My son is graduating from high school this year, which is making me reflect back to how our family started. Since today is Donor Conception Awareness Day, I thought I’d offer a refreshed version of our experience with reciprocal IVF (my egg; partner’s womb) in hopes of offering some insight or inspiration to others pursuing similar paths.
Preparation
My now-spouse Helen and I had been together for eight years, but focused on our careers, before we decided to start a family in the early aughts. Once we began discussing it, we knew almost immediately that we wanted to do reciprocal in vitro fertilization (RIVF), with Helen carrying my eggs, so that we could both be a part of the process in a physical way. I’m a few years younger, so we used my “fresher” eggs.
We then juggled the three areas of healthcare, insurance, and law. First, we talked with our regular doctor and got physicals. She referred us to a fertility practice. I also approached my employer’s health insurance provider to be sure that IVF was covered—at $20,000 per attempt, we couldn’t have done it otherwise. We had to pay for the sperm ourselves, though, at about $300 per try.
Next stop was the lawyer to make sure none of the paperwork we had to sign at the clinic would waive either of our rights, since it was set up for egg donors who would not be parenting the child. We also updated our wills and powers of attorney just in case.
At the same time, we started looking at online catalogs from sperm banks. We wanted an anonymous donor who would have no possible legal claim to the child. Looking back, we might have considered a donor who was “willing to be known” when the child turned 18, but we unfortunately didn’t know this was a possibility. We’ve always been open with our son about his origins, however, and told him what we know of the donor. Mostly, we wanted someone healthy—but that still left a lot of choices. We were almost driven to putting printouts of the finalists’ profiles on the floor and choosing the one the cat sat on. (Ultimately, we made the call ourselves.)
Feeling the Egg-citement
Then began the real attempts. We met with the fertility doctor and brought home a large paper grocery bag full of medicines and needles. So. many. needles. Helen needed to take hormones to prepare the lining of her uterus to receive the egg. I needed hormones to produce many eggs at once instead of the usual one per month. (I’m not going to specify medications here; there are different protocols in use and I’m not a doctor, so this isn’t a recommendation for anything specific, just our personal experience.)
Helen started with a “test cycle” of hormone pills to make sure her uterus responded appropriately, then I went on birth control pills to synch my cycle with hers. I still laugh about the fact that the first time I ever went on birth control was in order to have a child.
I then gave myself daily injections in my belly for several weeks. The needles were tiny and nearly painless, though there was definitely a mental barrier to get over. I began to feel a little bloated as my ovaries grew.
Helen began with a daily injection via small needles, and then another for a week or so via a 2-inch needle in her backside, which I had to give her. (It was a bonding experience.) This was in a thick, sesame-oil base and caused some soreness.
We also both went to the clinic every other morning at 6 a.m. for blood tests and ultrasounds. We’d cut out caffeine for the duration, so that was rough, but we figured it was good preparation for parenthood.
My final injection, to release the eggs, had to be exactly 36 hours before my clinic appointment, when I went briefly under general anesthetic and woke up (babbling incoherently, I’m told) with the eggs painlessly removed.
The clinic then fertilized the eggs with the sperm we’d had shipped to them. Five days later they inserted the embryos via a tube into Helen’s uterus. They usually insert more than one for IVF—this boosts the chances of any one succeeding, but at the risk of multiple births. The doctors recommended how many, based on how the embryos were developing, but the final choice was up to us. This was the most difficult question we faced after selecting the sperm donor.
We then waited for the results—a looong 10 days, especially since most over-the-counter pregnancy tests didn’t work with IVF and we had to go to the clinic for a blood test instead. The first time didn’t succeed.
If at First…
None of our remaining embryos had been good enough to freeze, so we started again from scratch. We chose a different donor, in case the sperm was the problem. To improve egg quality, I also took an additional medication, which required a no-carb diet for two weeks. I was hallucinating bagels by the end of this time, but something must have worked. Helen was pregnant!
Helen kept going to the fertility clinic every few days for the next couple of weeks to be sure, then they cast her loose to see her regular OB/GYN only every couple of months. This felt like an eternity after being at the fertility clinic so often. We did end up going back to the clinic regularly for a queer moms’ group they had launched, and were tempted each time to sneak in the back and fire up the ultrasound. (We restrained ourselves.)
Making It Legal
This was all before marriage equality or civil unions, however. In New Jersey, where we lived, I would not have been able to be on the birth certificate or have any parental rights, even though the child was genetically mine—except that with the help of our lawyer, we successfully petitioned the state for a pre-birth parentage order, making me a legal parent from the moment of our son’s birth. This required one court visit, but no home study or background checks. We thought we were going to be the first RIVF couple in the state to get such a parentage order; we ended up being the second, happy to be part of a trend.
The story of Helen’s pregnancy and our son’s birth is for another time; suffice it to say that all went well, and here we are, 18 years later.
RIVF was definitely the extra complicated (and needle-filled) route. It’s not for everyone, but we both value the different connections it has given each of us to our son. To those also considering RIVF (or any path to parenthood), I’d say be patient, try to find the humor in it, and realize it’s just the start of the long but worthwhile adventure of parenthood. Good luck!
Looking for more information and stories of donor-conceived family making? Try my database with the tags “Sperm donors,” “Donor siblings,” “Family creation,” or “Memoir,” and the appropriate age category. (You can use tags in combination, but note that results must match all tags. If you get too few results, try reducing the number of tags.)