purpose of third party reproduction mandatory counseling

[Anonymous]

Is this basically prospective patient education at places like Shady Grove? Or are they assessing you in some way?

I don't want to get into the personal details of my life with a potentially large group of people there, but rather just go over medical information, and, since it appears they require it, discuss the ethical implications of anonymous donor treatments.

[Anonymous]

I didn't do anything at Shady Grove so I can't speak to it specifically, but I think usually the clinics want to make sure the parents are prepared for the emotional/mental aspects of donor eggs/sperm. And making sure all parents are prepared to answer questions kids may have and share research about ways to talk to your kids about their donors, etc.

Most clinics I've heard of it's just the parents and a counselor, not a group session, so maybe someone can weigh in Shady Grove in particular. I definitely understand not wanting to share all your personal info with a group of strangers! Hopefully that will not be necessary.

[Anonymous]

I was told the counselor sends a letter and it is shared to the entire clinical team at SG.

Best to treat this like a deposition and say as little as possible if you value your privacy.

[Anonymous]

We were at SG but did our counseling with a non-SG doctor recommended by our lawyer (we were using a gestational carrier). In our case we met privately as a couple with the doctor, our GC also met privately with the doctor, and then the three of us all met together with the doctor. I am a very private person and had never had any sort of mental health counseling before so had no idea what to expect, but found it less intrusive and easier than I'd anticipated. Mostly it was questions from the doctor asking if we'd been thinking about how we'd talk with our child about their conception/birth and giving us some suggestions based on her experience, whether we had any concerns she could help us talk through, etc. I found it really helpful and in a weird way it was actually reassuring because it was clear she'd done this so often before that it reminded me we weren't freaks of nature doing something completely bizarre that nobody else had ever done - I actually felt more normal afterwards.

I suppose she did send some kind of report to SG afterwards but no one ever mentioned anything about it. I would suppose unless something really alarming arises, like a suicide risk or concerns about you being under some kind of external abusive pressure, they're not looking to do an in-depth analysis on you. More like a pass/fail and frankly if you've already made it this far through the process, you're going to be a "pass." It's just checking off the box.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I didn't do anything at Shady Grove so I can't speak to it specifically, but I think usually the clinics want to make sure the parents are prepared for the emotional/mental aspects of donor eggs/sperm. And making sure all parents are prepared to answer questions kids may have and share research about ways to talk to your kids about their donors, etc.

Most clinics I've heard of it's just the parents and a counselor, not a group session, so maybe someone can weigh in Shady Grove in particular. I definitely understand not wanting to share all your personal info with a group of strangers! Hopefully that will not be necessary.

This.

I was at Columbia Fertility, and we were required to meet with a therapist before moving forward w/ DE. I was greatly annoyed by the requirement, and then I found the session to be surprisingly helpful. The therapist had really useful insights and questions around how we would think about discussing donor eggs w/ our kid(s), how realistically we were prepared for the prospect of twins, how we felt about the donor herself, etc... She was very helpful and my husband and I still (maaaany years later) refer back to a couple of things she suggested we think about.

A completed unexpected benefit was that she had also met with many of the inhouse donors we were considering. So while she, of course, didn't discuss specific individuals, she was able to tell us a lot about their motivations in general and what their perspectives on this process were. That was really terrific to hear.

[Anonymous]

I (single woman) have done it twice. Once for when I was a patient at SG and once after I was pursing DE and had switched to an OOS clinic that had their own in-house person. For SG they handed me a piece of paper with a list of recommended people and I chose the one closest to my house.

Both times I found it helpful and fine. There was no aspect in which I felt like they were screening my viability bc they never really asked hard or follow-up questions to anything I said. Nor did they challenge any of my statements. I feel like if they were testing you they would actually make it more interactive than ask a question, get an answer, move to the next topic. In reality the way these sessions are set up I would imagine you would have to be a severely trouble person to not be able to hold it together enough for a 60 minute meeting.

They asked me about myself, I talked to them about why I wanted to have a child, a little about my own family and background. I was very new to the whole process when I did the SG one and after the fact I read an article about the types of people who pursue single motherhood by choice and I realized the background questions all went to the typical traits which I have. (Ie that single moms tend to be highly educated, professionally successful and have close ties to their family).

Both focused on how to talk to the child about their donor origins and stressed the importance of it being an often repeated story that the child will alway know about and never a wrenching surprise. In my case the child will not have a father so it will be all the more necessary to talk about it all. The 2nd person recommended I practice telling them when the child is an infant and doest really know what you are saying bc it will help you get the story down and that all kids love to hear their birth story so just incorporate it into any of those tellings. I thought that was good advice. Echoing what someone posted above the second person who was in-house at my current clinic also talked to me about their interactions with the donor egg candidates (in general, not my donor).

[Anonymous]

I did the counseling at another clinic. It didn't require me to reveal many personal details. It was a discussion about the DE process and the various things to consider. It was an evaluation of me and my husband to a certain extent, but mostly about the fact that we talked to teh counselor and understood the process. I found it to be extremely helpful.

[Anonymous]

My wife and I went through this at SG (we are a same sex couple). We used a known donor and we had to meet with their social worker as a couple, our donor had to meet with her and take a personality test that was insanely detailed and lasted for hours, then all three of us met with her. This was all to the tune of about $850 OOP. I understand on a logical level why we had to do this, but I found the social worker to be incredibly rude and off putting, and the whole process felt so invasive. Like ok, you get to give us permission to proceed with IVF or not? When we switched clinics we had to meet with their psychiatrist but she was much kinder and it wasn’t as involved.

[Anonymous]

Thanks these were all very helpful. I ended up asking to go "off the record" and she said she would since it was not directly relevant to the report letter. It was a little more involved than those described in this thread, but my situation is not common I guess.