The Road Less Traveled: Why Women Choose Egg Donors, Surrogacy, Adoption
“If there was any other way love, don’t you think I’ve tried to find it?”
Those lyrics from pop singer Celine Dion may as well be about her six attempts at In Vitro Fertilization (which resulted in her 9-year-old son and in-utero twins). Dion told People magazine last February: "I'm going to try until it works."
Not everyone has the platinum-record bank account or do-or-die attitude to make such a bold statement about fertility. (However, a new TFC financial assistance program makes multiple IVF cycles realistic.) Whether you are just strapping in for the roller coaster ride, or the pain of failed cycles has derailed your dreams, we suggest working out an exit strategy.
You’ll have to decide if giving birth to a biological baby baked with all of your own “ingredients” is worth pursuing up to and past the point of family and/or financial stress or the gerbil-on-a-wheel syndrome that can cause you to lose all joy in starting a family.
In the following vignettes, three women, each with healthy children today, reflect on what brought them to resolve infertility on their own terms.
Laurie Chose a Gestational Carrier
Laurie had no trouble conceiving. In fact she was pregnant five times, but after her daughter was born, the unexplained miscarriages came one after the other in her second trimester until she was labeled a “habitual aborter.”
Even though this Charlotte, NC native was pregnant for the fifth time, she didn’t tell anyone and made a “just in case” appointment with a surrogacy attorney. She miscarried one week before her meeting date.
“My mom was sending me articles about adoption, but I knew I really wanted my own biological baby and I didn’t want to risk my health with another pregnancy attempt.” She and her husband had money saved for a rainy day and Laurie remembers thinking: “It’s raining. Let’s get it done.”
In January 2002, Laurie and her husband met with a gestational carrier. That meant Laurie’s oocyte and her husband’s sperm would form the embryo that doctors transferred into the carrier’s uterus in an IVF cycle. Exactly one year later, the couple welcomed a healthy baby boy into their lives.
Pam Turned to Adoption
Insurance covered intrauterine inseminations (IUIs), so Pam and her husband poured $30 co-pays into them like a Las Vegas slot machine. By the time she went to a specialist, the couple had undergone close to 15 of the procedures with nothing to show for it but a threadbare marriage.
“I wish I had seen a specialist earlier,” she said. The reproductive endocrinologist they chose explained that if they hadn’t gotten pregnant by then with IUI, odds were they were not going to. In their situation, where each member of the couple had fertility challenges to overcome, IVF was really the best option. Although neither IVF nor adoption was covered by insurance, the couple decided to pursue adoption.
“At that point, I just wanted a child,” said Pam. “I could finally let go of the dream of getting to tell my parents ‘I’m pregnant.’“
The mother of a tween who often hears her friends tell delivery room ‘war stories,’ Pam jokes that her labor and delivery went on for five years. “Infertility took a toll on our marriage and we’re still feeling it. When you’re in it, you’re so blinded by desire for a baby that you can’t see where you are. It’s good to decide beforehand how far you are willing to go.”
Michelle ‘Adopted’ an Egg and Delivered a Baby
After 2 1/2 years, three IUIs and no luck, 36-year-old Michelle moved on to IVF. Two cycles failed, and she was told that egg quality was likely the reason. “We had one cycle left under our insurance plan,” she said. “It was, quite literally, our last shot.”
The doctor broached the subject of donor eggs with Michelle, explaining that it would greatly increase the success rate. "Absolutely not," she remembers saying. "I didn't get into this to have someone else's baby." Michelle’s husband, however, supported any option that would increase their chances.
Michelle came to the conclusion that she was willing to adopt a baby. This way, she’d simply be adopting an egg instead of a child. “It was the means to the end. All of the nurturing that the child needed, both while in the womb and once he or she was born, would be mine to give.”
From the moment the doctor's office told Michelle she was pregnant, she remembers thinking: “This baby is mine and I’m so grateful this option was available to us.”
Still other couples decide to live childfree. The 2008 US Census found that 20 percent of couples remain childless, compared with 10 percent 30 years ago, and the Pew Research Center recently reported that nearly one in five American women in her early 40s is childless.
Since Texas Fertility Center opened its doors, we have welcomed well over 10,000 babies into the world, which gives would-be parents good reason to have hope for a joyful outcome.
However, population statistics show that the chances of live birth after age 43 are less than 1 percent and, according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, live birth rates for even the most high-tech treatments are less than 50 percent per attempt.
At some point, you individually or as a couple will need to ask yourselves: “What appeals to us more…being pregnant or being a parent?” If starting or growing a family is your priority, you have options. Texas Fertility Center provides a comprehensive array of proven treatments, from non-invasive Clomid stimulation and intrauterine insemination to In Vitro Fertilization and subsequent frozen embryo transfer.
Some parents-to-be will achieve their dream of starting a family through the TFC donor program, including donor oocytes, donor sperm, donor embryos, gestational carriers and surrogacy.
Texas Fertility Center counsels patients to begin treatment with some idea of how far they are willing to go to achieve a pregnancy.
“As physicians, we vow to ‘do no harm’ and that means providing treatment as long as it’s reasonable to expect a positive outcome,” says Dr. [Insert Name]. “It doesn’t happen often, but there are certainly heartbreaking situations when we have to advise a couple to redefine what ‘success’ looks like.”
Your doctors, friends and family can offer you advice on when it’s time to move on, but the decision ultimately belongs to you. Well-known counselor Merle Bombardieri in his book “The Baby Decision” says the worst thing a couple can do is “float into a non-decision where they evolve into childfree living, not by choosing it but by letting it choose them.”
