When we started down the IVF road, we had no idea how difficult and confusing the whole experience was going to be and, if we didn’t, we wouldn’t be in the happy position we are in now, me, my husband and our new little one.
We were able to build up a network of friends and experts to support and to help us make sense of everything that was going on. So, this is a big thank you to all our new eggdonationfriends.com buddies who helped us through it all and is a way of paying it forward. You are not alone.
We had always wanted kids, it was what attracted me to my husband, Jack, in first place. He also thought that house was a home only when there was a family living there. When we got married we were quite young, I was in my early 20s and money was tight, but we felt we had time to waste. We worked hard to save money for a house and were both working every hour God sent. We built our careers and became really quite comfortable. Jack in engineering, as a site manager, and me as a logistics co-ordinator for a shipping firm. It was always in the back of our minds that something was missing.
When we were in our mid-30s we started our own business, using both our skill sets, importing high-end window frames for the domestic market from Scandinavia, and couldn’t take time away. I kept working in my old job, and worked part time in the business in what little spare time I had. I must say that I felt cheated a lot of the time, I had wanted a family and although I loved my job I felt I lacked something. We spoke about it often, but it was never the right time. There were a lot of people who were relying on us to make the business a success. I wouldn’t have told anyone at the time but I had a feeling that apart from any success we had in our work, we weren’t living up to our potential in life. We both had so much to give.
I was 40 when I was made redundant. I wasn’t keen to get back on the career ladder, because for me it felt like a last chance. We decided that it was now or never, I would stay at home, continue part time at the company and we would start a family.
We tried for about a year before going for help. It was the saddest day of my life, I felt I had let Jack down. I was given all the check ups and after an ultrasound I we were told that my follicle count was low, so I was proscribed a series of injection pens of FSH and after 6 cycles and more tests we were referred to an IVF specialist who spoke to us about egg donation. We both cried for a month when we heard this. We had left it too late and we weren’t going to have “our” baby, it was going to be half somebody else’s.
IVF and donor eggs in Czech Republic
Because of the waiting lists on the NHS, around 14 months, we decided to go private. We had savings and could just about afford it. I joined a few forums online, including eggdonationfriends.com, with the idea of getting support from other couples. We filled in the forms and according to our needs the consultants suggested a clinic in the Czech Republic, just outside of Prague. We were both very shocked. We hadn’t really considered travelling for treatment, but this place seemed perfect. Of course we were interested in keeping the price low, but we were also interested in the efficiency and reliability of the clinic and after much debate and checking other people’s experiences of IVF in this clinic and in the Czech Republic in general, we booked our treatment.
Egg Donation Program
When we arrived in the Czech Republic for our initial consultation we were told by the consultant that it would be advisable to consider egg donation program because of my age and the problems we had been having conceiving. Although I know that this might be the case, I had hoped that we would be able to have a baby that was ours and ours alone. I started to cry and told the doctor that I wanted to have my own baby with my own eggs because egg donation felt like “second best”. So they suggested using a combination of my own eggs and donor eggs. This felt right because we had a bit more control over the process than we had before, and the feeling that there was a good chance that the baby would be genetically all ours put both our minds at rest.
They gave us a proscription for hormonal stimulation injections and we came home with an appointment booked for a month’s time. When we returned they took 2 oocytes from me under general anaesthetic and 6 oocytes from a donor. The result was 4 healthy embryos and after 5 days two were implanted and two were frozen.
There were checkups and again at 6 and 12 weeks and it was confirmed. I was pregnant. The clinic gave us a follow-up plan, which included a list of all of the tests and checkups we should have. All of my scans showed a healthy baby and our son was born at the beginning of 2016.
I know how lucky we were and that our treatment went without a hitch and that lots of people go through very difficult times, but I know that we couldn’t have done it without the help and love of our friends, old and new, that didn’t always really understand what we were going through and why it was so important to us.
So again for all your support and love, thanks from Jack and Ruth and the little one.
