MicroblogMondays: Finally Pregnant

My friend who had 21 blastocysts from her second round of donor egg cycle is finally pregnant.  Eighteen out of the 21 blastocysts are PGS normal.  Eighteen!  What does one do with 18 blastocysts?  Her mother wanted her to transfer a male embryo mainly because she herself didn’t have a son.  Her husband also wants a boy.  My friend does not have much of a preference so she transferred a male embryo.  She is now 8 weeks pregnant.  Her 6 week scan showed a beautiful heart beat.  I am so thrilled for her!  I know that she is still early in her pregnancy but I am so hopeful that everything will go well, and that she will finally hold her baby after being on this journey for 8 years.  She still has a lot to work on in terms of grieving the loss of genetic connection with her child.  We have had numerous conversations about it.  I had been trying to convince her to see a professional to work through her feelings.  At least she is working with one right now.  It has been quite a trigger for me to walk alongside her on this journey, which is kind of unexpected.  I thought I have done grieving not sharing genes with my kids.  I guess these deep seated feelings don’t totally go away.  When she shares with me how she feels, I often tell her that I sometimes still feel something similar.  I will be curious to see how I fare emotionally as I watch my friend go through her pregnancy while processing her feelings.

MicroblogMondays: Friending Donor

About a year ago, my former reproductive endocrinologist Dr. E introduced me and Bob to the parents of one of Bunny and Okra’s genetic half siblings.  We haven’t met them in person but did exchange emails several times and become FB friends with one of the parents.  I was very curious to see what the little sibling looked like and it has been fun to see photos of her.  She is a few months older than our twins.  She and Okra share more of a resemblance than she and Bunny.  Dr. E mentioned that little half sibling’s parents are connected to our mutual donor on FB.  Although our donation was supposed to be anonymous, we do know our donor’s name.  We just haven’t asked to meet up with her in person.  It is partly because of the pandemic but also of our egg donation history with the donor.  I am tremendously grateful for our donor and do not hold any grudges against her.  But it seems to be hard to ignore this piece of history when considering when to meet her.  I wonder if we would ever talk about what happened.  Fast forward to last week.  I messaged Dr. E to ask about something for a friend of mine.  She wrote back and said that she actually wanted to reach out to me.  She invited the parents of Bunny and Okra’s half sibling as well as our mutual donor to dinner at her house the previous week.  They all had a blast and discussed about doing this annually.  Dr. E was wondering if Bob and I would like to be a part of that annual dinner.  We continued chatting, and Dr. E asked if we wanted to connect to our donor on FB, she could make it happen.  I took some time to think about it.  And I thought about how it would be good for Bunny and Okra to know who their donor is, what she looks like, and for us to get information on her family medical history if need be.  After a few days of consideration, I told Dr. E that we would love to become FB friends with our donor.  Dr. E made it happen. She messaged our donor, and that same night, our donor friended me on FB.  I wrote her a message with pictures of the kids.  I haven’t heard back from her but it is a great first step to get to know person who so graciously helped us complete our family.  I showed the kids our donor’s photos.  How did they react?  They were more interested in our donor’s grandpa. Haha.  I will let you know if our donor ever messages me back, and maybe one day we will see her face to face.

MicroblogMondays: Hopeful

I wrote about my friend back in May.  She is my one friend who has been trying for a baby for eight years and is still trying.  She finally decided to pursue egg donation. The eggs from the proven donor that she chose only yielded one blastocyst.  That blastocyst turned out to be unusable.  She was back to square one.  After a lot of consideration, she found another proven donor and started a new cycle in late June.  This is a totally different outcome from the last cycle.  This donor is a super producer as her egg retrieval yielded over 30 eggs of which 20 of them became day 5 blastocysts.  Twenty!  They were all biopsied and sent for testing.  One more day 6 blastocyst joined the group the next day.  My friend will know how many of them are PGS normal very soon.  She is now preparing for a transfer this month.  Yesterday’s fireworks were so loud I was afraid that they would wake my kids up.  I messaged my friend and joked with her saying, “Hopefully next year today you will be cursing these fireworks”.  She laughed asking, “Because they will wake up the baby?”  Exactly.  At the time I message her, she and her husband were driving home from a 4th of July celebration.  I said to her, “Next year you won’t be going anywhere.”  I am hopeful that this will come true for her.

MicroblogMondays: One Last Friend

I have met many friends on my fertility journey.  Almost all of them have had their baby or on their way to having a baby.  Even my friend who has had her embryos for a few years but had a hard time finding a gestational carrier is expecting her first child via surrogacy in October.  And then there is my one dear friend.  I wrote about her when I first met her in December 2014.  She had been banking embryos with her own eggs, one egg at a time.  This process had been going on for years, since 2015.  Her most recent transfer of her day 3 embryos made with her own eggs did not result in pregnancy.  At age 46, after trying to have a baby with her own eggs for the last 7 to 8 years, she finally decided to pursue egg donation.  Knowing that chances of blastocysts and pregnancy are higher with fresh donor cycles than with frozen egg cycles, she chose a three-time proven donor for a fresh donor cycle that would give her the best chance of having enough blastocysts for two children.  I was so excited for her on the day her donor started the cycle.  I thought for sure that she’d be able to have a transfer in a couple of months and she would have a chance to become a mother when she turns 47 early next year.  However, as the cycle proceeded, the news had not been good.  The number of follicles and the E2 number didn’t look too good for a proven donor.  Prior to the start of the cycle, the donor was expected to have about 30 eggs.  As the cycle continued, she was tracking about 20 follicles but her E2 indicated that she might only have 8 to 10 mature eggs.  At one point, my friend was going to cancel the cycle because it didn’t make sense to pay so much money for a fresh donor cycle for 8 to 10 mature eggs.  However, the clinic and the coordinator predicted that the donor would have 18 to 20 eggs and convinced her to continue with the cycle.  She was convinced and the donor proceeded to egg retrieval.  The outcome?  Only 9 mature eggs.  Out of the 9, only four fertilized.  Out of the four, only one became a blastocyst.  At the same time, her friend who also started a donor cycle at the same clinic was a few days ahead of her and got 15 normal blastocysts.  My friend has been so depressed about this whole thing.  It took her a long time to decide to pursue egg donation.  Nobody knows why this cycle didn’t work for this young donor who had great responses multiple times in the past.  It goes to show that even proven donors don’t yield guaranteed results.  It all made it even harder for my friend that this past Mother’s Day she didn’t even know if that one blastocyst from this cycle is normal.  And even if it is normal, if she should transfer it or if she should scrap this all together and find a new donor so that she can have a chance of full genetic siblings for her kids.  I hate it for her that even a supposedly wise choice and easy route is not easy for her, that she has had to go on a roller coaster ride once again, just like how she had been with her own eggs.  I sent her a “thinking of you” e-card on Mother’s day to let her know that I was thinking of her.  I know it is hard for her to see that having a baby is in the cards for her, but like my other friend A told me a long time ago when I was struggling with believing that I would be a mom one day, that “Things don’t change until they change”, I hope that things will change very quickly for her, and that she’ll be holding her baby in her arm some time early next year.

MicroblogMondays: Resemblance

I started telling the kids about our gestational carrier when they were 13 months.  When they were 18 months, I bought a children’s book about donor conception and started reading it to them. I don’t know if they understood what I was saying but I continued reading it to them and telling them that mommy’s eggs were not working well and a nice lady gave us eggs that made them.  Then a few months ago, I purchased another book called “What Makes a Baby”.  This is when we really started talking about the different parts of conception: egg, sperm, and uterus.  It gave me a way to explain things to them without being graphic.  Recently when I read the book to them, I start to feel that they can really grasp the concept.  When asked why we couldn’t use mommy’s eyes, they’d say because mommy’s eggs were broken. When asked why we needed Auntie Annie to carry them, they’d say because mommy’s uterus was sick.  They know about the egg donor as a nice lady.  I think that it is a good time to introduce her to them more solidly by showing them a picture of our donor.  For the life of me, I couldn’t find the our donor’s profile and photos either on my computer, on my iCloud account, or as a hard copy.  I remember that I showed the first page of the profile to my friend Maddie who used to have a blog.  I searched through our chat conversation and found the picture.  The first page of our donor’s profile actually contains four pictures of her.  One of them was a childhood picture.  I would say it was when our donor was about 8 or 9?  She was dressed in soccer gear with a half pony tail on the top of her head.  Once I saw that photo, I exclaimed and had to go show my husband.  He also exclaimed and said, “Wow she looks so much like Bunny!”  That is what I have been saying all along, that our daughter Bunny looks exactly like our donor.  Her facial structure, her eyes, her nose, her chin, the shape of her face, and her dimples.  You put the two pictures side by side, you’d think that they were of the same person, or they were related like sisters.  DNA is an amazing thing.  Bunny looks a lot like my husband but also very much so like our donor.  How is that possible?  On the other hand, my son Okra does not look like anybody to me.  I can’t see my husband or our donor in him at all.  If you put him and me together, people may say that he is definitely my son because he looks more Asian than Bunny.  Honestly, looking at the photos of Bunny and our donor side by side gave me a tinge of sadness because it was a reminder that my daughter will never look like me.  That is what comes with using donor eggs: the reminder of the long and hard journey of having these kids and losing the genetic connections and the ability to brag about the likeness of our kids’ facial feature to me or my parents or my brother.  That sadness was short lived though.  I can’t help but feel tremendously blessed that this generous person gave us the chance to have our own children.  These children are precious and gorgeous and bright and every good thing in between.  So what if Bunny looks exactly like the donor and nothing like me?  I chose this donor so of course the chances of the kids looking like her were high.  I am so glad that our donor’s physical beauty is manifested in Bunny.  How Bunny looks doesn’t diminish my love for her.  I sometimes look at her and her brother and can’t fathom how lucky we are to be called their parents.  Now I just have to find an opportunity to show the kids our donor’s photo and explain further that this was the person who generously donated a part of her to make them possible.  I hope their understanding of this complicated matter continues to deepen and their identity of who they are is secured because they know our undeniable love for them.

MicroblogMondays: What to Say?

One day my sister-in-law came to join me and the kids at the play gym.  At the end while I was putting the kids in the stroller and giving them some snacks, my sister-in-law suddenly said, “I need to apologize for something that I said; I made a mistake on your behalf.”  At that moment, I half-guessed what she meant, and it wasn’t far off from my hunch.  She and my brother had dinner with a mutual friend, and the topic of our twins came up.  This mutual friend asked, “How come the twins looked nothing like Isabelle?”  My sister-in-law wasn’t thinking much and blurted out that it was somebody else’s eggs, or something to that effect.  Our mutual friend thought that it was our gestational carrier’s eggs, but my SIL clarified that it was someone else’s.  Once my SIL said it out loud, she knew that she had made a mistake from seeing the horror on my brother’s face.  She made our mutual friend swear that she won’t tell others, but she didn’t feel good that I didn’t know that this mutual friend knew.  She explained that she was caught off guard at that moment.  When this topic comes up, she usually would say that Bob’s genes are very strong and the kids just look a lot like him.  But this time she just told it without thinking about it.  Afterwards, my brother was more mad at the friend than my sister-in-law because he felt that she shouldn’t have asked, as the question puts people on the spot.  My SIL was horrified that she had told someone without consulting with me first and she was sincerely sorry about it.  I told her that it is okay because this is not some dark secret.  But I have been working on telling the kids about their genetic origins and before they have the cognitive ability, language, and maturity to tell people about it, I do not want those other than our chosen friends and family to know.

How did/do I feel about it?  It has been a few days and I am still processing my feelings.  I am not mad at my SIL at all.  It IS a difficult question to answer and I felt that I should have prepared my loved ones better by giving them an answer to give people who ask.  I am a bit mad at our mutual friend.  What gives her the right to question why my kids don’t look like me?  I mean, plenty of people do not look like their parents.  If their parents did not use a gestational carrier to carry and give birth to them, I doubt that their friends and family would ask why they don’t look like their parents.  The fact that our family building path involved a gestational carrier makes people feel that they can question the origin of my kids’ genetics.  Just because I didn’t get to carry my babies, the chances of encountering difficult to answer questions are so much higher.  At the same time, I did use donor eggs to create my family.  And again, this is not some dark secret, so I feel that I *should* be okay with these questions because I should own up to my decision proudly.  I don’t know.  Like I said, I am still processing my feelings.  One thing I am sure is that my SIL probably won’t blurt out donor eggs easily in the future. And, I should think about how to prepare my family better in the future because I am sure this question is going to come up again.

MicroblogMondays: My Cousin is a Mom

Back in October last year I wrote about my cousin Jeannie who struggled with diminished ovarian reserve and finally got pregnant via egg donation.  She was due mid-June.  Throughout her pregnancy I had kept in close contact with her, and had been so happy for her that her pregnancy was uneventful.  Although her pregnancy was healthy, she was anxious about it.  I can’t blame her because I had the same thoughts.  Everyday when she got up in the morning she’d wait for the baby to move before she could relax a little bit.  I think many of us have been so traumatized by infertility that stillbirth is a big fear.  It is no different to my cousin.  And I had the same fear when I was waiting for my kids’ birth.  Jeannie’s due date came and went, and baby did not show any signs of coming out.  Jeannie is a small business owner and started her maternity leave two weeks prior to her due date.  I told her to enjoy this down time a bit before the craziness of a newborn began.  She said that she was so uncomfortable that it was hard to enjoy her time.  She just felt like she was wasting her maternity leave.  Anyhow, a week after her due date was when her doctor started induction because baby was just not coming on his own.  Induction started on a Monday late afternoon, and she was only 1cm dilated 24 hours later.  Throughout this time, she was still very anxious about losing the baby at the last moment, because, you know, we as infertiles just have those crazy/not so crazy thoughts.  Being induced for 48 hours didn’t bring her closer to her baby so a C-section was done.  My cousin finally became a mother!  I am so happy for her but at the same time have been feeling bad for her for all that she has had to endure with this birth.  It has been quite rough for her physically and emotionally.  She is entirely swollen and is puffy everywhere.  She could not bend her legs.  The crazy hormones make her cry all the time.  Basically she is a mess.  But she will eventually come out of it and did I mention that she has a baby now???  And he is so precious and perfect, and is so healthy and doing so well.  It’s hard for me to believe that after all these years of wanting a baby and trying for a baby, she is finally at this point.  She is holding her baby.  I can’t wait to see how motherhood unfolds for her.  During her pregnancy, Jeannie mentioned to me how she was envious of me having my mom here with me and so wished that her mom would still be alive and have the joy of being a grandmother.  I feel for her and it makes me cherish my mom even more.

MicroblogMondays: So Lucky

I continue to read my old blog posts.

Now that Bob and I have our boy/girl twins, it has been quite surreal to read the posts I had written about the possibility of pursuing egg donation.  Even when we were banking day two embryos with my own eggs, we were already mentally, emotionally, and financially preparing for future potential donor egg cycles.   There were quite a few posts back then about my thoughts and feelings regarding egg donation.  This particular post stands out to me.  My friend who struggled to get pregnant had just given birth to a baby boy.  I signed up to deliver a meal to her.  When I arrived, I was overwhelmed by the sight of everything new mom and newborn.  This was what I wrote:

“I commented on the abundance of his dark hair.  Anna exclaimed at her surprise of his dark hair because both she and her husband were born bald and later on grew blonde hair.  I couldn’t help but wonder if I would feel the loss of the privilege of making such a comment in the future if my children are conceived with donor gametes.  Maybe by then I’ll just feel so lucky to have a baby that it doesn’t matter anymore.”

Now that I am mom to my babies who were conceived with donor gametes, I don’t have to wonder anymore.  I can tell you exactly how I feel.  There is still a sense of loss of not being able to make such a comment about my own children’s hair, or skin color, or nose, or other physical parts of them.  During the weekdays when I am by myself with the kids out and about, I get asked many times by strangers where my boy’s curly hair comes from.  That whole head of curly hair definitely comes from my husband, which is usually how I answer it, but it does serve as a reminder that the kids and I are not biologically related.  Is this sense of loss constant?  Not at all.  I’d say it is not a part of my everyday life.  I love them so much and only want them and not other kids, so this sense of loss comes occasionally and goes away quickly.  Most of the time the last statement of that blog post was true.  I feel so so so lucky to have (these) bab(ies) that it doesn’t matter anymore.  The fact that I can come back here in this space 4.5 years later to address a question I had prior to becoming mom of kids made with donor eggs?  Now THAT is a privilege that I won’t/don’t take it lightly.

(By the way, yesterday, June 2nd, was my 6th blogoversary, and this is my 520th post.  I sure hope to be able to keep this blog up for many years to come.  Thanks for stopping by!)

MicroblogMondays: No Such Thing as Anonymity

I was listening to a podcast the other day about DNA testing and how people are excited about connecting to their relatives through a DNA database.  I paid particular attention at one point when egg and sperm donors were mentioned.  With this technology, egg and sperm donors who wish to keep themselves anonymous will not be able to keep their identity under wraps.   That means people like my children who have been conceived with the help of donor eggs have the means to find the people to whom they are genetically linked.  They will be able to see who contributed to 50% of their DNA and those that share their DNA. I have never wanted to keep my children’s conception story a secret.  I want them to have a complete picture of who they are and not to have to find out about the donor conception part of their life through a test or anyone other than me.  I recently purchased a book called “You Were Meant To Be” and started to read it to the kids.  Bunny is a book worm and frequently requests to read this book.  She calls this book “Be”.  She fills in the blank for certain words of the story.  Okra likes the book too but he is more into trucks and trains.  I explain to them that a piece of me didn’t work so I needed help from our donor.  The book itself is simple enough to explain a very complex situation to toddlers who are not even two years old.  This is my first step to make this part of their life a normal part so it will not be a surprise in the future.  I do not want them to be like those who are tremendously hurt because they find out about their biological origin well into their teenage years or adulthood.  If my kids want to find out who the donor is through a DNA database, I will have no problem with that.  They have the right and the freedom to explore who they are.  When we first pursued egg donation, our donor did say she was open to meeting with us.  So maybe this will come true and the kids can have a even more complete picture of who they are.  Then we will connect with our donor so they don’t even have to find her through a database.  We will see how this all will unfold.

MicroblogMondays: Imposter

I have been taking an online course aiming at helping women come up with the best business idea for their season of life.  (Eventually I will start bringing in an income again but I will wait to write about it at the appropriate time.)  One of the things that the instructor talks about is imposter syndrome, or a feeling of inadequacy or incompetence, or an utter failure or a fraud for a person’s own ability or accomplishment.  Many people don’t feel that they can or will be able to start a small business to bring in money, or doubt that they are good enough for others to use their service or buy their products.  I don’t actually feel like that with the business idea that I came up with because it is well within my professional field.  But this word “imposter” came to my mind the other day.  I have been attending a weekly bible study with my kids.  I get my me time during discussion with my group of ladies and get fed spiritually with the truths that a teaching leader imparts to us.  The kids get their precious time to learn about God, be loved on by their teachers, and play with their friends.  Last week prior to the lecture, a video was played to us to show the importance of the children’s program to the existence of the adult bible study class.  Afterwards, the lecturer asked all the mothers with little kids in the program to stand up so that the crowd could show their appreciation for their dedication in bringing the kids.  I hesitated for a few seconds before I slowly rose from my seat.  I felt a tiny bit uneasy and didn’t look back at the rest of the people in the sanctuary since I sat quite close to the stage.  The lecture started after that and I went on with my day.  However, during the quiet evening hours when I reflected back various moments of the day, I thought about the moment when I stood up as a mom to my kids and I started analyzing my emotions.  Why did I hesitate and why did I feel uneasy when the leader asked the moms to stand up?  Maybe sometimes I still feel like an imposter.  Not all the time, but sometimes.  I know that my kids are mine and I am their mother.  I love them to the moon and back, and will do anything for them.  BUT, the fact that I didn’t get to carry them or share my genes with them still haunts me.  Not all the time, but it creeps up at moments like this.  At times I do still feel insecure about it and wonder how the kids would feel about their unique history when they are teenagers or adults.  I wonder if my love for them is enough for them to feel secure about their special situation being children born out of the tremendous love I and their dad have for them.  Deep down, at rare moments, I do feel like a fraud, as if someday someone would come and take them away from me because I am not their real mother.  This is all silly talk when I am sane and busy with a beautiful life full of chaos of raising twins, but at times this silly talk is not too silly and consumes me and makes my heart ache for the journey that I had to take in order to become my babies’ mama.  Fortunately, I feel secure as their mother 99% of the time, but when that rare moment comes at an unexpected time, I am almost surprised at having these feelings.  I guess these emotions will probably never completely go away.