As mentioned in an earlier article, we had received a flood of requests for our embryos within just a few weeks of listing them with MiraclesWaiting.org. We had specified we would donate only to a lesbian couple since lesbians face discrimination from adoption agencies, fertility clinics and genetic parents.
There was one thing that all of the lesbians contacting us had in common. They all had one child. Their inability to have another child reflected secondary infertility, or infertility of the partner who was parenting but had not yet given birth herself. At least one of the partners in each couple had already carried a child to term. But with only one child, these women felt their families were not yet complete.
Each couple wanted exactly one more child. We have three frozen embryos. Our clinic has the best success rate in the country with frozen embryo transfer. Fully 65% of frozen embryo transfers at our clinic end in pregnancy. Their successful thaw rate per embryos is an impressive 95%.
Chances are excellent that one of our three embryos will develop into a child. It's statistically probable that two of them could become children. And you never know, lightning could strike three times.
But all the women contacting us only want one baby. So if they have a child using one or two of our embryos they will have no use for the remaining embryo(s). Since any unused embryos usually revert back to the donor, we would have to go through the entire donation process all over again with a new family. And potentially have on-going contact with two families instead of one. This did not appeal to us. The fact that these women all wanted only one additional child was not a plus.
One heterosexual couple had written to us saying that she and her husband had five children. They wanted a sixth but their youngest son had autism. Since that condition has now been found to have a strong genetic component, this couple had made the admirable decision not to give birth to another child who might also have this problem. I respected that their family did not seem complete to them, but the fact that they already had five children when couples with none were writing to us affected the direction we took next.
Donating our embryos is the greatest gift we will ever give someone, unless we donate an organ to a person who faces death without it. That gift will be far more meaningful if we help a childless couple start a family versus allowing existing parents to complete their family.
Most women with no children would welcome either one or two children. That means if we found a couple with no children we could make our donation just once. If a childless couple had two children from our embryos they would be happy about it. If these three embryos beat the odds and turned into three babies it might be too many for a couple who already had a child but for a childless couple it could be just the right number.
We resolved to wait for a couple whose diagnosis was primary infertility, not secondary infertility. In other words, we decided to try to donate to a couple who did not already have a child. As additional requests came in from lesbian couples we offered to retain their contact info while explaining our preference to them for a childless couple. And we waited to see if our perfect recipients would come along.
Showing posts with label primary infertility. Show all posts
Showing posts with label primary infertility. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 3, 2007
Monday, January 1, 2007
THE SEARCH GOES ON
After we finished exploring an embryo donation to the first Jewish lesbian couple to contact us we were surprised to receive many more requests from other such couples.
When we listed our embryos for donation we expected it to take months to find even one Jewish lesbian. Within weeks we had heard from eight potential recipients.
We wrote back to one lesbian couple. They had written to say they were Jewish, experiencing infertility and not interested in receiving the embryos for a year or so. We asked them some basic questions: why did they want to wait a year to receive the embryos? What region of the US did they call home? They never wrote back.
Contacting someone asking for their embryos should not be a casual act. All they needed to do was write a one-line email saying they were not ready to receive embryos after all. As it was, their flaking out meant we would never consider them again.
Another couple wrote who were in their late forties/early fifties. Both were also ill. My own parents were in their mid-40's when I was born. As a child I did the math and realized my parents were old enough to be my grandparents. After that I always worried they would die while I was still young. This couple (and several others who contacted us) was even older than my parents had been, and sick. I did not want to give the embryos to a couple which might leave their children orphans before long.
We wrote back to another couple who were in their mid-forties. We learned that they had a lot of "dyke drama" going on over custody of a child one partner had with her ex. It sounded messy.
We also heard from Jewish lesbians who were not currently in a relationship. Being a single parent is extremely hard. We wanted to give our gift to two women, partners who could help each other, not just one.
A single lesbian wrote to us asking for the embryos and addressing just this concern. She said she was "looking for a co-parenting arrangement" with the donors. An open embryo donation can take any shape the parties prefer. But if we wanted to parent our remaining embryos we would give birth to them ourselves! Our family is complete. The whole point of giving away the embryos is to give someone else the chance to parent.
Several other lesbian couples wrote who were not Jewish. One or two of them seemed like good candidates, if only they had been Jewish. We explained to them that we were prioritizing a donation to a Jewish couple but we could keep their information in case we did not find what we were looking for.
One of these non-Jewish lesbians wrote back thanking me but saying she did not want to be picked unless she was the "perfect recipient". Since I did not want to pick a non-Jewish recipient unless I could not find a Jewish family, this woman felt she could not measure up and removed herself from consideration.
I wondered about her idea that there is a "perfect recipient". Most of the lesbian couples who had contacted me had some positive aspect to their families. We considered each request carefully, even if we ultimately rejected those we had received to date. Was there a "perfect recipient" out there? We kept our minds open to all possibilities while we waited to find out.
When we listed our embryos for donation we expected it to take months to find even one Jewish lesbian. Within weeks we had heard from eight potential recipients.
We wrote back to one lesbian couple. They had written to say they were Jewish, experiencing infertility and not interested in receiving the embryos for a year or so. We asked them some basic questions: why did they want to wait a year to receive the embryos? What region of the US did they call home? They never wrote back.
Contacting someone asking for their embryos should not be a casual act. All they needed to do was write a one-line email saying they were not ready to receive embryos after all. As it was, their flaking out meant we would never consider them again.
Another couple wrote who were in their late forties/early fifties. Both were also ill. My own parents were in their mid-40's when I was born. As a child I did the math and realized my parents were old enough to be my grandparents. After that I always worried they would die while I was still young. This couple (and several others who contacted us) was even older than my parents had been, and sick. I did not want to give the embryos to a couple which might leave their children orphans before long.
We wrote back to another couple who were in their mid-forties. We learned that they had a lot of "dyke drama" going on over custody of a child one partner had with her ex. It sounded messy.
We also heard from Jewish lesbians who were not currently in a relationship. Being a single parent is extremely hard. We wanted to give our gift to two women, partners who could help each other, not just one.
A single lesbian wrote to us asking for the embryos and addressing just this concern. She said she was "looking for a co-parenting arrangement" with the donors. An open embryo donation can take any shape the parties prefer. But if we wanted to parent our remaining embryos we would give birth to them ourselves! Our family is complete. The whole point of giving away the embryos is to give someone else the chance to parent.
Several other lesbian couples wrote who were not Jewish. One or two of them seemed like good candidates, if only they had been Jewish. We explained to them that we were prioritizing a donation to a Jewish couple but we could keep their information in case we did not find what we were looking for.
One of these non-Jewish lesbians wrote back thanking me but saying she did not want to be picked unless she was the "perfect recipient". Since I did not want to pick a non-Jewish recipient unless I could not find a Jewish family, this woman felt she could not measure up and removed herself from consideration.
I wondered about her idea that there is a "perfect recipient". Most of the lesbian couples who had contacted me had some positive aspect to their families. We considered each request carefully, even if we ultimately rejected those we had received to date. Was there a "perfect recipient" out there? We kept our minds open to all possibilities while we waited to find out.
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