How to Accept The Egg Donor Option and Even Be Happy About It

 Some women who want to get pregnant, especially those over 40, receive the news that they didn’t want to hear: “Your egg quality is very poor; donor eggs are your only hope for a baby.” You’re shocked, saddened, confused, and even a little insulted. You had dreamed of a baby who was a perfect blend of you and your husband or partner, maybe with your big brown eyes, his curly hair, and your family’s musical talent. You’ll still do anything to get pregnant, but it wasn’t supposed to be this way. Fortunately, you can come to see egg donation not as a disappointing fallback but as a choice you feel truly good about.

You are giving your baby a truly precious gift: an excellent genetic makeup.

As loving and responsible parents, we want the best for our children, even if it requires that we give up something–make a sacrifice. In giving up your own genetics, you give your baby something better: a greatly decreased risk of chromosomal disorders such as Downs syndrome. And donated eggs provide other genetic advantages, too: the young women accepted as donors by donor egg agencies and IVF clinics have excellent genetic histories, better than that of the average person. Most likely, better than your own.

Your baby will be every bit as unique as if he or she were your genetic child.

Your little one won’t be a “designer baby” or a “test-tube baby”; he or she will be created out of the love between you and your husband or partner, regardless of genetics. And speaking of genetics, they’re notoriously unpredictable anyway. You probably know people who are very unlike one or both of their parents or look very different despite a genetic connection. Perhaps you know an artist whose parents can’t even draw stick figures, a shy friend with social-butterfly kids, a neighbor with a great tan whose daughter has to pile on the sunscreen. Regardless of whether your baby has a genetic connection with you or not, he or she will have a very special and individual set of characteristics that will yield plenty of surprises and joys as the years go on.

You’ll get excited over the wonderful young women available as egg donors.

Most women do not start looking at donor profiles until they are actually ready to start the preliminaries for an IVF procedure. If you are facing the egg donation option but feel sadness about it, try jumping the gun and learning about egg donors currently available. Look at donor profiles available at egg donor agencies that post profiles online (or online with a free user account), even if you don’t plan to use a particular agency or any agency at all. You’ll learn what types of information you are typically given about an egg donor and can start to decide what characteristics are the most important to you.   Most likely, you will start warming to the choice when you see the wide selection of healthy, intelligent, and beautiful donors that you can choose from.

You will feel just as strong a connection with your child as you would if he or she had developed from your own egg.

Some people assume there’s some kind of metaphysical connection between biological family members that doesn’t occur between unrelated people. But think about your own parents, and your other blood relatives. Even if you have a good relationship with them, you are aware that they are individuals who are separate from you, with some things in common but many differences. You probably feel a stronger connection to your husband or partner, or other people who are not biologically related to you.

In addition, as humans, we are “programmed” to bond with babies and children that need us, even if they are not biologically related to us. This probably comes from our prehistoric days in which postpartum death was common and many young infants were left motherless. To ensure that our species kept its numbers up, we developed the instinct to raise these orphaned babies as if they were our own. And to feel just as if they were our own as well.

You are choosing a winning strategy.

Many women, when trying to conceive, find company and support on online infertility forums. If you are currently on a forum for women trying to conceive after age 40, you surely value the camaraderie and enjoy celebrating other members’ successes. But the number of disappointments can be discouraging. Take a look, instead, at forums for women undergoing donor egg IVF treatment. These forums are happy places with very high success rates. So often, members are busy high-fiving someone’s positive home pregnancy test, steadily doubling HcG levels, or an ultrasound that shows a healthy heartbeat.

And finally…

When plans change, your feelings need time to catch up. Don’t expect yourself to absorb it all right away and to be ready to jump forward immediately. But remember that numerous women have experienced just what you’re going through now. And many of those women are now mothers through egg donation and couldn’t be happier. One of those moms, who started out very unsure if she could accept the donor egg option, said after the birth of her son, “if someone could wave a magic wand and give me my own healthy eggs, you know what I’d say? ‘You keep those silly things; I just want a baby as wonderful as my little Andrew!’”