The Gift

How do you thank someone for giving you the most precious gift there is...the gift of life?  Obviously, nothing would ever be adequate...but wouldn't you have to try?  I've thought long and hard about whether to write this post...whether describing what I am presenting to our donor somehow becomes cheapened if I share it with anyone other than her.  Ultimately, what made me decide to share the information in this post was my memory of how this blog started.  I started writing "The Princess and the Pee Stick" because I needed to work through my emotions and feelings surrounding infertility and the donor egg process, without regard for how my thoughts and words were received.  I need to write this post because deciding how to thank our egg donor has been something that has consumed me for some time now.  I am still working through whether I am getting this right.  So, I'm putting this out there in hopes that, as with other issues in the past, this blog helps to reassure me and clarify my thoughts and feelings on this issue.

I've known for awhile now that I wanted to give our donor a small gift and a note, attempting to express our appreciation for what she is putting herself through to help our dreams come true.  The gift, as you might expect, was much easier to find than were the words for the letter.  But even deciding on a gift wasn't easy.  I had read on some egg donor blogs that, while they felt uncomfortable when the recipients bought them expensive jewelry, most appreciated smaller tokens of appreciation that were clearly from the heart.  I decided to get our donor a Willow Tree angel.  These wooden  and wire angel sculptures are about 6 inches tall, and are incredibly expressive, despite their lack of facial features.  I decided to give our donor the one I've pictured above.  She is the Angel of Gratitude.  I went back and forth for a long time trying to decide which angel to get, but when I saw her, I thought that she was the best fit.  She looks a little like me, a little like the donor, and she has blue flowers behind her back (and my donor's favorite color is blue).

When I went to the Hallmark store to buy the gift, I stumbled upon a "Thank you for being our donor" card...no kidding!  Who knew that they made such a card?  On the outside of the card, it says "What you did was amazing, beyond generous and kind.  You started a miracle.  You have given the gift of life."  And on the inside it says "How can anyone thank you enough for that?"

The card is great, but I wanted to personalize the message as well (we all know that I am not a "short and sweet" kind of girl...I'm a little long-winded).  This is my one chance to express my feelings to our donor, and I'm not going to be shy about saying what is in my heart.  I'm ending this post with the draft of the letter that I intend to put in the card because...well...I think it says everything I have to say today.

"Dear Donor,

Words could never adequately express how grateful we are for the amazing gift you have given to us.  For three long years we have gone through one failed IVF cycle after another, trying desperately to complete our family.  We know what a commitment it is, both physically and emotionally, to go through the process of injections and monitoring, and we really appreciate what you've done to help us reach our goal of raising a family.

We have come to view ourselves as a mother and father without a child and, until you came along, it seemed that our dream of holding our baby in our arms might never come true.  You have provided us with the chance to become the parents that we know in our hearts we are meant to be.  You are our angel of hope and, although we can never repay your kindness and generosity, please know that we acknowledge how truly beautiful and special you are.  Regardless of how this cycle turns out, we cannot thank you enough for your selfless sacrifice.  You will always have a special place in our hearts.

Wishing you happiness, health and joy always,

The Mother and Father-to-be."

Another Beautiful Princess/Fairy Godmother - Our Anonymous Egg Donor

Today I got the message I have been waiting for…we’re ready to start moving on my egg donor cycle.  Over a month ago, when our names got to the top of the waiting list of our anonymous donor choice, we decided we were ready to go ahead with pursuing this option of family-building.  We committed and I was relieved, excited, terrified and sad all at the same time.  Because we were doing a split cycle (two recipients split the eggs retrieved from one donor during one cycle, each recipient paying half of what she would normally pay for a donor cycle), we had to wait for the donor coordinator to get confirmation from another couple that they also wanted to move forward with the chosen egg donor.  Then, the coordinator would call our donor choice and ask her when she would be ready to do a cycle.  Foolishly, I thought I would have my answers in a few days. 

I waited, and waited, often not as patiently as I would like, while day after day there was no news.  I tried to wait at least a few days between each email to the coordinator, asking for a status update (she’s got to be ready to kill me at this point).  Always the same reply, “Just waiting for another couple to confirm.”

So last night, a couple finally confirmed.  My first thought when I received the news I’ve been waiting for during the last month was not “great” or “finally.”  No, instead I ruined the moment by thinking about the fact that if we both get pregnant, my child and their child will be half-siblings.  There are a lot of thoughts that randomly pop into my head which make me worry that I am not fully onboard with this option.  But I also get that feeling on the way up the hill of a rollercoaster…I know that it is too late to back out and a part of me knows that I really don’t want to because the best part is still to come, but I’m so scared as the cart goes higher and higher that I think, for a split second, about freaking out and trying to get them to stop the ride to let me off.  Pursing the use of donor eggs has been my “rollercoaster experience” to the tenth degree.

I was worried that our donor wouldn’t be ready to do another cycle for a while, as she just finished one in November or December, but she is good to go.  So, now, after waiting and waiting, I feel like I’m starting down the hill of the rollercoaster, and the momentum is already terrifying and exhilarating at the same time.  I still have so many questions (which I’m sure the donor coordinator appreciates me bombarding her with via email the second I got her message that we were going to start in February).  I don’t know how long the process takes once our donor has her “Cycle Day 1,” which is what I am currently waiting for.  When do I fork over the thousands of dollars for the cycle and when do I get my medications that I will be taking during the cycle?  These are all questions that I feel as though I need answered RIGHT NOW.  I’m panicking a bit, and information is my only lifeline.

During those brief moments that I step back from the panic and breath, I am reminded that I should be filled with gratitude, not fear.  I recognize that this family-building option is not available to a lot of people for financial reasons or for moral reasons.  Many religions frown upon what we are doing and I am blessed enough to believe that God would never wish childlessness on a woman who truly desired a child, so God is okay with me using an egg donor.  Maybe I’m right, maybe I’m wrong, but either way, I’m not losing sleep over that issue.

I also realize that I need to be so grateful that the beautiful, amazing woman that we have chosen to be the genetic mother of our child is willing to give such a precious gift.  I understand that there are some financial incentives for donors, but I have read the answers my donor gave to a whole battery of questions (and reread them about a million times), and I truly believe that there is a huge altruistic motive for our donor giving us the gift of hope. 

When we started choosing a donor, I came up with a mathematical formula that rated and weighted the characteristics that were most important to us, plugging in each donor’s characteristics to determine which one had “the highest score.”  My husband and I both agreed that we wanted to use someone who had donated before and had a good response.  To my husband, it was also important that the donor be smart (in his mind, this means an advanced degree or a high SAT score).  For me, I felt like our donor should look something like me and her answers should be well-written.  But after hours and hours of pouring over each “candidate,” I realized that we were missing the big picture.  Some of the donors seemed very smart but had children at a very young age, or had financial situations that prevented them from pursuing college degrees.  My husband wasn’t happy about it, but I decided that I was not eliminating any candidates based on their education.  I also realized that I was incredibly nervous about being a recipient, and would probably have a ton of spelling and grammatical errors if I was asked to complete a pile of questionnaires without the benefits of spell-check, so I got rid of the “well-written” requirement that I had placed on the donors.  It also became less and less important to me, as I researched the donors, whether the woman looked like me.  Sure, a resemblance would be nice, but lets face it…no one is going to say that our child looks just like his/her mother and if someone does say that, it will be tough for me not to suppress a giggle.

Eventually, I started to get a gut feeling and my gut kept drawing me back to the same donor.  At that time, she hadn’t donated before (yet another one of our criteria down the drain), but I just felt like she was the one.  She does bear some resemblance to me, she has an associates degree, and she is very well-written, but most importantly to me, her answers jumped off the page.  It was like I could hear her voice and she was there with me when I read her responses to such questions as “Why did you choose to be a donor” and “How would you describe yourself” and “Who is your role model and why.”  I made my choice that she was “the one,” got my husband’s blessing (which was more like him being so sick of my indecision that any decision was fine with him), and I put our names on her waiting list.  As it turned out, while we waited we found out that she has an amazing response to stimulating medications and, in the two single cycles before our upcoming cycle, her eggs have helped both recipients get pregnant…one with twins!

I spend a lot of time thinking about what I would say to our donor if I could.  I would say that no matter how this all works out, I am so thankful that she was willing to share the ultimate gift with us.  I would tell her that she is so amazing and so beautiful inside and out, that I could see her radiance from a piece of paper she filled out.  I would tell her that I am honored to have her DNA in my child (okay, that would be a little awkward to say, but it’s my fantasy, so it’s fine).  I would assure her that, if I do get pregnant and have a child thanks to her assistance, I will be the best mother ever and that child will be showered with love every day of the child’s life.  I would say “Thank you,” through the tears of joy that are flowing down my cheeks as I write this post.