Can I Have Some of Your Eggs?

Hi everyone! In today's post we are talking about egg donors and all the decisions that go into choosing one. Enjoy!!

Ok, I want you all to imagine for a minute that you can't have a child that is genetically yours. What physical characteristics of yours did you always want for your child? What qualities of yours did you want to be passed down? Now I want you to imagine that there is nothing wrong with you, but your spouse can't have a genetic child. Thinking about your husband or wife, what characteristics and qualities that they possess are important to you? What part of them did you hope to see in your future child/children. If you can choose the person who contributes their genes to your future child, and you can't choose your spouse, who do you choose? How do you choose? What's important when making this decision? Do you choose someone you know or a stranger? These are the types of questions that have been running through our minds. It's alot to think about!

Our first decision was the choice of using an anonymous donor or a known donor. This was a hard decision to make. There are pros and cons to each. The biggest pro of going with someone that we know is that we know that person's history. If it's someone that I am related to then we share genes, which is a very compelling reason to make that choice. The child may actually look like me if we choose a family member and I really liked the thought of that. The biggest con about choosing someone we know is that we know them and so does our family. We needed to think about how often we see that woman? How will she feel about the child? How will we feel about her when she is around the child? When the rest of the family looks at that child will they be thinking he or she looks like the donor. Ultimately we decided to go with an anonymous donor. The more we thought about it, we just were not comfortable using the eggs of someone we know. It's already a very emotional situation and we decided going with an anonymous donor made it a little easier for us. We did have a couple very sweet women offer to donate eggs. And I just want to say to those women that we truly, from the bottom of our hearts, appreciate the offer. It takes such a giving person to offer part of yourself to someone else. I thank God for these people in our lives.

So now onto looking for an anonymous donor. Through research I found an agency in Texas, called The Donor Solution, that I had a really great feeling about. When I emailed the lady that runs it she emailed me back within 15 minutes and sent me the database of donors. Searching through a database of girls, looking for someone to replace my genetic contribution, is a very strange experience.

I like to compare choosing an egg donor to what I imagine online dating would be like. I would like a girl that has dark brown hair, green, maybe hazel eyes, 5'4", loves shopping, reading romance books, long walks on the beach... You get the picture. I would see physical characteristics of someone and say, "Ok, she sounds like what I'm looking for." Then would click on the picture, not like what I saw and say, "Nope, not going with that one. On to the next." This whole process made me feel very strange. I found myself getting very judgemental about the girls I was looking at. I knew in my head that it wasn't right to judge someone based on one picture and some things they wrote on a questionnaire, but this person is important! This decision is important! So I judged. I would see a girl whose physical appearance I was ok with, but then something in her questionnaire would make me rule her out immediately. This went on for a little while until I clicked on a girl that fit all my requirements. I emailed Ryan and told him to check her out. Haha! Pun intended. He said that she reminded him of me. We both believe strongly in first impressions and following our gut. There was just something about her that felt right. I knew she was the one because we were both so excited! We wanted to start it all right away. Of course there are other things that we need to consider before we can start and I will discuss those in a different post.

You know, I can joke and laugh about it now, but it took some time getting to that point. Let's face it, choosing someone else to contribute their genes to your child sucks! We really had to mourn that genetic connection. It was hard and involved alot of crying, but I believe we have come to the point that we are excited about what our future holds.


Wondering what happens next? Stay tuned for my next post!

~Tonya