I got an interesting phone call this morning from my friend
Jane. She asked if I would help one of her friends write a newspaper ad for an
egg donor – apparently she thinks I’m a good writer! Her friend’s story is one
that breaks my heart so of course I said yes. So now we start our hunt for
eggs!
This woman has been to hell and back in her bid to have a
second child. After her first child she suffered 2 stillborn births then found
out she was going into early menopause and had heart problems, meaning no more
babies for her. She then tried overseas surrogacy twice – both failed. So that brings her to trying surrogacy in
Australia which is much harder than it should ever have to be.
In Australia, you can’t advertise for a surrogate. You can
do surrogacy, but you can’t do it
publicly meaning no ad and I’m pretty sure you can’t pay for it either.
Although I’m sure many people do it and just “slip the money under the table.”
It would be so much easier if Australia was more progressive thinking like
America and it could all be done in the open but no – Australia likes to keep
childless couples childless by making surrogacy and adoption near impossible to
achieve. In Victoria, you need written approval from the Minister for Health
just to advertise for an egg donor – good reason to move I say!
The donor doesn’t get paid but has medical costs covered so
they’re basically doing it out of the goodness of their own hearts. It’s truly
an amazing gift to give so it’s not surprising that many women would change
their mind and pull out. But, if you wanted to go down that road, where do you
even start?
I came across Egg
Donor Angels – a website set up by a woman who started on her own journey
and found it difficult to find a donor. Now, you can go to this site, post your
ad and cross your fingers! There are 150 ads for people looking for a donor and
only 25 from women wanting to be donors – clearly the odds aren’t good.
A Google search also brings up a range of websites that
claim to foster the egg donor process with “contacts overseas.” This scares me
enormously as no doubt many of these businesses would just be crooks, looking
to pray on the anxiety, desperation and vulnerability of women to extort as
much money from them as possible. It’s a process rort with danger and clearly
it’s not one to be entered into lightly.
At this point in time, this is not a process I’m having to
think about. However, as coincidence would have it, only yesterday I asked my
doctor to do an anti-mullerian
hormone test which is a test to check your ovarian reserve – how many eggs
you have left. If you don’t have many eggs left, then you may as well skip all
the natural trying and head straight to IVF because there isn’t a lot of time
left!
I had the Day 3 follicle stimulating
hormone blood test earlier in the week which detects the level of FSH in your system.
This is the first test to check your ovarian reserve – it’s an indication of
how hard the body needs to work to get the follicle to start growing to release
the egg. Mine came in at 5 meaning my body isn’t working too had so I should expect
a good ovulation stimulation this month! Hoorah!
So, it will be interesting to get my results back next week.
One of two things will happen – I’ll be like my Mother’s friend, who at 32, was
told her reserves were very low for her age and she would go into early
menopause, or I’ll have eggs galore and won’t have menopause until I’m 80! I’m
hoping it’s the second, but if it’s the first, I’ll be happy to know I’m helping
someone else hunt for precious eggs so I’ll at least be more informed about the
process. Here’s hoping the words I come up with will bring her this longed for
baby. I would love to think I’ve played a part in bringing a precious life into
the world! I wonder if she would call the baby Fiona if it’s a girl?
Image by Stuart Miles
Courtesy of www.freedigitalphotos.net
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