Egg Donation

Today has been one of those days! You know when nothing is going how you wanted and every little thing is wrong and makes it even worse. Bingo, that is today. But on the bright side, I am on my merry way to Lexington tonight and hopefully those little tiny newborns will make me smile! I love the hospital!


Since today has been so rotten, I figured I would write about something that I am very passionate about-egg donation! I have had a LOT of people ask me about the process recently so I figured that I would explain it and make it a little more clear for everyone. It's a little bit TMI for some, but it is interesting.


I am an egg donor. An egg donor is a woman who gives her eggs to a couple or individual who cannot achieve pregnancy with their own eggs. It has been a long process-I began the process in about September, so it has been about 7 months and I am finally "official and waiting". This is how it works. I had an initial visit with Southeastern Fertility where they explain everything to you-I'm not going to lie it would scare most people off, but it sounded cool to me so I decided to proceed. I had to fill out a loooong questionnaire that took about 2 hours. These questions create a profile of you in their database. You include baby and young pictures of you. I had a doctors appointment where they did a vaginal ultrasound of my ovaries and the follicles. 


Every month, your body (if you're a girl!) produces 6-20 follicles and your body chooses one to become the egg. The rest die off and are flushed out. As you know, each woman is born with a certain amount of eggs, and when they're gone, they're gone. A common misconception is that they take eggs away from you-wrong! They never harvest eggs that you could use, instead the medicine you take turns all of the follicles into eggs instead of them dying off. So really, you are using what your body would consider waste to create usable eggs for someone! 
So, once they look at your ovaries and make sure you are good physically, they move on to mental and genetic evaluation. I went to see a psychotherapist (the appointment took a month to get!)  to make sure I understood the process, and also a genetic counselor to look at my family history. 


Finally, after you're cleared you play the waiting game.My profile is now active, so when potential parents are searching the database (it is private, only parents can see it) they can find me and hopefully pick me! My location, name, age, etc are not visible to them. The potential parents are from all over the world. The woman told me she has seen matches come from all of the continents! 


Once I am picked by a couple, I will begin taking birth control to regulate my cycle with the woman's. I will do one week of injectable medication in my leg once a day to stop my own body from ovulating normally. The second week I will inject myself with another medication that makes my follicles turn into eggs. When they are nice and ripe, I could potentially have 6 fertile eggs waiting. (Sextuplets..yikes!) The night before retrieval, I take one final medication to get them ready to 'harvest.' I will have to see my Fertility Doctor just about every morning for a week to check my hormone levels.


The day they are ready, I will travel to Charleston for retrieval. They put me to sleep, take a loooong needle and insert it vaginally. They suck the little guys out and wake me up! The process takes about 45 minutes and only puts you out for a day or so. It is painful afterwards and I will be sore for a few weeks. After one cycle, my body should go back to normal. The entire process if confidential unless myself and the family decide differently. They will never be in the same facility as me, they will never see me, know my name or my location. I won't know theirs either. In fact, they don't even tell me how many eggs matured, whether the in-vitro fertilization worked for the other couple or if she even became pregnant. 
I think it is so cool that measly little me can give a couple the best gift that they will ever receive. I also think that God puts it on certain people's hearts to do this type of thing. Some people are really freaked out by the whole thing, and I happen to think it is beautiful and so perfect. I am so excited to be a part of it.


So, now that I have completely wigged you out, feel free to ask me any questions you have about it! I am not so patiently waiting to be matched with someone so that I can finish this journey!