Guilt Should Be a Four-Letter Word

In IVF-land you come across women using donor eggs.  It's happening with more and more regularity, and it's something I fully support.  But I come across the topic from a different angle to anyone else I've read here.  Instead of being the donee, I'm the donor, and it's a strange position to take when you read blogs of women who are using donated eggs.  You want to tell them what it's like to be a donor, how you view the world, what makes you tick, but you know that's not your place.  You should just hope for them.

On our first egg share cycle in the UK I had 19 eggs, a bumper crop by UK standards.  Clincs here like women to get 8-12 eggs, so my clinic worried I was over-stimulated.  I produce eggs at the same rate that hillbilles produce babies, all you have to do is look at me and my ovaries go into overdrive.  In Sweden, for my first cycle, I had more eggs than 19 and a mild case of OHSS to boot.  In the UK although I didn't have OHSS, I had many eggs all produced on the absolutely minimum of drug dosages.

My 19 eggs were divided between the other woman and myself.  She got 9 eggs and I got 10.  Neither of us got pregnant. 

I look back on that cycle and cringe with all the mistakes that I made.

On my resulting FET I did get pregnant but miscarried. 

The other woman remained pregnancy-free.

Complete fucking washout for both of us, then. 

I felt so guilty, too.  I really did.  This woman put all my eggs in her basket and they all failed.  True, I don't know the nature of her infertility, it could be male infertility is a factor, too.  But she'd been on the donor waiting list for ages and when her shot comes up, she gets a complete loss.  Using my eggs not only got her nowhere, but got her put to the bottom of the list again if she is to try again.  And a part of my mind thinks-What if my eggs failing was the point where they decided to give up?  What if I was a part of a cycle that crushed her just a little too hard? 

I know what those negative test results feel like.  I wouldn't wish one on my worst enemy.  In some ways I wish I could just let her know how sorry I am, how much I wish it were different.

This last cycle, the one that produced the Lemonheads, was a complete fiasco.  It was an examination into bad cycles.  We had problems early on-I was kept on suppression for a long time because the other woman wasn't responding to the meds.  When we were finally ready to stim I'd been on supression longer than I ever had before.  The doctor has admitted this might be a factor on why I had the worst cycle I'd ever had, I was under too long on the down-reg. 

I didn't respond well to the stims.

When they realized my usual bumper crop wasn't forthcoming I was put on double-doses of stims.  I was going mad worrying that I wouldn't produce enough eggs, that I would let me and the donor down.  I couldn't believe my body's response to the meds, it was as though I was injecting orange juice instead of sophisticated synthetic hormones. 

When egg retrieval finally came, I got 8 eggs, of which only 4 were good quality.  They were split down the middle, we got 4 each.  And my guilt this time was even greater - the donor had paid a fortune, waited 18 months, and all she got were 4 eggs, 2 of which were crappy quality.  She must've been really pissed off.  I would've been really pissed off.  I felt I'd let us both down in so many ways.

Unbelievably, my 2 average quality eggs became 2 average quality embryos.  The doctor assured us twins were extremely unlikely.  Hindsight and all that.

We decided to find out on Friday how the donee got on with her 4 eggs.  It shouldn't have been a surprise to us, but it was.

"Hi!" chirped the egg share nurse.  "Right, so the good news is, no one will come knocking on your door in 18 years trying to look you up.  The other woman didn't get pregnant."

I'm not sure I felt relief at that.  Truthfully I didn't necessarily want any children I helped to create look me up, but only because I had absolutely, completely no doubt that I am not the mother.  They have a mother who wanted them very much.  I just donated some gametes, I'm nothing in the development of this other person.   If they wanted to look me up and find out about family trees and tell me about their childhood, that'd be great.  But they have a mother, one who would've invested 18 years into their wellbeing. 

I did feel terrible, though.  I guess some part of me figured the odds of the other woman's pregnancy weren't great.  But then, my odds weren't great either and I have two extremely active Lemonheads percolating in there.  I just felt that I had hugely let someone down, she had such dreams and I couldn't help them.  Some part of me knows that I helped someone try to achieve their dream and that there's merit in that, I just can't get past knowing that I was unable to be there, that it didn't work.

If you're doing a donor cycle, you maybe wonder about the woman who's donated her eggs to you.  I can't know all cases, but let me tell you how it is for some of us who donate - we want so much for you to succeed.  Honestly.  We are ordinary women with ordinary lives and ordinary dreams.  We keep you in our minds the entire time we go through things.  We want this for you more than I know how to say with a keyboard and and bright sparkly pixels.

I have my unborn Lemonheads whom I love at 1,000 miles per hour.  I feel so incredibly bad for the other two women who never got their Lemonheads from me.  I want to tell them I'm sorry, that I wish for them, and that's all I know how to say.

Comments

[marie-baguettte]

This is a very touching post. I wish you could find it in yourself to not feel guilty -- perfectly good eggs sometimes don't work while below average result in perfect pregnancies. It is such a lottery. You did everything you could to help other couples. You have been extremely generous. I know that I could not do what you did. It is not that I am against donating gametes, but it makes me very uncomfortable. When our IVF#2 failed, we started to think about adoption. Eggs or sperm donation was never an acceptable option for me.

[thalia]

I agree with MB, I don't think there should be any guilt here. You didn't choose which egg went where, that was the clinic. And there was sperm involved in each situation, so the fact that her embryos didn't take might be nothing to do with your donation's quality. You did a good thing.

[Tinker]

I'll add to Thalia's comment that it might have been the condition of her uterus that factored into the lack of success as well -- there are so many things beyond the number and quality of eggs she received over which you have no control that truly there is no reason for you to feel guilty.

Now, I wasn't surprised to hear that you felt badly about the recipient's lack of success. I was, however, surprised at how the nurse phrased the woman's unfortunate luck. Perhaps it's because I would like to donate the embryos that we don't use to a couple who so desperately wants a child, that I don't understand the perspective of donating while at the same time wishing for failure.

[Bea]

Very touching post. And if only we could divvy up the babies a bit better - you're freaking out with two, and she didn't get pregnant at all. Life has no sense of balance sometimes. But you're right - there is merit in giving someone the chance, and you can only give her the best chance you can give.

Bea

[Katie]

That's something really hard to think about - I didn't know they told you the outcome so soon (I guess I thought they didn't tell you at all, but they must do if you have the new non-anonymity thing I suppose!).

But given that you have a different uterus and different sperm, perhaps it is not the other woman's eggs after all that are causing her problems (well, perhaps she doesn't have any of them at all - I don't know) but it isn't YOUR fault.

[Becks]

I'll call this response HOPE, but first I just want to say how f*'ing amazing that women are prepared to donate their eggs anyway, so I don't think you should feel anything other than pride for being prepared to help others, regardless of the outcome (which you have no control over).

Onto HOPE....my IVF#1 was rubbish, I only got 4 eggs. I started thinking last week about my own down reg. My doctor was away so I was down regulating for 27 days, and I wondered if this could have affected my response to stims (which was crap). When I just read your post my little heart did a little dance of hope that IVF#2 might be better.

I'd be really interested to hear how long you were down regulating for - if you have time, would you mind dropping me an email? onemiracleneeded@hotmail.co.uk

Thanks so much.

[Lut C.]

I can imagine that you'd feel affected by the fate of your donee's. After all, you know all to well what it feels like, to get negative after negative.
On the other hand, you gave them a chance, were many others did not.