Buyer's Remorse: Egg Edition

I met my donor for lunch yesterday. The following are excerpts from our conversation.

My Donor: "I'm really good at a lot of things. Like flower arranging. I'm great at succulents. Look at these pictures.
Me: "They're beautiful."
My Head: "I hope she doesn't google search my house and see how bad my yard looks."

My Donor: "I'm also great at make-up. I want to do make-up for the movies. Like for Johnny Depp."
Me: "It's wonderful that you know what you want to do."
My Head: "But your eyebrows are drawn about an inch too thick, and they're kind of scaring me."

My Donor: "And I'm a great writer."
Me: "..."
My Head: "Your emails and texts suggest otherwise."

My Donor: "So, what else should I tell you? Oh, yeah! I have a son! He's 10."
Me: "That's right. I remember that from your profile."
My Donor: "He lives with my mom. I was too young and crazy when he was born."
Me: "Do you have a picture?"
My Donor: "Yes, you should see him. He looks exactly like me."
Me: "How cute. He seems very happy."
My Head: "Oh, god, he's fat. My kids are going to be fat."

My Donor: "I was a really funny-looking kid. I had a big head. And then I grew up, and I got skinny and pretty."
Me: "..."
My Head: "You're not that skinny. Or that pretty."

My Donor: "I'm really glad you're pretty. I was hoping the recipient was going to be pretty. I don't know why. I just was."
Me: "..."
My Head: "How I look doesn't matter at all because my genes die with me. Yours, on the other hand, will live on in this arrangement. Lucky me."

My Donor: "From my last cycle, the lady's having twins. I love the idea that there are all these kids from me all over the country because I know I'm a really great person."
Me: "..."
My Head: "Holy shit. I'm breeding a narcissist."

My Donor: "I might get a glass of wine when our food comes. I know they said not to, but I don't think it matters. I drank wine throughout my whole cycle last time, and they still got, like, 26 eggs."
Me: "..."
My Head: "What?
"Also, WHAT?
"Also, they may have retrieved 25 eggs (not 26), but only 18 fertilized, and only 5 made it to transfer. That's the number that really matters. Five.
"Also, who knows how alcohol affects the eggs with all this medication?
"Also, how much have you had to drink during this cycle?
"Also, if you're drinking, what else are you doing that you aren't supposed to?
"Also, do you know this is costing me $40,000 that I don't really have?
"Also, WHAT THE FUCK?!"

~~~

On the bright side, I finally have a distraction from the panic that embryos won't implant because my uterine lining is only 6.3 mm thick when it should be over 7. I'm not even sure if I want them to implant.

I should have chosen another donor.
I should have tried IVF sooner rather than wasting all that time with inseminations.
I should have tried to get pregnant when I was younger.
I should have planned my life better.

Why did I do this donor egg thing again? Maybe being childless wouldn't have been that bad. Better than having overweight, not-too-bright, narcissistic children. Better than raising kids that aren't my own.

And all the while, egg retrieval day is tomorrow.
Ugh.

Positive Thinking

I wish I could say that I'm optimistic about this donor egg cycle, but I just can't let myself go there. My pregnancy test is in 4 weeks, and I've started to prepare for the worst; only a fool would count on a positive.

To be honest, I'm loaded with fear and vulnerability, and I'm doing everything I can to protect myself against rosy thinking. I never let myself fantasize about baby names or and imagine what it'll be like to post a photo of a little one on my Facebook page because things so rarely end up the way you hope. Of course I know that this cycle can work, but so allowing myself get giddy about it is just not something I can do.

My donor's egg retrieval is tentatively scheduled for June 7, which - in IVF terms - is considered Day 14 of a pregnancy. By those same calculations, 13 days before retrieval is Day 1 of a pregnancy, which - incidentally - is today.

Yes, I know it's a twisted logic, and not at all based in reality, but by a certain fantasy yardstick, today I'm one day pregnant.

I realize it's a nutty thing to think, but a small part of me occasionally succumbs to false hope, and I imagine what it would be like to announce it to the world. I know I can hardly anticipate a positive outcome since the odds are not great, and my result can easily fall on the side I don't want.

I guess what I'm saying is that I'm not a huge fan of positive thinking because I just don't see the point; I know too much about all the things that can go wrong at every step of the process, and the reality is that anything can happen.

But try as I might to suppress the optimism, there are brief moments where I can't help but think happy, hopeful, giggly thoughts. A positive is possible, after all, and a positive in 27 days means that I'm one day pregnant today.

Still, it's a crazy mindset, and there's no way I'm going to let myself imagine that!!!

Plagiarizing Frankenstein

I could have written Frankenstein.

If we're talking about the story of someone who is overwhelmed by grief, who can't accept life's fate, who wants so desperately to defy the limitations of our bodies that the only escape is to create a human composite made of other people's body parts, then yes, I could have written Frankenstein.



Like the eponymous Victor Frankenstein, I'm doing everything I can to bring an unnaturally conceived person into this world: a brand new life spliced together from other people's body parts by combining painstakingly selected pieces in order to create my very own monster.

Two centuries ago, this was a horror story. Some argue it was the original tale of science fiction. Today it's science fact.

There are those who don't like science facts, however, and many of them strongly oppose egg donor in vitro. They see the procedure as a severe encroachment on the laws of nature and an ungodly experimentation on human life.

They're not entirely wrong.

I'm aware that donor egg IVF is some freaky shit. I recently got pretty skeeved out myself after reading an article about how donor egg babies are more strongly linked to pre-eclampsia - a condition that was essentially described as the uterus rejecting a foreign body that it doesn't recognize as its own.

I read "foreign body" as "Frankensteinian monster."

All of which brings to mind the last time I read Frankenstein during a college course on The Gothic Imagination where the professor drove home an essential question:

In the book, the monster is actually a loving, emotional, and vulnerable being, whereas Victor himself is an arrogant man who ignores the grotesqueness of his scientific interventions because he's too much of a self-absorbed coward to accept the limitations of the human body's vulnerabilities. If this is the case, then who is the real monster? The creature or Victor?

Or, since we're plagiarizing: my baby or me?

But before we demonize me or Vic too quickly, it bears keeping in mind that most medical procedures were once thought creepy and weird. The first organ transplants were over 100 years ago, and I don't imagine those went over too well. Isn't it possible that donor egg in vitro won't always be met with the same cocked heads and scrunched faces that I get today?

Either way, I'm doing it. My donor's egg retrieval is in 3½ weeks, and my embryo transfer is in four. In 5½ weeks, I'll have my first pregnancy test, and at that point we'll know if there's a little monster in the works.

Copyright laws be damned.

How to be Happily Childfree in 10,000 Easy Steps

Accepting a child-free life is something I've never tried, but I'm pretty sure that's more a consequence of weakness of character rather than determination to battle against fate.

It's possible that I may still have to learn these 10,000 steps to being happily childfree, so I'm comforted to know that when the time comes, I'll have inspiration.

Thank you, LifeWithoutBaby.

Two Weeks' Silent Apostrophe

Watching shitty romantic comedies is my most guilty pleasure.

Actually, that's not true. Watching shitty romantic comedies is a guilty pleasure, but my most guilty pleasure is watching shitty romantic comedies over and over and over again.

Anything with Reese Whitherspoon, Meg Ryan, or Julia Roberts are obvious must-see-four-dozen-timeses, but I'll even watch Kate Hudson or Drew Barrymore vehicles at least 8 or 10 times over. Hell, I've seen Jennifer Aniston's Along Came Polly twice, and that movie is terrible.

It's a disgusting vice, I'll admit, but I do have a small shred of dignity that enables me to draw a line somewhere and keeps me from seeing one particular chick-flick a second time. I'm sure you've heard of it: it's the one where Sandra Bullock is a brilliant but uncouth attorney who works for High Grant's amoral yet lovable billionaire, and because he drives her crazy, she gives him her notice of resignation after which they fall madly in love and live happily ever after. (If I've spoiled the ending for you, I'm sorry. Also you're an idiot.)

I'm hoping you know the movie title so that I don't have to write it because I refuse to write it because it contains a grammatical pet peeve of mine that frustrates me more than almost any other: the absence of an apostrophe.

I will, however, write the title of the movie as it should have been, which is Two Weeks' Apostrophe Notice. The apostrophe is silent.

Similar to Two Weeks' Silent Apostrophe Notice, if there were a documentary film about my day yesterday, the title of that movie would be: Two Weeks' Apostrophe Delay. The apostrophe is, again, silent.

Yup, my donor has to delay the cycle for two weeks because she can't get off from work until June. I'm less than thrilled, as you might imagine, but I'm actually quite fine. I'm not crushed or mad at her. I'm not even remotely bothered by it. It really is totally fine.

I let my fellow PVEDers know about the postponement, and they appropriately booed and hissed and grumbled at the news. They really are a sweet and supportive bunch, and I'm super grateful to have them on my side.

But this isn't a tragedy. It's just two weeks' delay. Things could be far worse. I mean, someone else could have blogged about it, and there'd be apostrophes missing all over the place. How infuriating would that be?

Junkie

The word "junkie" can be applied to a number of things. It can refer to someone who suffers from an addiction, like heroin or needing to have a baby. It can indicate that someone really likes something, like wine or the idea of having a baby. And it can be used to describe someone who uses needles to shoot up drugs, like meth or things that help you have a baby.

Which, since we're on the subject, brings me to this:



My cycle officially begins in 6 days, and this photo includes most everything that I'm going to need in the coming weeks. The only things not included above are my prenatal vitamins, baby aspirin (to increase blood flow), and the birth control pills that I've been taking since February to get my cycle in sync with my donor's.

I also didn't include all the needles I'm going to be using. I have boxes and boxes and boxes of needles. And that's because I'm a junkie.

This addiction metaphor is being thrown out in a blasé manner, but I'm actually kind of serious. Heroin junkies and I have quite a bit in common, and I'm not just talking about the secrets of getting air out of a syringe without losing product, or that we both know the value of breaking off needles into our sharps containers so that they don't get too full too fast.

I'm talking about actual addiction.

I have close friends and family in various Anonymous programs, and I've worked in the field for long enough, so I understand that addiction is as serious as it is complicated. There's the physiological need and the psychological want. There's the social influence of a "normalcy" that isn't normal, and there are the emotional traumas that make us feel inadequate and empty. There's a way that all these components interconnect to make us turn to a particular behavior no matter how much it drains our resources and taxes our relationships because there's a yearning that creates a romantic hologram of such perfection that there's always some justification for "just once more, and that'll be it. I'm quitting. I swear."

I've been around addicts enough to know that these things apply to them, and I've been infertile for long enough to know that these things also apply to me.

So when I say that I'm a junkie, it's as much a joke as it isn't.

That being said, there is one key difference between drug addicts and me: my doctors are encouraging me to keep using. All of them. My therapist, my nurse practitioner, and my fertility specialists (or course) are all telling me that I should keep going along this path for as long as I want.

And so, inspired by their influence, I have to renounce the Serenity Prayer as being completely inapplicable to me. You know, the whole

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Because, in my case, I am not seeking the serenity to accept my infertility, and I'm not seeking the wisdom to know that it can't be changed.

I'm just seeking drugs.

But this egg donation is my last attempt at having a baby, and after this cycle, that'll be it. I'm quitting. I swear.

Let Us Now Praise Famous Eggs

Google "pregnant celebrities over 40," and you get over 20 million page results. Yes, there are a lot of them in Hollywood, but it isn't because of age-defying seaweed wraps or chemical peels. Those have no effect on ovaries.

It's because of IVF procedures and donor eggs.

As I've mentioned before:

• By 35, women have a 10% chance of getting pregnant each month. The miscarriage rate is 25% 
• After 40, 90% of a woman’s eggs are genetically abnormal 
• After 44, women have a less than 1% chance of getting pregnant with their own eggs even if they use IVF.

This means that Hollywood moms are using IVF and egg donors behind closed doctor's curtains, and they're trying to keep it on the down-low in an effort to preserve their youthful image.

Conversely, the purpose of this post is to out them.

~~~

Donor Egg Moms Who Used Surrogates
This group is pretty easy to identify since almost all women who use surrogates also use egg donors. Many women try to suggest that their surrogates are carrying babies fertilized with their own eggs, and this could be true for younger women (as in the case of Dennis Quaid's wife who was 36), but among women over 40, it doesn't really work that way.
* Giuliana Rancic is having a baby via surrogate at 37. (Fingers crossed for a healthy baby due summer 2012.)

Joan Lunden had two sets of twins via surrogate when she was 42 and 44.

Sarah Jessica Parker used a surrogate to conceive her twins at 44.

Angela Bassett had twins via surrogate when she was 47.

Annie Leibowitz had twins via surrogate at 56.

Cheryl Tiegs used a surrogate to deliver twins when she was 53. I love her story best because she told Larry King that they were conceived using her own eggs, which pretty much means she's crazy.

~~~

Donor Egg Moms Who Carried Pregnancies Themselves
This group is tougher to guess at, but when it comes to moms over 44, it's fairly safe to assume they've used donors. For women closer to 40, it's less obvious, although twins are a pretty big clue, especially if their babies follow years of infertility. Anyhow, here's my list:
Nicole Kidman had a baby at 40 and another at 42. A third baby was born a year after that via surrogate. With all her history of infertility and miscarriage during her 30s, I suspect that she used donor eggs for all three.

Patrick Dempsey's wife had twins at 41. Considering the 5 year gap between this pregnancy and their first daughter, I'm going with egg donor.

Mariah Carey delivered twins at 42 after years of struggling with infertility. She credits the miracle pregnancy to acupuncture. I credit it to an egg donor.

Iman had a baby at 44. A successful IVF is possible, but statistically unlikely. I'm going with egg donor.

Jane Seymour delivered twins at 44. Donor.

Marcia Gay Harden had twins at 44. Donor.

Mary Stuart Masterson was pregnant with twins at 44. Egg donor. [She was supposedly due summer 2011, although I haven't seen any reports about a successful delivery, so hopefully things didn't take a bad turn for her.]

Marcia Cross gave birth to twins at 44. She's admitted to going through IVF treatments but not to using donor eggs. She has, however, acknowledged that egg donation exists. Baby steps.

Mimi Rogers had a baby at 45. Egg donor.

Susan Sarandon had babies at 42 and 46. Egg donor. (Although the kid she had at 39 obviously has her genetics.)

Jane Kaczmarek had babies at 42, 44, and 47. Donor, donor, and donor.

Kelly Preston had a baby at 47. Donor.

Holly Hunter and Nancy Grace each had twins at 47. Donors.

Bridget Jones scribe Helen Fielding gave birth at 43 and 48. Donor, obviously.

Geena Davis gave birth to twins at 48. Egg donor fer shur.

Beverly D'Angelo had a baby at 49. That's forty-NINE.

* Elizabeth Edwards had kids when she was 48 and 50.

Annie Leibowitz gave birth when she was 51. Obvee. [As noted above, she subsequently used a surrogate for twins.]

Jennifer Aniston isn't pregnant, but she's 43 and a long-time heavy smoker, so I'm calling it early: egg donor.

~~~

IVF Moms
Then there are the celebrity moms who have done IVF. Again, I'm totally fabricating this list based on assumptions, but twins are a giveaway, and singletons born to moms close to 40 are suspect, too. My guess is that many of these women have also used donors, but I'm less sure of these than I am of the group above.
Rebecca Romijn had twins at 36. It's possible that this was natural, but I was infertile at 35, and we used the same wedding photographer, so I'm going with IVF.

Julia Roberts had twins at 37 and a singleton at 40. Definitely IVF. [More specifically, my guess is that the second pregnancy was a frozen embryo transfer leftover from her first cycle's retrieval.]

Jennifer Lopez had twins at 39. IVF for sure. Egg donor possible.

Lisa Marie Presley gave birth to twins at 40. IVF for sure. Egg donor possible.

Courtney Cox Arquette had a baby at 41 after years of struggling with infertility. Definitely IVF. Probably egg donor.

Julianna Margulies had a baby at 41. IVF is likely, particularly since it was her first child. Possible egg donor.

Diana Krall had twins at 41. IVF for sure. Egg donor possible.

Molly Ringwald had twins at 41. IVF for sure. Egg donor possible.

Celine Dion had six IVF cycles and a miscarriage and then finally gave birth at 42. It's possible that the 7th try was the charm, but an egg donor is more likely.

Angelina Jolie is pregnant with her second set of twins. I realize that she's only 36, but - as my friend A pointed out - the odds of having two sets of twins is pretty low. That combined with the fact that she's crazy makes it clear that she's using IVF. Own egg, though. And Pitt sperm, obviously. I mean, wouldn't you?

~~~

I suppose there should be some moral to this blog post: something about how bad it is that these upper-class, professional female role models are perpetuating the myth that you don't have to start worrying about your biological clock until you're 45 even though the true start-worrying age is 27, and how bad it is that celebrities are setting real-life women up for failure when instead what they could be doing is educating folks that ovaries expire, and that women would be wise to make more informed decisions when it comes to their plans for family-building, and that the only way to do that is to reject the illusion of Hollywood youth, glamor, and invincibility once and for all.

But, whatever.

Right now I just feel like outing them.

~~~

* Update, April 24, 2012: With the announcement of Bill and Giuliana Rancic's surrogate pregnancy, I decided to keep this log updated as pregnancy news emerges. Names preceded by asterisks denote additions made after the initial post.