Can I ever accept using an egg donor

The room was filled with anticipation. Women and husbands/partners, brought together by a common question many are reluctant to share with others close to them:

Can I be happy using an egg donor to have my baby?

This month’s Tampa meeting of Resolve featured a panel I helped assemble:

• A young college student who has donated her eggs twice in the past
• A couple pregnant with twins using an egg donor
• The owner of an agency which matches egg donors with intended parents.

For those attending, it was a glimpse inside a world that seems futuristic, almost surreal. One woman’s eggs – a tiny nugget of DNA and genetic code representing eye color, hair color, ethnicity, intelligence and personality – being harvested, joined with the man’s sperm, and transplanted into another woman’s uterus.

The start of a new life. Also the end of a dream.

As the panel talked, I could imagine what was going on in the minds of these prospective parents:

• Does this mean I’m inadequate as a woman?
• Will I ever be ever to accept this child as my own?
• Have I been “cheated” out of having a baby the natural way?

There was something comfortable about the “normalness” of the people on the panel. The donor, a college student working on her doctorate, was friendly, intelligent and likeable. Instead of being an abstraction, a apparition of a real person, an egg-bot spitting out tiny orbs, she was just.. nice. Like a daughter you’d be proud to have.

The couple was in the 40s. After a failed IVF attempt with eggs judged to be past their prime, they were now pregnant with twins after using donor eggs. They also seemed.. kind of like the family next door. No regrets, just peace.

A Path To Parenthood

The owner of Open Arms Surrogacy, Souad Dreyfus, sees it every day: Couples come in with pain on their faces, tired and exhausted. Not all are willing or able. But for those who can accept a chance for pregnancy with the help of a young woman they will probably never meet, the path to parenthood is just beginning.

I hope we changed some hearts at this meeting. (Tampa Bay Resolve meets the second Wednesday of every month, 7pm, at Memorial Hospital. Free to all. Call 727-521-0210 or 813-833-8393.)

What would you do? Have you already made the decision to use donor eggs? How did you decide to use donor eggs? Share your thoughts in the comment field below: