I don't know anyone else going through secondary infertility

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I never know how to respond to people when they talk to me about their secondary infertility. I try to be a good listener and be supportive, but often people start with a statement like “I’m not interested in using donor eggs.” They think since I have three kids close together, I can’t possibly understand what they are going through. However, what they don’t know is that all three of my kids are donor egg kids and, if I took that position, I would be childless. I respect that donor eggs aren’t for everyone, but I also feel a bit weird commiserating with someone over their inability to have a second child because they don’t want to go the route I did to become a parent. You might know more people than you think who experienced secondary infertility. They just solved the problem in a way that you don’t realize.

This is a great point. May i ask what do you think the hesitation is re: donor egg? I used to be one of those people that was like hellz no re: donor egg but now realizing not sure why i reacted so strongly against it

PP donor egg mom here. I am probably not the best person to ask because I didn’t have any hesitation myself. I wanted to be a parent and would pursue any means available to me. I did try regular IVF many times before moving on to donor egg, but that was mostly because I had insurance coverage for part of the cost that can’t be used with donor egg IVF. I wish I had moved to donor egg sooner and saved myself all the heartbreak. Once it became clear that I wouldn’t have a child who was genetically related to me, I did prefer to try donor eggs over adoption, although we would have moved on to that had donor eggs not worked. For me, adoption was scarier because you have less control. You have to wait for someone to pick you and then hope they don’t change their mind. But, I know that some people prefer adoption to using donor eggs. Every person has their own hang ups that determine how they respond once a choice must be made to move past traditional forms of ART. I truly can’t understand why people aren’t comfortable with donor eggs because I wasn’t and for me the outcome has been nothing but miraculously amazing. But, I do very much respect that other people feel differently and that for some people it isn’t a choice they can make. However, I feel badly for people who are genuinely miserable about not being a parent or not having an additional child. I can’t see how having a donor egg child (even if you see this as a loss of something, which I don’t) is a worse outcome than being miserable.