Diary of an anonymous egg donor
Egg donation made me confront, then experience, the reality of infertility
“Barren” was the word that kept bouncing around in my head. I was stiff as a board on the exam table while the nurse set up the ultrasound with the intimidatingly-long probe dangling from its own little notch on the side of the cart.
My heart pounded as I thought: Barren, barren, barren. I was barren.
On the previous ultrasound, my ovaries looked like a vast, empty wasteland. Or, at least, that’s how I pictured them: Like the Sahara desert.
This ultrasound would reveal the contents of my ovaries, and the implications were huge. Not only would it determine whether I might one day be able to have children, but, much more immediately, whether I would be able to satisfy my end of a pending egg donor agreement between me and an anonymous couple in Texas who had, it sounded like, suffered a cruel number of miscarriages.
We were about to find out whether I would be able to help them, the “Intended Parents,” as the egg donor agency called them, start their family.
It was not the first time I worried about whether my unruly body would let me down, but it was the first time that the stakes were this high. Before deciding to enter the egg donor registry, I had never thought much about my ability to have children, other than a far-off, abstract notion that maybe someday, when and if I found the right person, I might consider it. But I did not think of myself as a “kid” person, and as much as I liked animals, I did not feel very maternal. Like, maybe I was lacking all maternal instincts. I didn’t really know how to hold a human baby, nor was I interested in learning how. If someone were to hand me one, I would worry about dropping it or not knowing how to support its neck.
That was a thing about little babies, right?
I was, at 22, much more interested in my career, finishing my masters degree, writing my thesis, and making money than I was in future hypothetical children. It was not until I was told that I might not have the choice to have my own, seeing as my first ultrasound as an egg donor revealed no viable eggs in my reproductive parts, that a grim view of my future snapped into focus.
As soon as I was told I may not have my fertility, I desperately wanted it.
That’s the thing about women and childbearing; you go through these phases of your tweens when you learn about periods, then as a teenager, worrying about birth control, just assuming, that, when you were ready, your body would be able to do this thing, this enormous, life changing, life-GIVING thing: Create another human.
At least, for me, it was always in my subconscious that I would be capable of having children if I wanted to. I never once considered that I wouldn’t be able to.
Sure, I had heard some women struggle to get pregnant, but it seemed like the “default setting” for my body was that I’d get pregnant as soon as I was ready. Only then, being told that the reality might be otherwise, was alarmingly, suddenly devastating. It occurred to me for the first time — ironic, given how much I wrote and read about evolution and offspring — how ancient and fundamental the desire to have children is to women. How it seemed to me like it’s just part of our programming. I’d only ever studied it in a clinical way, but egg donation made it such an unavoidable part of my personal life that I felt l was suddenly on the edge of an existential crisis. If I couldn’t have children — for myself or in aid of someone else — I was fundamentally flawed.
So: The ultrasound was a big deal. There was nothing I could do about the results; my mysterious inner workings were either going to be cooperative and fertile, or they weren’t, but I desperately wanted to know whether I was going to be able to perform, or if I should sink further into a mire of self-loathing and criticism about my body.
To distract myself, I watched my medical student friend Eric’s face as he sat next to me and tracked the ultrasound reading with complete focus. He had been more than willing to come with me as moral support, for which I was grateful.
His eyes flicked from side to side, following the probe’s movement. Neither he nor the doctor said anything, both of them intent on reading the moving Rorschach of fluid in my torso. I was dying for someone to break the silence and tell me what was going on. It was obvious that there was a lot of critical information happening in there. Every so often, one of them would make a “hmm” sound that made my pulse race. Was it a good “hmm,” or a bad one?
Not that I could make sense of the staticky black and white images, anyway, but I couldn’t bear to look at the screen. I gave up trying to interpret nonverbal noises and studied Eric’s expression, waiting for it to from narrowed-eye focus to something else. Anything else, good or bad: I just wanted to know kind of omen lay in wait inside me. I felt a little like a human eight-ball, waiting for some message to float up suspended in liquid.
And just when I was silently, internally screaming because I could hardly take the suspense for one more second, Eric’s face broke into a smile. He squeezed my hand, one quick, firm squeeze, and his eyes met mine.
Oh, my God.
“There they are,” the doctor said then, confirming my hopes. He motioned to the screen with a finger, gesturing at a cluster of round black shapes on the screen amidst a field of grey. They looked like bubbles or, more specifically, frog spawn? Obviously, this meant much more to him and to Eric than to me, but I assumed — God, I hoped — that they were eggs.
When Eric squeezed my hand again, the lump in my throat melted, and I felt my body sag with relief into the pleather exam table. Eggs. Yes, eggs. Holy shit. I heard him talking to the doctor, but their voices faced to a womp-womp-womp in the background. My ears rang, my heart thumped and I stared up at the ceiling, feeling grateful tears leak down the corners of my eyes and into my ears.
Just that month, I had gone from potential egg donor to potentially barren and back to potential donor and fertile woman. The implications of this, my fertility, which I had never given much though to before stepping foot in the fertility clinic, were enormous.
Not only could I help the Intended Parents have their baby, but, if I wanted to, I could have my own children someday. Suddenly, it was clear to me that that could be something I wanted.
The doctor elevated the head of the chair so I could sit upright. As I sat up, my warm tears traced new tracks toward my chin instead of into my hair. The doctor paused and looked at me with something like concern or surprise. They weren’t happy tears, exactly, but tears of relief, disbelief … I can’t articulate any of that. I just nod until I can eventually choke out:
“I just really wanted to do this.”
I did want to do it. But I had no idea what lay in store for me: Heartbreak. Loss. Profound joy. The choice I made to donate my eggs would nearly cost me everything.
Best of all, I had no idea that, four years later, I would be in a similar chair in a different office in a different state. But much else would be the same: My then-husband, Eric, would hold my hand in much the same way while we looked at our first ultrasound of our future son.
The next ten years of my life were defined by hormones, miscarriage, pregnancy, and pain, but along the way I would discover who I really was. Infertility and egg donation — the opposing sides of the same coin — would open the door to all that and more.
Read more:
On body acceptance → I am a postmenopausal blimp
On aging → A premature crone’s view on wrinkles
On hormones → 4 things I noticed when I started taking testosterone