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Our infertility is largely ‘male factor’ – the sperm are all the wrong shape. After our first ICSI resulted in no embryos from more than 10 healthy eggs we felt we couldn't go through it all again in the almost certain knowledge that it would fail.
Donor Back-up, where half our eggs were fertilized using our sperm and half with donor sperm, gave us the opportunity to give ‘our sperm’ one more go while still holding insurance. In the end (and as we expected) it was 2 eggs fertilized with donor sperm that were transferred, one of which went on to form our baby. However had this cycle not worked, and having seen the dramatic results produced with the donor sperm, we would have gone on to 100% Donor cycles.
Using donor sperm is not something we did lightly, we sought advice both professional and from our immediate family and closest friends, but we went into it confident it was the right thing for us to do. However coping with the implications has involved us making a number of changes.
First of all we have made a language shift:
You will notice I have been talking about ‘our sperm’ and ‘our eggs’, while it may seem false we found it removed any ‘blame’ from the situation. Never once have either of us felt let down by the other or their gametes, this is an issue of joint responsibility; after all we are making ‘our baby’. (I believe it also helped us to act more rationally when we had to choose between one extremely poor quality embryo made with ‘our sperm’ and 4 embryos of the best quality from our donor sperm.) The term ‘real’ is also being used with caution, our baby has a Mummy and a Daddy and we are both very real! But they also have a donor, that is the phrase we will use, simply ‘donor’ and certainly never ‘real father’. To be honest we plan to make very little play of the donor being a man and he certainly wont be a father, in any real sense to our child. Donor conception is not a ‘secret’ but a private matter, if it was a secret that would be something to hide. We are not ashamed by what we did. ‘Private’ also gives our child permission to share that information with people who are close to them, they don't have to hide it or feel ashamed either and it will be up to our child who they tell. (Though I admit we will probably have discreet conversations with a teacher or two to save any blushes in the classroom) I’ve also been making every effort never to say ‘my baby’ but always to use ‘ours’.
We have made a positive decision to keep our child informed about how they were made. This is not the time or place to discuss the semantics behind the rights and wrongs of ‘telling’; it has been incredibly easy to hide the information from almost all of our friends, even those who knew we were having ICSI (and most did) and I can understand why some parents use simple subterfuge to never tell. However the changes we have made help us feel more confident in telling, but the act of deciding to tell has also been helping us to cope. It helps us to feel that this is not some guilty secret we have to hide, we have no fear that the information will leak out and we don’t worry that our child will turn it’s back on us because it will know what happened from the start. Finally telling helps us cope because we hate lies and how would we feel if we could not tell our own child the truth?
With the above in mind we’ve been making a record, a box or a book of memories to give to our child. It has a large selection of material taken from our treatment (appointment cards, pictures of the clinic etc.) but it also has a letter we wrote before embryo transfer, explaining what we were doing and why we were doing it. This article and one or two others will also go in. We want our child to understand that they are very wanted and we think all this will help. I also find it reassuring to read it and remember.
inally the greatest coping mechanism we’ve had has been the love and support of our family and closest friends. They have been incredibly positive over the whole thing, have taken the change in language completely on board and have never raised the issue without a cue from us. Our child will grow up secure in the knowledge that its’ Grandparents, Aunties and Uncles all know about the donor sperm and love it anyway.
Deciding to use donor sperm has not been either simple or easy but I hope it is clear that in the end this has been a very positive choice for us. We have many people to thank, not least of whom is the donor, without their kindness and generosity we would never have achieved our dream of a family.
Our baby is due in June and we look forward to meeting it so much.
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