Donor Drama: An Update

First off, thanks for the comments. It makes me feel a whole lot less insane to know you are there.

Secondly, sometimes I forget to trust my instincts. IVF is such a crazy business and fertility so amazingly complex that sometimes I just end up calculating some illusive "odds of getting pregnant" scenario. I forget that I have feelings about things. Not instincts necessarily, but my gut feeling. Of course over time I have learned not to trust that feeling after all the reproductive "surprises" and failures, because in the beginning I just thought everything was working fine. Over time that self-assured feeling has been chipped away to just the tiniest hope that this will finally work. So, I have forgotten about me. I have gotten lost in the logistics, statistics, and cynicism. Today, I realized that how I/we feel needs to be an important part of this process (as you all have reminded me). I didn't feel good about this, despite the fact that it's all very human to eat, drink, smoke, and party sometimes. I felt like I needed options.

I made arrangements to go to the clinic and look through the egg donors again. I was thinking that maybe there had been changes with some of the women who were not available in Feb. but would be free now. I was thinking that maybe someone would jump out at me and say "HEY! Pick me!! I'm your gal! I want you to have this baby too!!".

I brought the profiles home and we looked them over. One of them, a new one that just finished her first cycle really appealed to WonderWoman. She looked at me and said, "If you want my first impression, this is the one." I asked her what she liked about her particularly. She told me that not only does the donor look like her (there is quite a similarity between them I must admit) but I had overlooked one line in her self-description that jumped out at WonderWoman. She said she "...loves life and loves sharing it with her children".

And then we knew. I called our coordinator and let her know that despite the outcome of the blood work (still pending), we would like to ask if this new donor would be willing to do a cycle with us.

A little background about what happened with the nicotine blood work: Our donor came in at the end of May to have her blood work done. The test results came back on June 1st. According to the policy at this RE, a positive nicotine test always results in terminating the donor from the program. But, no one caught this. The chart was filed away. On the eve of ordering the meds for the cycle the donor coordinator looked over the labs and saw the blood work results. She took it to the RE. He told her since we were so close to the cycle starting to call the donor and ask her if she had started smoking. They did this. She was retested. The results are still pending.

So the way I see it if they had caught it in June, they would have called us and said they were sorry but we would have to pick a new donor. And that's exactly what we would have done. So really, this is the way it should have been. If you believe in fate, we would have never gotten to use that donor. But because the cycle was about to begin, they thought they would offer me the option to take a chance. I don't want to take that chance. If the egg quality was poor I would always wonder if it was because of the smoking thing. That's no way to start my last chance.

For those of you who are keeping statistical score. Here is how our "now" donor stacks up.

She is 29 this year.
Has 2 children (ironically the same age as our girls).
Has completed her first cycle in June 07.
Cycle results were:
19 mature eggs
13 embies
2 blasts
5 frozen embies
negative pregnancy for the recipients

If she agrees (deep breath, fingers crossed), she will be ready to cycle in September. Two weeks later than the former donor.

I can live with that.