Getting started

Our decision was :

Indian Donor Egg cycle with Indian Surrogate

It was exciting and very surreal.

We phoned our previous IVF clinic to organise sperm samples to be frozen and shipped to Mumbai. We couldn’t let them know what we were doing as under the current laws they are unable to assist us in any way.

We had two frozen samples (17 straws) shipped via DHL under recommendation from Corion. The process was very simple and took about 2 weeks from the time we froze til the time the straws arrived at the Corion.

In the meantime Dr K had been sending us Donor profiles. Egg donation in India is anonymous and Intended parents are given a very limited amount of information regarding prospective Donors. One A4 page with a small, often blurry picture and the following details:

Initials

Age

Weight

Height

Complexion

Blood Group

Caste

Marital Status

Education level

Occupation

Medical Problems

Surgeries

Allergies

Children

Abortions
Miscarriages

Limited Hormonal Profile.

It sounds like a lot of information, but when faced with choosing the biological mother of your potential children it gives you only a small taste of what you want to know and what you would like to have available to your children when they start needing to know more.

At first it seemed like too big a decision to make. So we based our decision on a couple of things:

Age – the younger the donor the better the egg quality

Height – Indian women are generally very short, so the taller the better!

FSH level – The lower the number the better the egg quality

I’d be lying if I said that we didn’t take looks in to consideration……after all everybody wants the best for their children.

We spent hours mulling over this decision only to have our first pick unavailable for a few months.  We couldn’t wait that long. Our second pick was already chosen for another couple. Our third pick had a family member pass away just before our cycle was about to start so she was no longer available. It looked like we had hit the jackpot with our fourth pick and all we had to do was wait for her to come in to the clinic for a checkup before getting started.

We waited for several weeks and upon contacting Dr K we decided that she probably was not going to go ahead and donate. Dr K had a donor available to start that very day if we were happy to go ahead and use her. Yes yes yes. It was pure luck that she just happened to fit the criteria we had set . I think probably we would have gone ahead regardless.

We were so relieved to be starting.

Our cycle was pretty straight forward, it felt strange that I was starting to feel so much better whilst another lady out there was going through countless prodding and injections to help me. I felt relieved and guilty at the same time. We retrieved a total of 10 eggs. By the following day 7 eggs had fertilized, by the next day we had 5 cleaved embryos. We were looking good for transfer. We were a little disappointed with our quantities after hearing of others achieving better numbers but we also knew that we only needed one good one to achieve a pregnancy. Fingers crossed.

We were advised that Dr K would choose a surrogate for us based on the surrogate with the best looking endometrium on the day of transfer.

The next email we got was to say that 4 Grade A embryos had been transferred to Mrs N and that she would have a blood test in 12 days times.

Surprisingly, time passed quite quickly.

We were expecting an email anytime. It was 2pm and I had just sat down to have some lunch. I had decided that I wouldn’t check the email until Foo got home from work so that we could get the news together. Out of habit I picked up my phone and touched the email icon. Next thing, out of the corner of my eye, the subject heading:

“CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!!!!!”

There was no waiting for Foo now!!! I swear I didn’t even read the rest of the email before jumping around the room, bursting into tears then jumping around the room again, several OMG OMG OMG’s!!!

Mrs N’s HCG value was 131 IU/ml, definitely pregnant!!!