donor egg

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Italy opens up to donor eggs

I popped into a coffee shop a few days ago. Opened up a paper to practice reading in Italian, and suddenly there it is.

Donor eggs now allowed in Italy!

donation options expand

I wasn’t sure. My Italian isn’t good, but then today my landlady mentioned it to me with a “damn! you could have done it here!”

Well yes and no. It might have been nearly free to do it here, but I suspect it will take them awhile to get all systems operational. I know I don’t want to add more waiting and what ifs to my life right now.

Also, I doubt there will be a huge donor pool initially.  This is a country where last week you could only create 3 embryos at a time during IVF and all 3 had to be implanted. I can’t imagine next week dozens of woman are going to be thinking, ah spring, I should see about donating eggs now that it may be legal.

But it is a huge step forward. This is going to help many people.  If the law stays in place long enough to allow that to happen (Italian law is a very fluid thing with a constant churn of law changes).

And like so many other things on my journey thus far, his comes  just a little too late for me, but at least I can smile as I see the door swing open for the people just behind me in line.

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Ah, we are adaptable us human types…

Today I was thinking back to the desperation I felt the first 4-5 weeks here in my new country.   The sobs at night and the quiet tears at work were very real.  I was so alone. I was so afraid that I had deviated from my truth path.  I thought not only was I further from having children, but also from a fulfilling career.

I am happy to report that things are changing.  I bravely hang my washing on the line out 5 story window, cringing with fear the entire time, and smiling (once safely a few feet from the window) at the locals who do it with one hand while talking on the phone with the other — and there are HUGE wind gusts!  I can conjugate some parts of some tense of verbs.   I can order a drink and wander the streets with less fear now.

Everything I do I do  incompetently, but with a new found calm in my utter incompetence!

And I laugh.. oh how I laugh.  One of my flatmates is a truly open and generous spirit.. and he wants to learn English. And he wants a girlfriend.  And this leads to conversations like

  • ‘I want to meet a life girl!’ (girl of my dreams)
  • ‘I am preparing the section for my next strategic move in my mission’ (much of his English is from management tapes)
  • when there is a bad girl (meaning less amazing, not bad or ugly) and a pretty girl, sometimes I speak equally at both as a strategy!

But what these quotes don’t convey is his spirit and openness and kindness.  We laugh and laugh. And then he has me translate Beattle songs.  Last night was ‘bullfrog…. sheep dog.. standing in the rain.” I have no idea how it is possible, but we manage to work these words into sentences every day and laugh hysterically. Please do not be afraid if you board a bus and someone says ‘bullfrog’ and their companion says ‘sheepdog’ and they burst out laughing and then start singing Lady Madonna.  They might be more like you than you think, and not crazy at all.

Please frequently ask me here why I don’t have children.. I mean I’ve been when my husband nearly 13 years, not married all that time, but still.  What am I waiting for they say?  And I am not really about to blurt out ‘an egg donor’ while drinking in front of a several century old cathedral.  Just because there are condom machines on every corner, doesn’t mean I feel comfy chatty about this stuff.  We’ve decided to put the infertility/menopause stuff in the closet here for a bit.  I was so open from the start about my situation that it feels really weird not to talk about it, but I think for now it is the right choice. I figure that once I have the language skills to honestly talk about it in Italian then I’ll decide whether to share it.

I did share with one person though.. and that was enough to relieve the pressure.

So in a week my husband joins me with his new visa.  I feel like a bit of a new women having walked through a really hard month and come out the other side presently surprised by how much I can handle.  When I put on my NZ glasses I can still see how filthy the streets are, how cold people’s faces are, and how much the food is white white white with a bit of color here and there… but when I take them off and try on my new Italian glasses, I see things in a new light.  I don’t love it here yet, but it is pleasant and I am laughing more than I have since the hot flashes started.

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Which clinics to call…

It is time to act. I will be home in about 5 weeks and I really need to be a bit more aggressive about my future.  I need to call some clinics and try to schedule appointments to find out about their donor egg programs. 

Regardless of where I end up living, it is possible to fly stateside and do a cycle there.  I really ought to take advantage of my ‘vacation’ home to do some face to face research while I am there.  It will only help if I end up trying to do a cycle in the States.

So do you have any clinics in the Pacific NW or Chicago or even San Fransisco for that matter that I should consider calling? 

Things that matter to me:

  • success rates
  • ethics
  • willingness to work with known egg donors
  • option of ‘contact’ at 18 with anonamous donors
  • easy to communicate with
  • any thing that makes it a bit more financially viable
  • willingness to work with overseas patients
  • how well they treat a donor (who may well be one of my friends)
  • that if I am not the most aggressive person in the world that my cycle planning will still happen appropriately, I want the option of driving things but not something where if I am not 100% on top of things that it all is likely to fall apart.

I have been very happy with my clinic here.  I know I will blow my top if I have to pay thousands of dollars and fly across the world if I feel like  end up getting significantly worse treatment (which to me means more than just the medical sense of the word) than I got here.   It sucked that the first cycle didn’t work… if I hated the way I was treated on top of that, even with a publicly funded cycle, it would have been even harder. 

I know many of you haven’t done donor eggs, but I think any contact with a clinic gives a person valuable information.  The success rates I can look up.. it is the intangibles that are only known through world of mouth and let me tell you no one here in NZ is looking at flying to America to pay for donor egg cycles in my local  circle of friends!

I have no idea where to even start, so I am starting here.  I hate this type of thing.  I am the type of person who’ll avoid seeing a doctor for years just because I don’t know who to call.  Any help would be so greatly appreciated.  Feel free to email me directly at smiling.scar at gmail or leave a comment.  Anonymous comments most welcome. Are there any clinics you’d recommend (or recommend avoiding) ?