Everything Old is New Again

I usually believe that things happen for a reason. That's a pretty good philosophy. It works well until I don't like what's happening. Then I pretty much revert back the the "life is unfair" philosophy.

Right now I'm at a crossroad. After searching through the egg donor databases (again and again and again) my mind was overwhelmed. There were some donors I liked who were not available because they were getting married, already in a cycle, training for the Chicago Marathon, etc. There were some donors I liked who had never given birth or donated and that's a big gamble for a lot of reasons. There were some donors I liked who lived in Texas or Colorado and I had to think if I wanted to go through that process of an out of state donor again. There were so many things to factor in when choosing a donor: looks, family health history, donation history, pregnancy history, education level, geographic area, answers on the questionnaires, etc.

In the end, I found four donors who I liked. The sticking point to them all was that none of the donors had been pregnant AND donated. I have two donors who had been pregnant (one aborted and one aborted twice and had one child) and two donors who had donated before but had not produced a pregnancy as far as we know.

Picking a donor who has been pregnant is great because we know her eggs can produce a child. But we also don't know if she will pass the fertility center's screening and if she will respond well to the medication. Picking a donor who has donated before means that we know how she responds to the medication and that she has met the criteria for donating. There is less testing required upfront.

There feels like no good answer right now. Well, I should say there feels like four good options with none of them clearly better than the others.

I talked with the mean nurse yesterday who turned out to be very nice and compassionate on the phone. I didn't feel rushed with her, she was patient with me, and she even was very understanding when I started to cry a little from the stress of this decision.

I don't want to say she swayed me one direction or the other, but she told me she and the doctor were very confident in using one of the previous donors. They had worked with her on her first cycle and she responded very well to the medication. Any girl who is approved must have certain hormone levels which makes it likely that her eggs are viable and healthy. A donor's age alone makes her eggs desireable. There are definitely perks to using a woman who has had a child, but that alone is not a guarantee her eggs are better than a woman who has not had a child.

The donor I'm thinking about using is a Jewish girl who is a teacher, has a master's degree and, I believe, is working on a second master's degree. Those are important qualities to me. She has a good health history, a good work history and I like her answers to the personal questions. She is also the girl I almost picked on my first attempt. She is the one who was picked by someone else right before I was ready to commit to her. Plus, her donor number is the same interpreter number I was assigned when I worked for my first video relay company.  How crazy is that?  Out of 9,999 possible numbers we had the same number!  

Are all of these signs? Does this mean it was meant to be that she's available now and wasn't available before? Who knows. This process - to be blunt - sucks right now. Once again I feel like this is a leap of faith. It's thousands of dollars and time invested and a horrific emotional rollercoaster so approaching this on a gut feeling doesn't sit well with the part of me that is analytical and scientific.

My first donor was amazing and it didn't work out. My gut told me my second donor wasn't right but I went with her because she had some qualities I wanted. It didn't work out and, in a way, I am OK with that. I don't get gut feelings often but when I do, I feel I'm usually right. Should I follow my gut this time, or follow science?

Does anyone have a story about following a gut feeling that turned out to be right?