than his ex, with whom he has a son.
Sick little issue. But hey, it's honest.
7. I want to have a baby so I won't be "lacking" in comparison to most of my friends and my brothers.
Did I mention sick little issues?
8. I want to have a baby so I can create the family I never had when I was little (I come from a family of divorce).
Now, I know from being a stepmom that when I'm running late, and the kid's poking along not brushing his teeth in the morning, I open my mouth and start channeling my mother. So wherever you go, there you are. Even if one of my genetic babies had lived, I doubt I could have created the nauseating TV sitcom family of my dreams. And that's probably for the best.
9. I want to have a baby so I can stop feeling like a "failure" as a woman, in the biological sense.
See, and we all thought it was breast size that determine's a woman's entire self-worth. Turns out it's the condition of her ovaries and uterus. Go figure.
10. I want a genetic child so that my children won't experience "issues" when they're older about their origins. So that they'll "truly belong" to my family.
Ouch. That last one hurts. It is the only need -- besides the ones that are petty and must be dealt with in counseling lest I become the dreaded Bad Mother -- that cannot be met by becoming a donor egg mother.
It will be my task to ensure that my children know they are loved beyond all reason. That they belong in our family because we want them here. That I loved them enough, even before they were born, to admit that my eggs were doing harm to my babies, and to ask for help from another woman to be a mother.
So that's my list. I think, measuring my choice to be a donor egg mother against my reasons for wanting a child, that I've made the right decision. For me, that is.
If anyone's out there reading this: What would your list look like?
Friday, February 25, 2005
Thursday, February 24, 2005
Lies and damned lies
Yeah, I admit it. In my restless and all-consuming quest for pregnancy, I've become a Google slut, constantly on the stroll for links that will do me. Tonight I found me a stud: Assisted Reproductive Technology Success Rates > 2002 National Report > Section 4: ART cycles using donor eggs.
Some of the information therein amounts to stating the obvious: "Are older women undergoing ART more likely to use donor eggs or embryos?" Why yes, genius -- because we're old, and our eggs are poached. By the way, thanks for the reminder about that old thing. Love you too.
Of more interest to me was this byte: "Thus, the live birth per transfer rate for cycles using embryos from donor eggs varies only slightly across all age groups. The average birth per transfer rate is 50%."
Fifty percent? As in, heads-you-win-tails-I-lose? As in, I hope my uterus gets half full, but it might stay half empty, even after I give you $15K that I can't really afford?
Suddenly, reality bites.
See, here's the thing. Many of us who choose donor egg think of it as the safe harbor for our sinking infertility ships. When we get the Dread DE Speech from our reproductive endocrinologists, they hold it up like the Holy Grail: "With your own eggs, your chances of becoming pregnant are about three percent. And if you do get pregnant, the chance of miscarriage in your age group is fifty percent. But if you use donor eggs, your chance of pregnancy is...fifty percent! And your risk of miscarriage goes down to that of your young, nubile, robustly healthy, did I say young? donor! And you can drive it off the lot today!"
Okay, I added those parts at the end. But you get the idea. When they're throwing all these stats at you, "fifty percent" sounds so much better than "three percent." And they push the idea so hard and are so upbeat about it, versus the wrinkled brows and long faces they pull when you venture that you might want to try to conceive a child with your own crappy 39-year-old eggs.... You start to get the idea that if you can only bring yourself to accept it, donor egg is the Way and the Life.
But. Fifty percent. That's a flunking grade. That's an effing coin toss, and I am not known for my luck. Suddenly I am so freaking depressed.
And it gets worse: "For all ages, singleton live birth rates (average 29%) were lower than the total live birth rates (average 50%). Singleton live births are an important measure of success because they have a much lower risk than multiple-infant births for adverse infant health outcomes, including prematurity, low birth weight, disability, and death."
Waitaminit. What's this 29%? I am a very dim bulb when it comes to mathematics of any kind, and I hope someone, someday reads this blog and enlightens me. But it seems like they're cooking the books to get their holy fifty percent number. If twins count as two live births for one ART procedure, what's the real success rate per procedure? The report goes on to note, "In 2002, 4,195 pregnancies from ART cycles that used fresh embryos from donor eggs resulted in live births...slightly more than 42% of these live births produced more than one infant (about 40% twins and about 3% triplets or more)."
I am so screwed. But it's too late to choke on the digits now. I'm facing down Dirty Harry's .44 Magnum: "You've got to ask yourself a question: 'Do I feel lucky'? Well, do ya, punk?"
No, I don't, Mr. Eastwood. In fact, my uterus is notoriously unlucky. But then there's this one, by Benjamin Disraeli (a British statesman) and quoted by Mark Twain in his autobiography: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."
Some of the information therein amounts to stating the obvious: "Are older women undergoing ART more likely to use donor eggs or embryos?" Why yes, genius -- because we're old, and our eggs are poached. By the way, thanks for the reminder about that old thing. Love you too.
Of more interest to me was this byte: "Thus, the live birth per transfer rate for cycles using embryos from donor eggs varies only slightly across all age groups. The average birth per transfer rate is 50%."
Fifty percent? As in, heads-you-win-tails-I-lose? As in, I hope my uterus gets half full, but it might stay half empty, even after I give you $15K that I can't really afford?
Suddenly, reality bites.
See, here's the thing. Many of us who choose donor egg think of it as the safe harbor for our sinking infertility ships. When we get the Dread DE Speech from our reproductive endocrinologists, they hold it up like the Holy Grail: "With your own eggs, your chances of becoming pregnant are about three percent. And if you do get pregnant, the chance of miscarriage in your age group is fifty percent. But if you use donor eggs, your chance of pregnancy is...fifty percent! And your risk of miscarriage goes down to that of your young, nubile, robustly healthy, did I say young? donor! And you can drive it off the lot today!"
Okay, I added those parts at the end. But you get the idea. When they're throwing all these stats at you, "fifty percent" sounds so much better than "three percent." And they push the idea so hard and are so upbeat about it, versus the wrinkled brows and long faces they pull when you venture that you might want to try to conceive a child with your own crappy 39-year-old eggs.... You start to get the idea that if you can only bring yourself to accept it, donor egg is the Way and the Life.
But. Fifty percent. That's a flunking grade. That's an effing coin toss, and I am not known for my luck. Suddenly I am so freaking depressed.
And it gets worse: "For all ages, singleton live birth rates (average 29%) were lower than the total live birth rates (average 50%). Singleton live births are an important measure of success because they have a much lower risk than multiple-infant births for adverse infant health outcomes, including prematurity, low birth weight, disability, and death."
Waitaminit. What's this 29%? I am a very dim bulb when it comes to mathematics of any kind, and I hope someone, someday reads this blog and enlightens me. But it seems like they're cooking the books to get their holy fifty percent number. If twins count as two live births for one ART procedure, what's the real success rate per procedure? The report goes on to note, "In 2002, 4,195 pregnancies from ART cycles that used fresh embryos from donor eggs resulted in live births...slightly more than 42% of these live births produced more than one infant (about 40% twins and about 3% triplets or more)."
I am so screwed. But it's too late to choke on the digits now. I'm facing down Dirty Harry's .44 Magnum: "You've got to ask yourself a question: 'Do I feel lucky'? Well, do ya, punk?"
No, I don't, Mr. Eastwood. In fact, my uterus is notoriously unlucky. But then there's this one, by Benjamin Disraeli (a British statesman) and quoted by Mark Twain in his autobiography: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
ICSI, you see
I found out today we'll be ordering off the a la carte menu from the lab. My husband's semen analysis came back, and apparently all is not well with his swimmers. The count's good, the motility's good...but the morphology (that is, the shape of the sperm) is not so good.
Our doctor has said we'll need to use intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) to fertilize our donor's eggs.
Big sigh. Well, I was running out of things to worry about, anyway, in between the sweats and headaches caused by my favorite drug, Lupron.
I talked to the egg donation coordinator, and she says this is not a bad thing. Many programs routinely use ICSI for all donor egg procedures because it maximizes the success of a very expensive treatment option....
My husband's more cheerful about it than I am. I told him the results and he said, "See, I'm getting old too." Nice, honey. Very nice. But he meant well.
I'm not sure how I feel about this. We used ICSI in one of our pregnancies -- for our little boy, lost at 9 weeks. I certainly can't blame ICSI for the miscarriage; that was most likely due to my defective oocyte, given that I produced a grand total of one egg during the whole IVF cycle. Surely the problem was with my egg, and not my husband's sperm. Surely....
Oh well. Nothing to do but keep going. I hope someday that I'll have a baby in my arms and all of these dark hours will be like watching daytime TV with a sinus infection--nothing but a bad memory.
Our doctor has said we'll need to use intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) to fertilize our donor's eggs.
Big sigh. Well, I was running out of things to worry about, anyway, in between the sweats and headaches caused by my favorite drug, Lupron.
I talked to the egg donation coordinator, and she says this is not a bad thing. Many programs routinely use ICSI for all donor egg procedures because it maximizes the success of a very expensive treatment option....
My husband's more cheerful about it than I am. I told him the results and he said, "See, I'm getting old too." Nice, honey. Very nice. But he meant well.
I'm not sure how I feel about this. We used ICSI in one of our pregnancies -- for our little boy, lost at 9 weeks. I certainly can't blame ICSI for the miscarriage; that was most likely due to my defective oocyte, given that I produced a grand total of one egg during the whole IVF cycle. Surely the problem was with my egg, and not my husband's sperm. Surely....
Oh well. Nothing to do but keep going. I hope someday that I'll have a baby in my arms and all of these dark hours will be like watching daytime TV with a sinus infection--nothing but a bad memory.
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Grieving the genetic link
I just watched George Cukor's 1944 gothic masterpiece Gaslight, starring the luminous Ingrid Bergman. She won that year's Best Actress Oscar for her taut, unnerving performance as a Victorian woman being driven slowly mad by...well, that would be telling.
A couple of months ago, we watched SciFi Channel's Earthsea, starring Bergman's daughter Isabella Rossellini. Regrettably -- because Ursula K. Le Guin's novel A Wizard of Earthsea and its sequels are so outstanding -- Rossellini's performance was the only memorable one in the miniseries. Perhaps that's why I thought of her as I watched her mother on screen. Film is a time-flummoxing media. Before my eyes was a mother, younger by years than the daughter I remembered from another film. I was struck by the echoes of the one in the other. Their voices, their eyes, that distinctive shape to the mouth....
It hit me hard, a hammer blow: I will never see in my donor egg child those echoes of myself. The genetic link is lost.
Grief, the experts tell us, comes from loss. Any sort of loss, though death is the most commonly discussed type. When I think of the grief I feel at not being able to have a genetic child, I also feel guilt. As if I should be so happy and grateful to have a child by any means, that I have no right to these feelings. As if, by feeling this grief, I label my donor egg baby as "not good enough." And so I thrust the grief away from me. I try not to own it.
Yet it is still here, like a piece of furniture I keep tripping over in this house of infertility. And, all experts in the field agree: A woman must "work through" her grief at the lost genetic link before she is ready to be a donor egg mother.
Madeline Feingold, a clinical psychologist with a specialty in reproductive medicine, offers this: "...couples must grieve so that the loss of their genetic child does not cast a shadow that negatively interferes with parenting and loving the child that will be their own" (Disclosing Origins: Children Born through Third Party Reproduction).
Oh, my God. I'm already a bad mother. One look at Ingrid Bergman and all my grief work is unraveled. I am crushed. Amputated. Something vital is gone, and can never be regained. But what is it? I can get neither my hands nor my head around it. I have to ask myself: What have I lost? Who died?
Many proponents of donor egg insist there is no loss, or none that matters. I will have the experience of pregnancy, that some call the "gestational link." I will give birth. I will breastfeed at 2 a.m. and hover anxiously over the crib while my baby sleeps, making sure that little chest rises and falls. I will churn through rolls and rolls of film, create silly Web sites devoted to my offspring, and someday join the homework and soccer-practice grind. I will be the only woman my little one knows as "Mom." I will love my child like a lioness, fiercely and without reserve. If I consider only the act and experience of motherhood, then I will have lost nothing by being a donor egg mother. Thank God.
Yet, for me, there is a loss. I have lost the ability to pass on my genes, and to mingle them equally with my husband's in the creation of our child. My body has failed to do its full duty in this process of conception. Because of that, what should be emotionally simple, even joyful, becomes complex and fraught with doubts and fears. I would not be human if I didn't wonder, "Will I bond with this child as I should? Will my child resent me for my choice?" And a whole host of other worries that I can come up with in the wee hours of the night. These are not the concerns of a mother who conceives with her own eggs, and the loss of that simplicity is grievous.
Recently, I found the article Infertility and Aftershocks, by Patricia Irwin Johnston. In it, she writes beautifully and sensitively of the impact of unresolved grief for the lost genetic link on the lives of adoptive parents and children. I hope Ms. Johnston would forgive me for quoting from her article and substituting "egg donation" for "adoption," because I believe the issues are the same:
"It's like this. Egg donation makes us parents, but it doesn't make us fertile. Much as we might wish differently, egg donation, despite giving us parenthood, cannot change the facts of those several other losses associated with infertility -- the loss of control over many intimate and practical aspects of our lives; the loss of genetic connection and immortality; the loss of the opportunity to create a new person who is the genetic and symbolic blend of love we share with our life's partner. . . . Egg donation can't give us these things that infertility took from us."
When I first realized what diminished ovarian reserve meant, there was black terror in knowing that when I die, I am extinct on this earth. Genetically, I am a dead branch. I will not continue. That reality scared me, deep in the gut. I am far from superb as a genetic specimen, and in my rational moments I know that I will leave my legacy in other, more important ways. But the loss is still felt.
It helped me to realize that it's a two-way street: We grieve that we will not pass on the traits we like about ourselves or our birth families, but we may feel a (guilty) sort of relief that we can avoid bequests such as alcoholism, depression, or--believe me, I've pondered this one--a genetic predisposition for early menopause. And "traits" are not all passed on genetically. Values, habits, mannerisms . . . all these come with family, and will be available for good or ill to my child.
Another element of the genetic loss is familial. I have a nephew who is the spitting image of his grandfather. That will never be, for my baby -- unless he looks like my husband's dad. My family is proudly Irish and has a 200-year history in one Southern city. It saddens me to think of taking my child there, or to Ireland itself, and having those places mean nothing to him. I ache at the thought that my child, no matter how much loved and welcomed by me and all my family, will be different than her cousins. I don't want that difference for her. I want her to merge into our family like a raindrop into a river and never worry or wonder about where she "comes from." That is simply not to be for my child. I feel as if I should take her in my arms right now and say, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry I could not give that to you."
It helps to realize that grieving a lost genetic link is not unique to donor egg mothers. Adoptive parents and children have struggled and made their peace with it for years. I have a friend whose husband was adopted, and he has none of the issues I fear will afflict my child. He looks on his place in his family as "adopted into the clan" in the Scottish sense: "...the chief of a clan would 'ingather' any stranger, of whatever family, who possessed suitable skills, maintained his allegiance and, if required, adopted the clan surname." Now, that's the right idea.
A last and somewhat ignoble loss is this one: It just wasn't supposed to happen this way. If in fact Change = Loss = Grief, then I have sustained a heavy loss: The idea of my life as it was supposed to be; as I expected it, dreamed of it, worked toward it. The hard part was supposed to be finding someone to be a father to my children; I never imagined that I would have to go to such unusual measures to have them in the first place. There's a not-very-grown-up person inside me who wants to be just like everybody else, with a mate and a cottage in the suburbs and 2.5 adorable children who may someday say to me after a tussle over curfew, "I hate you!" but who will never say, "You can't tell me what to do. You're not my mother." The woman who strove for that life will never achieve her goal, and I feel badly for her, even as I have to tell her, "Oh, grow up."
It occurs to me to measure my progress against the famed Five Stages of Grief. Am I still in denial, refusing to acknowlege my loss? No, I don't think so. How about anger; am I still asking "Why me!" or wailing "This isn't fair!" I must plead guilty on that one. I will probably be angry about my reproductive fate until love for my donor egg baby makes that feeling meaningless. Am I still striking bargains with God, promising to cure world hunger if he will only give me a baby? No. My miscarriages cured me of that one. If God were going to come through with a genetic child, surely it would have been one of those. My personal favorite -- depression, suffered while we mourn not just the loss but our dreams, hopes and plans -- still dogs me every day. Without it, I don't think I'd be writing this.
And so we come to acceptance, the state of finding comfort and healing from grief, and the ability to reframe the situation to see its positive aspects. Here I would have to say, "I'm getting there." The truth is, I will cycle through these stages of grief many times as my donor egg journey continues.
The one thing I cling to, that I read over and over again on one support board that I visit, is this: Once you have your baby, all the doubts and fears go away. Amen, wise sisters.
A couple of months ago, we watched SciFi Channel's Earthsea, starring Bergman's daughter Isabella Rossellini. Regrettably -- because Ursula K. Le Guin's novel A Wizard of Earthsea and its sequels are so outstanding -- Rossellini's performance was the only memorable one in the miniseries. Perhaps that's why I thought of her as I watched her mother on screen. Film is a time-flummoxing media. Before my eyes was a mother, younger by years than the daughter I remembered from another film. I was struck by the echoes of the one in the other. Their voices, their eyes, that distinctive shape to the mouth....
It hit me hard, a hammer blow: I will never see in my donor egg child those echoes of myself. The genetic link is lost.
Grief, the experts tell us, comes from loss. Any sort of loss, though death is the most commonly discussed type. When I think of the grief I feel at not being able to have a genetic child, I also feel guilt. As if I should be so happy and grateful to have a child by any means, that I have no right to these feelings. As if, by feeling this grief, I label my donor egg baby as "not good enough." And so I thrust the grief away from me. I try not to own it.
Yet it is still here, like a piece of furniture I keep tripping over in this house of infertility. And, all experts in the field agree: A woman must "work through" her grief at the lost genetic link before she is ready to be a donor egg mother.
Madeline Feingold, a clinical psychologist with a specialty in reproductive medicine, offers this: "...couples must grieve so that the loss of their genetic child does not cast a shadow that negatively interferes with parenting and loving the child that will be their own" (Disclosing Origins: Children Born through Third Party Reproduction).
Oh, my God. I'm already a bad mother. One look at Ingrid Bergman and all my grief work is unraveled. I am crushed. Amputated. Something vital is gone, and can never be regained. But what is it? I can get neither my hands nor my head around it. I have to ask myself: What have I lost? Who died?
Many proponents of donor egg insist there is no loss, or none that matters. I will have the experience of pregnancy, that some call the "gestational link." I will give birth. I will breastfeed at 2 a.m. and hover anxiously over the crib while my baby sleeps, making sure that little chest rises and falls. I will churn through rolls and rolls of film, create silly Web sites devoted to my offspring, and someday join the homework and soccer-practice grind. I will be the only woman my little one knows as "Mom." I will love my child like a lioness, fiercely and without reserve. If I consider only the act and experience of motherhood, then I will have lost nothing by being a donor egg mother. Thank God.
Yet, for me, there is a loss. I have lost the ability to pass on my genes, and to mingle them equally with my husband's in the creation of our child. My body has failed to do its full duty in this process of conception. Because of that, what should be emotionally simple, even joyful, becomes complex and fraught with doubts and fears. I would not be human if I didn't wonder, "Will I bond with this child as I should? Will my child resent me for my choice?" And a whole host of other worries that I can come up with in the wee hours of the night. These are not the concerns of a mother who conceives with her own eggs, and the loss of that simplicity is grievous.
Recently, I found the article Infertility and Aftershocks, by Patricia Irwin Johnston. In it, she writes beautifully and sensitively of the impact of unresolved grief for the lost genetic link on the lives of adoptive parents and children. I hope Ms. Johnston would forgive me for quoting from her article and substituting "egg donation" for "adoption," because I believe the issues are the same:
"It's like this. Egg donation makes us parents, but it doesn't make us fertile. Much as we might wish differently, egg donation, despite giving us parenthood, cannot change the facts of those several other losses associated with infertility -- the loss of control over many intimate and practical aspects of our lives; the loss of genetic connection and immortality; the loss of the opportunity to create a new person who is the genetic and symbolic blend of love we share with our life's partner. . . . Egg donation can't give us these things that infertility took from us."
When I first realized what diminished ovarian reserve meant, there was black terror in knowing that when I die, I am extinct on this earth. Genetically, I am a dead branch. I will not continue. That reality scared me, deep in the gut. I am far from superb as a genetic specimen, and in my rational moments I know that I will leave my legacy in other, more important ways. But the loss is still felt.
It helped me to realize that it's a two-way street: We grieve that we will not pass on the traits we like about ourselves or our birth families, but we may feel a (guilty) sort of relief that we can avoid bequests such as alcoholism, depression, or--believe me, I've pondered this one--a genetic predisposition for early menopause. And "traits" are not all passed on genetically. Values, habits, mannerisms . . . all these come with family, and will be available for good or ill to my child.
Another element of the genetic loss is familial. I have a nephew who is the spitting image of his grandfather. That will never be, for my baby -- unless he looks like my husband's dad. My family is proudly Irish and has a 200-year history in one Southern city. It saddens me to think of taking my child there, or to Ireland itself, and having those places mean nothing to him. I ache at the thought that my child, no matter how much loved and welcomed by me and all my family, will be different than her cousins. I don't want that difference for her. I want her to merge into our family like a raindrop into a river and never worry or wonder about where she "comes from." That is simply not to be for my child. I feel as if I should take her in my arms right now and say, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry I could not give that to you."
It helps to realize that grieving a lost genetic link is not unique to donor egg mothers. Adoptive parents and children have struggled and made their peace with it for years. I have a friend whose husband was adopted, and he has none of the issues I fear will afflict my child. He looks on his place in his family as "adopted into the clan" in the Scottish sense: "...the chief of a clan would 'ingather' any stranger, of whatever family, who possessed suitable skills, maintained his allegiance and, if required, adopted the clan surname." Now, that's the right idea.
A last and somewhat ignoble loss is this one: It just wasn't supposed to happen this way. If in fact Change = Loss = Grief, then I have sustained a heavy loss: The idea of my life as it was supposed to be; as I expected it, dreamed of it, worked toward it. The hard part was supposed to be finding someone to be a father to my children; I never imagined that I would have to go to such unusual measures to have them in the first place. There's a not-very-grown-up person inside me who wants to be just like everybody else, with a mate and a cottage in the suburbs and 2.5 adorable children who may someday say to me after a tussle over curfew, "I hate you!" but who will never say, "You can't tell me what to do. You're not my mother." The woman who strove for that life will never achieve her goal, and I feel badly for her, even as I have to tell her, "Oh, grow up."
It occurs to me to measure my progress against the famed Five Stages of Grief. Am I still in denial, refusing to acknowlege my loss? No, I don't think so. How about anger; am I still asking "Why me!" or wailing "This isn't fair!" I must plead guilty on that one. I will probably be angry about my reproductive fate until love for my donor egg baby makes that feeling meaningless. Am I still striking bargains with God, promising to cure world hunger if he will only give me a baby? No. My miscarriages cured me of that one. If God were going to come through with a genetic child, surely it would have been one of those. My personal favorite -- depression, suffered while we mourn not just the loss but our dreams, hopes and plans -- still dogs me every day. Without it, I don't think I'd be writing this.
And so we come to acceptance, the state of finding comfort and healing from grief, and the ability to reframe the situation to see its positive aspects. Here I would have to say, "I'm getting there." The truth is, I will cycle through these stages of grief many times as my donor egg journey continues.
The one thing I cling to, that I read over and over again on one support board that I visit, is this: Once you have your baby, all the doubts and fears go away. Amen, wise sisters.
Monday, February 07, 2005
Whose baby is it, anyway?
Not much going on today with my own donor egg cycle. I started injections of 10 units of Lupron yesterday and this I can tell you: Lupron = instant menopause. I'm sweating like a pig and my face looks like I've had three glasses of wine before breakfast, and I nearly cried at a red light this morning on the way to work.
Over the weekend I happened on a couple of news stories that made me think about an important question for donor egg mothers, and for egg donors: Whose baby is it, anyway?
In a recent California case, the court has said that a lesbian egg donor who donated the eggs used to impregnate her partner has no parental rights to the resulting twin girls, whom she helped to raise for five years until the couple split up. The case is to be appealed to the California Supreme Court. (For more on this case, see this article and this one.)
The ruling was made in part because the woman signed a standard egg donor agreement at the couple's fertility clinic. Although both state laws and the text of clinic donor agreements vary, all stipulate that the egg donor relinquishes parental rights to any children born of her donation. Under the Uniform Parentage Act, maternity and parental rights can be established by genetic testing, completed adoption, or by giving birth to the child. Approximately 19 states have adopted a version of the Uniform Parentage Act. In one infamous surrogacy case, Buzzanca v. Buzzanca, the court initially ruled that a child born of an embryo donation via surrogacy had no parents. In a later ruling, the court determined that "parental relationships may be established when intended parents initiate and consent to medical procedures, even when there is no genetic relationship between them and the child." The court quoted a legal commentator on the subject, saying that the intended parents are the "first cause, prime movers, of the procreative relationship."
In a disturbing opposite view, however, a Pennsylvania court ruled that a sperm donor must pay support or twin boys born of his donation. This case was a "he said, she said" situation in which the man alleged there was a verbal contract stipulating he would not be obligated to children born of his donation, while the twins' mother now says there was no such agreement. She filed for child support five years after the twins were born in August 1994.
Once I chewed all that up and digested it, I felt a lot better as a future donor egg mother. I am indeed a "first cause"; a "primary mover" -- I will be my child's mother not only by giving birth, but because I want to be. Sadly, not every child's mother can say that, no matter the method of conception.
I do feel very sad for the lesbian mother who has been torn away from her children, but she was not the "usual" egg donor, who has no desire to have a child that particular month and to whom an egg is just an egg. And I feel sympathetic toward the man forced to pay child support for children that he did not plan to raise as his own.
The takeaway for all of us? Read the fine print. In neither of these cases was there a legal contract that correctly laid out the wishes of those involved. I think tonight's bedside reading might include the recipient contract I signed, and (if I can get it) a blank copy of the donor agreement that Our Donor signed. Because the truth is...at this point, I'll sign anything to be a mother. But I'd still better know what it says.
Over the weekend I happened on a couple of news stories that made me think about an important question for donor egg mothers, and for egg donors: Whose baby is it, anyway?
In a recent California case, the court has said that a lesbian egg donor who donated the eggs used to impregnate her partner has no parental rights to the resulting twin girls, whom she helped to raise for five years until the couple split up. The case is to be appealed to the California Supreme Court. (For more on this case, see this article and this one.)
The ruling was made in part because the woman signed a standard egg donor agreement at the couple's fertility clinic. Although both state laws and the text of clinic donor agreements vary, all stipulate that the egg donor relinquishes parental rights to any children born of her donation. Under the Uniform Parentage Act, maternity and parental rights can be established by genetic testing, completed adoption, or by giving birth to the child. Approximately 19 states have adopted a version of the Uniform Parentage Act. In one infamous surrogacy case, Buzzanca v. Buzzanca, the court initially ruled that a child born of an embryo donation via surrogacy had no parents. In a later ruling, the court determined that "parental relationships may be established when intended parents initiate and consent to medical procedures, even when there is no genetic relationship between them and the child." The court quoted a legal commentator on the subject, saying that the intended parents are the "first cause, prime movers, of the procreative relationship."
In a disturbing opposite view, however, a Pennsylvania court ruled that a sperm donor must pay support or twin boys born of his donation. This case was a "he said, she said" situation in which the man alleged there was a verbal contract stipulating he would not be obligated to children born of his donation, while the twins' mother now says there was no such agreement. She filed for child support five years after the twins were born in August 1994.
Once I chewed all that up and digested it, I felt a lot better as a future donor egg mother. I am indeed a "first cause"; a "primary mover" -- I will be my child's mother not only by giving birth, but because I want to be. Sadly, not every child's mother can say that, no matter the method of conception.
I do feel very sad for the lesbian mother who has been torn away from her children, but she was not the "usual" egg donor, who has no desire to have a child that particular month and to whom an egg is just an egg. And I feel sympathetic toward the man forced to pay child support for children that he did not plan to raise as his own.
The takeaway for all of us? Read the fine print. In neither of these cases was there a legal contract that correctly laid out the wishes of those involved. I think tonight's bedside reading might include the recipient contract I signed, and (if I can get it) a blank copy of the donor agreement that Our Donor signed. Because the truth is...at this point, I'll sign anything to be a mother. But I'd still better know what it says.
Saturday, February 05, 2005
I'm not even there
This morning my husband went to our fertility clinic for a pre-cycle semen analysis, while I stayed home to wait for my Fed Ex package of injectible medications.
I'm a little depressed. I've gotta say, this is worse than sleeping through it. This time, I'm not even there.
A few thoughts occur to me. One is, if there's any compensation to be had for all those years -- before I grew out of it -- of being embarassed to buy feminine protection products from male store clerks, this has to be it. Most of the technicians at our clinic are female.
In fact, riddle me this, Batman: In this large and busy clinic, most of the employees are female, except for the almighty doctors. I can't even think when I've seen a man in there other than the doctors, and the slightly shamefaced husbands trailing after their wives, avoiding the eyes of all others. Go figure.
So, I'm imagining this: My husband walks up to this strange woman, says, "Where do I go to...?" and gets his little cup and magazine or whatever. He must feel.... Hold up. What am I saying. He's not me, he's a man. He's probably enjoying the whole thing. *sigh*
One of the subtle humiliations of infertility treatment is, your sex life (what's left of it) and your privates are everybody's business. People call you in your cube at work to ask about your last period, or to scold you for having unprotected sex during a cycle. Now that's hilarious, that is. You're infertile and someone's on you about unprotected sex like it's prom night? Not to mention how often you have to climb into those stirrups. I wish they gave frequent flyer miles for those things.
You can't help but distance yourself from this process. You have to set aside modesty and pretend that no, it's not you half naked and exposed in this room with a doctor, a medical student, and a nurse who stands against the wall with her hands behind her back, watching your crotch intently to make sure nobody misbehaves.
Yep. In so many ways, I'm not even there.
I'm a little depressed. I've gotta say, this is worse than sleeping through it. This time, I'm not even there.
A few thoughts occur to me. One is, if there's any compensation to be had for all those years -- before I grew out of it -- of being embarassed to buy feminine protection products from male store clerks, this has to be it. Most of the technicians at our clinic are female.
In fact, riddle me this, Batman: In this large and busy clinic, most of the employees are female, except for the almighty doctors. I can't even think when I've seen a man in there other than the doctors, and the slightly shamefaced husbands trailing after their wives, avoiding the eyes of all others. Go figure.
So, I'm imagining this: My husband walks up to this strange woman, says, "Where do I go to...?" and gets his little cup and magazine or whatever. He must feel.... Hold up. What am I saying. He's not me, he's a man. He's probably enjoying the whole thing. *sigh*
One of the subtle humiliations of infertility treatment is, your sex life (what's left of it) and your privates are everybody's business. People call you in your cube at work to ask about your last period, or to scold you for having unprotected sex during a cycle. Now that's hilarious, that is. You're infertile and someone's on you about unprotected sex like it's prom night? Not to mention how often you have to climb into those stirrups. I wish they gave frequent flyer miles for those things.
You can't help but distance yourself from this process. You have to set aside modesty and pretend that no, it's not you half naked and exposed in this room with a doctor, a medical student, and a nurse who stands against the wall with her hands behind her back, watching your crotch intently to make sure nobody misbehaves.
Yep. In so many ways, I'm not even there.
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