Donating my eggs in my 30s

A touch of magic, mystery—nature’s play, Life’s soul, etched in strands of DNA. Microscopic fusions, an urgent, primal plea, Cells spinning, blooming, wild and free. Yet survival’s odds are callous and severe; An embryo’s life hinges on chance and fear. Cocooned in its shell, it bursts for space; Only the fierce find warmth, love’s embrace. But as time passes, a shadow casts, a cost unknown—Do we live to flourish, or leave Earth overthrown? -GW (First 5 days)

Shortly after breaking up with my partner of 8 years, I went through a crisis.  I flipped between shock and anger and sadness and depression.  There were days as I lay on the floor when it felt like the ground opened and swallowed me up.  I often woke up from my drunken daze with physical pain in my chest.  I was dying, I thought.

I didn’t want to die, but it felt like heartache was going to do me in.  I've never felt so mortal. If I died now, what would I leave behind?  Did the world change a little because I had existed? I was going through something quite normal (albeit unpleasant), but it was during these headf*ck moments that I decided to do something unorthodox to gain some control over the nothingness beyond death.

Children are strange (or I am)

I always felt uncomfortable around children.  Even when I was 10 years old, I’d rather hang out with adults than other children as I found it hard to fit in and play children's games.  I wanted to do adult things and talk about adult topics.  So unsurprisingly I wasn't keen on having children of my own as that would bring me back to my childhood— feeling out of place.

Yet funny thing happens when one is confronted with mortality.  Knowing that I was going to die suddenly spurred feelings of wanting to continue on my genes, legacy, consciousness, whatever you might call it.  I felt a sense of biological imperative to procreate, yet not necessarily to raise children myself.  Luckily we live in the 21st century.

I learned about IVF before.  Some of my peers were using this option to have children.  Egg donation intrigued me though.  Why would anyone want to raise a child with someone else's genes? We understand that it takes a village to raise children– relatives, teachers, babysitters, nuns, etc.  Fostering and adopting have been around for centuries.  It seems people are capable of loving children that are not theirs.  Thus it makes sense to go a step further and give birth to a child “not theirs”.  The process of childbirth is so intense and the initial bonding so strong that it can override concerns around gene origin.

Sperm donation preceded egg donation, and it’s based on the same principle.  A family seeks out a donor with certain qualities (ethnic background, physical features, temperament), in hopes of having an offspring that matches what they imagine could be theirs. The gene is just a part of the equation, a big part of how a child shapes up is through nurture. Of course, choosing the right gene is important to mitigate any surprises.

Challenging the taboo

I decided to go ahead with donating my eggs to UCSF.  Though I was in my early 30s at the time, and they normally prefer younger donors in their 20s, there was a low supply of Asian eggs.  This reflects the cultural taboo around "gene lineage" that is prevalent in Asian cultures.  I wanted to challenge this taboo while helping one family and possibly shutting down the clock-ticking noise in my head.  UCSF strongly encouraged me to proceed with the process seeing that I was a rare commodity.

I went through an interview, and then a questionnaire of what felt like a million questions (it was 500 questions).  Then they gave me materials to read over and a date to do my bloodwork to check for my viability and any possible diseases.  I went home to prepare.

A few days later, I was at an event and I casually mentioned what I was doing with a friend of mine.  I’d known him for several years.  He revealed that his wife and he had been trying to conceive for 2 years, and they were about to give up.  As a last resort, the clinic gave them a booklet of egg donees to consider (the selection of donors that matched what they wanted was none). It was a serendipitous discussion that led me to change my mind about UCSF and help this family instead.  Something about helping someone I know, and also being able to experience their joy in real time felt more fulfilling. The UCSF route would have been entirely anonymous.

Ow ow ow

The clinic they went with was the Reproductive Science Center.  I was assigned a counselor to talk to me for an hour to assess my mental health.  They wanted me to be sure I knew what I was getting into.  After that, they gave me some papers to sign, and then they did my bloodwork and discussed the details of the procedure which was as follows:

Since they need to have the eggs ready for implantation on a specific day, the donee and my cycles need to be aligned exactly.  We were to start taking estrogen pills together for several months.  I was to abstain from alcohol and smoking.  At 2 weeks before the procedure, I will need to inject hormones daily at the same time each day, to induce an overgrowth of eggs.  The timing dictates exactly when they would perform the extraction procedure.  The donee would also be doing progesterone injections, along with other meds, to prepare her womb.

I also needed to check in with the clinic several times leading up to the procedure to do ultrasounds and bloodwork to make sure I was growing enough eggs for the process. The donee family graciously compensated me for my time going back and forth to the clinic, and for general inconvenience.

On the day of the extraction procedure, I skipped coffee and ate very little.  By this point, I felt like there were rocks inside me.  I arrived and they put me in a gown, and cute slipper socks.  At exactly the scheduled time, they wheeled me into the operating room where I met the operating team.  The anesthesiologist inserted a needle into my arm and asked me to count backward from 3.  I only recall yelping "ow ow ow" before passing out, never even starting the count.

I woke up a few hours later in a daze, with discomfort in my nether region.  It was painful to sit upright.  For the procedure they inserted a device up my canal, punctured the wall of my uterus, to access the ovaries for the eggs.  They extracted 7 eggs, of which 5 were viable.  They inseminated all of them with my friend's sperm.  By day 5, only 2 blastocysts made it.  This is quite normal, though I heard that some donors can produce 20+ eggs from the ovaries, which will increase the chance of viable embryos.

They proceeded to implant one embryo into the mother and froze the other embryo.  Sadly the first embryo didn’t attach to the womb.  With one frozen embryo left, it was one more shot, so they went through the cycle again and implanted the following month.  This time it took, and the mother went through a full pregnancy.  The child was born in the summer of the following year.

Living with a bio-child

Though I had wanted to donate without ties before, over the years the donee family and I kept in touch and hung out once every few months.  The child knows me, and calls me "bio-mom".  We’ve even gone on trips together.  As I learn more about this child, I’ve come to appreciate their unique personality, and it’s interesting to observe over time how a child is shaped by their upbringing.  My parents are tidy, anxious, and serious, which caused me to embody these qualities at a young age, whereas this child's parents are easy-going, calm, and adventurous. The child currently carries more of the donee's family's qualities, at least for now. For the most part, I can't see many parts of my character in her, except the athletic and funny parts.

I read that some women later regret their decision to donate their eggs.  I still have no weird feelings or regrets about donating. I’m delighted to have brought a family joy and have done something to subdue the mortality noise in my head, as well as challenge a taboo in my way.  I went into the process with clear intent, and I wasn’t doing it for money.  A typical donor is in their 20s, not sure who they are yet, probably extremely idealistic or "bleeding-heart", and may be financially motivated, which is never a good reason for this. Being more mature, not hot for children myself, and not out for the money, I think I was an ideal donor.