Talking to your partner about becoming a donor

Many donors talk things through with their friends and family before they donate. It’s an important and very personal decision which is made easier with the love and support of a partner.

But sometimes partners have reservations, don’t understand why someone might want to become a donor or are worried about the implications. Some people feel that their partner’s eggs or sperm are special and don’t like the idea of them being used to create another family. These initial thoughts and worries are a normal reaction and with time and some discussion, you can work together to make the best choice for you as a couple and your family.

Here’s one woman’s story about how she came to terms with her husband’s desire to become a sperm donor.

Making a difference

By Richard Woolven, Trustee

Like a lot of people the thing I want most in life is to make a difference. A difference to the life of my children, my wife, my extended family and as many others as I can. I’m happy to admit that a lot of it is selfish. I love the feeling that I get from surprising a stranger with an offer of assistance, be it stopping if I see someone broken down at the side of the road, stopping to let a person cross the road or giving directions to someone that is clearly lost but is too afraid to ask.

So getting on the train last week to attend one of our twice-yearly trustee meetings was as pleasurable as it always is. I am not an adventurous person, if anything I’m a very very mild agoraphobic, so getting on a train to London always feels slightly intrepid to me. And the fact that I’m doing it to help others have the family that I already have and help pay forward the kindness of those that helped me is the best buzz in the world.

The meeting was the best I’ve yet attended by some considerable margin. With a successful egg donation campaign under our belt and a number of new ideas in the pipeline the feeling that we, as a group, are genuinely changing attitudes is phenomenally exciting.

It might only be twice a year but it makes a difference to my life and I hope it makes a difference for a lot of others too.

Diary of a Sperm Donor Part 4

It’s been months, but it’s over.

Last week I was tested again and made my final donation, which felt kinda odd like I should be feeling more than I was. The clinic were lovely and one of the doctors spoke to me and said thankyou very much, and gave me a bottle of champagne to make up for not being able to pay… which I’ve not opened yet. It can wait until I hear of any success.

Talking about it now feels kinda empty. It was months and months! My count, sadly, was somewhat variable so it was all rather irregular and while most of it was spent on twice a week I finished on once a week and there was even a few weeks where we stopped as my count crashed – apparently this is quite normal, just a virus or summat I had months ago messing things up. It recovered soon after but it meant it took a bit longer and in the end I didn’t give a full set of samples, which I feel odd about too.

It’s a very strange process. I’ve been quietly jealous reading the Egg Donor Diary and wishing it had been a short process like that, I’d happily take drugs to make my count go sky high so it only needed to be a few samples! I will remember it as a very odd patch in my life and I now know more about bits of myself and the way my bits work than I ever really wanted to.

While I know I’ve done a good thing really all the tests and routine were a hassle, and I found myself mentally avoiding the topic for quite some time but you get entirely used to it and it just becomes part of your life. But it is a relief when you’re back permanently off the clock. Still I find myself tempted to try and finish the set in a year or two, feels like a job not quite finished and it’s no big hassle – just a potentially long one.

But for now it’s over. Life returns somewhat to normal but as I won’t be ‘available’ as a donor until early next year any news or cause for celebration seems a long way off.

Pen portraits

As a donor, when you sign the consent form to say your donation can be used, there’s also a section where you can write a pen portrait of yourself. This is something that the donor-conceived person can read, as an adult, if they’re interested in finding out more about you.

Donors often find this hard to write – why are donor-conceived people interested in this information and what do they want to know?

Donor-conceived people have a range of reasons for wanting to know about you, their donor. Some have no interest at all, others are curious about why their donor donated, others want to know where their physical and emotional characteristics might come from. For some it is crucial to their own sense of who they are.

The questions donor-conceived people tend to ask are about what their donor is like as a person – they have all the factual details such as hair colour and height from other parts of the consent form.

When asked, donor-conceived people said they would like to know what sort of a person you are – what you were good at (or bad at!) at school, whether you’re religious or not, what your hobbies and interests are, whether you are sporty, your temperament, eating habits and preferences, and anything else that’s important to you. One said that they were keen to find out:

‘The kind of person my donor is; how he relates to others; and to see something he’s written, which is more personal.’

Many donor-conceived people would like to know whether their donor has a family and children of their own, so if they have any half brothers or sisters around their own age.

Although it can be hard to find the words to describe yourself to an adult person you may never meet, most donor-conceived people care very much about the effort their donor puts in to writing a pen portrait.

If you didn’t write a pen portrait when you donated, you can update your details on the HFEA Register if you wish. Contact the HFEA to find out more.

Wonderful women

By Laura Witjens, Chair

done

We often get patients wondering why people would donate. Until they’re faced with their infertility it is a question they never have to ask themselves. But once you start this process and feel you are at the mercy of some kind stranger the question “WHY would they do it?” does come up. I’ve written about this in this post as well.

Donors come in all shapes and sizes, from all different backgrounds. I wish I could say from all ethnic backgrounds as well but unfortunately that is not true. South Asian donors we need you!!

What donors do have in common is a desire to help. Men and women who want to make a difference. It can be as simple as that.

Birmingham Women’s Hospital had an Egg Donor Launch recently, check here for more detail, and two of their donors were interviewed for BBC Midlands.

View this wonderful clip and be inspired by these open positive NORMAL women. Don’t just believe what I write, listen to what they say.

They are amazing don’t you think?

And does it hurt?

By Kriss Fearon, Trustee

This is something egg donors are always keen to know about. Sometimes people gloss over this, thinking if they go into it too much it will put women off. But I think it’s easier when you know exactly what’s involved, so you can decide how it can work for you.

If you’ve read about becoming a donor you’ll know the treatment involves using one set of medication to control your menstrual cycle (this can be injections or a nasal spray), another to encourage your eggs to grow (this is injections), and then having your eggs collected at the end.

Like a lot of things which seem scary and a bit weird at first, when you actually start doing it, it’s fine. I had visions of having do do injections in a vein like heroin addicts, but there is a little needle, or an injection pen, which goes into your belly or hip. My morning routine became get up, get dressed, have breakfast (no injections on an empty stomach thank you!), do the injection, brush teeth, leave for work. It added an extra two minutes to my day and once it was done I forgot about it. It wasn’t completely painless, but it was more of an inconvenience than anything else.

The collection procedure is an operation. The eggs are collected by suction with a needle put through your cervix and guided by an ultrasound camera. You’ll get an anaesthetic before it all starts so you shouldn’t feel anything, there is no cutting, no need for stitches, and no scar afterwards. It helps a lot that you’ll be going to a specialist fertility unit so you’ll already know the doctors and nurses who’ll be working with you on the day. You’ll also know from your scans how many follicles they’ll be collecting from and what kind of result to expect. It lasts about 20 minutes and it should take an hour or two to recover. Even with a twilight anaesthetic you’ll probably only have a hazy memory of what happened.

Women who’ve given birth tell me this is ‘a breeze by comparison’ but even so you’re entitled to feel nervous! Nobody likes internal exams and this is several levels above that. You may well feel a bit bruised inside afterwards – as if you’ve done a heavy aerobics session with too many sit-ups. So you’ll need to take it easy, put your feet up for a day or two and avoid any heavy lifting.

You might feel euphoric afterwards. There’s a huge sense of satisfaction that comes with deciding to become a donor and then actually following it through to the end. Once it’s over, and you know you’ve done your bit, as much as you can to help your couple get pregnant, it’s a pretty amazing feeling. When I look back at each of the donations what I remember most is not the inconvenience, the literal pain in the bum of the injections or the collection, it’s that feeling. Knowing for sure that I did something completely unique and irreplaceable for someone else was a gift to myself as well as to them, and it’s something I will never regret.

Help Romeo and Juliet, it’s a love story

By Jackie, egg donor

I am not an amazing person but I have done something very special for a couple who needed an egg donor.

I had my children in my twenties and getting pregnant was almost too easy! I had postnatal depression and bonding wasn’t instant but I’ve always known my life wouldn’t be complete without my two kids. As a child I watched two of my mother’s best friends struggling to have a family of their own.

A recipient’s tale

By Laura Hughes, Trustee

My husband and I had tried everything possible to have a baby together before we finally moved onto sperm donor treatment. At the time this felt very second best. I couldn’t have my husband’s baby. It was the thing I wanted more than anything in the world, and I had to settle for the baby of a donor. There was huge grief about not having my husband’s child.

But from the very minute those children arrived, we looked at them and we still look at them today – at our treasured, bright, wonderful, easy little girl and our completely mad, sweet, funny and beloved little boy – and we can’t see an atom of them which is second best.

We can’t look at them and see second best because they’re not. They are one hundred percent the best thing that could ever have happened to us. And because of that we no longer feel that the donation was second best. We feel it was the perfect thing to do, as we have the perfect children. Though I’m not sure my son’s teacher thinks that. The last note home said “Please could you encourage him to sing hymns in assembly and not Bohemian Rhapsody” But to us he is the perfect son and she is the perfect daughter.

So to all donors we give our thanks.

Donor motivation

By Laura Witjens, Chair

The other day I was mailing back and forward with a female patient looking for an egg donor. Normally I try not to get to involved with the daily running of the office. Not only have I got plenty of other donation issues to deal with, more importantly, Pip is so much better at all this one-to-one work.

Anyway, the reason I became involved was because of this patient’s really unhelpful belief about donation. She desperately needed an egg donor – her words not mine – but deep down couldn’t understand why women would do it. Even more so, it became clear during our communication that she actually thought that egg donors were a bit strange and possibly even needy.

Needless to say, that niggled or to be more honest, that got my back up big time. For a start it is vital to start off any journey with the belief that you’re doing the right thing and that it will end up positively. Or as Henry Ford said “If you think you can or if you think you can’t, you are right”. So true that is, isn’t it?

By sending her our own information about becoming an egg donor she could read the testimonials of women who have donated before. Women, like 2 of the trustees and myself, who donated ‘just to help’. No neediness, no conditions, no hidden dramas. Have eggs, will share. Yes, we understand the possible challenges before, during and after the process but also understand the immense pain of being childless. But we are women believing that this real pain is more important than our own possible challenges. And we don’t need to know the person to understand that pain.

I don’t think for a second that makes egg donors needy. I think that makes them exceptional human beings and I am damn proud to be one of them.

She got the point.

Why I got involved with the National Gamete Donation Trust

By trustee, Mark Jackson

Hi, my name is Mark and I am a sperm donor. I am 41 years old and have a partner who has an eleven year old from a previous relationship and we have a nine month old son together. We will be trying for another child soon, so keep your fingers crossed

I donated at a clinic in 2005 and am planning to go back and donate again in the near future to replenish stocks as it were.

At first I was really embarrassed about donating and did not want anyone to know. But I was asked to talk at the NGDT conference in 2005 and since then I have not been worried about talking about my experiences.

I can honestly say that becoming a donor has changed my life! I am a more complete and confident person than I was before I became a donor. So I would say to anyone, do something amazing, and go and see if you can become a donor too!

Read more about Mark’s donations in The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/sep/05/sperm-donor