I paid a student £720 for the eggs that gave me a baby. And don't tell me it was exploitation

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My daughter Gabriella, though not yet three, always runs headfirst at life. As she plays with her cuddly monkey inside the pink tent that dominates our living room, she makes her father and me laugh out loud.

There is a lot of laughter in our house now, which there was not before Gabriella came into our lives. She has beautiful brown hair with a wonderful little wave in it. Already I envy her that, since mine is dead straight.

She has an ear for music, which she has inherited from her father, Andrew, 55. She has his eyes, too — dark-lashed and an unusual hazel brown — and his smile.

Eternally grateful: Victoria Macdonald has daughter Gabriella thanks to an anonymous egg donor

Sometimes I regret that, aged 50, I can see nothing of me in my daughter — at least physically. The fact is that Gabriella, my beautiful, bright little girl, is only ours and here with us today, because a university student in Spain donated her egg to me.

That young woman’s action meant that, at the age of 47, my long-cherished dream of becoming a mother was finally realised.

It also meant Andrew became a father at 52, and that his parents, who had long given up hope of a grandchild, have a granddaughter who gives them more joy than I can begin to describe.

I remember, before she was born, wondering if it would matter to me that Gabriella and I had no genetic link. I would lie there in the dark hours, hoping she would not grow up to hold what we had done against us — especially because we can never tell her much about the woman whose egg helped make her.

Of course, I realise that our way of becoming parents is riven by controversy, and that for critics it raises as many complex moral and emotional issues as it produces cherished babies for couples like us. Only last week, there was fresh controversy when it was revealed that thousands of Cambridge University students had been targeted by a firm offering up to £750 to egg donors.

'We saw the clinic as our last hope in a long struggle to start a family; its fertility experts the people who were going to help us try to achieve our elusive dream'

Leaflets had been distributed in students’ pigeonholes making an emotional plea on behalf of a childless couple ‘looking for a real-life angel to be our egg donor’.

Critics argued that the young women being targeted might not be fully aware of the risks involved in donating their eggs, including having to take fertility drugs.

Fears were also voiced of a rise in ‘egg brokers’ profiting from dealing in human lives, and of attempts to create ‘superbabies’ from elite students.

When I read about this latest assisted fertility controversy, I thought back to the university student, to whom we had paid a similar amount through the Institut Marques fertility clinic in Barcelona, where we had gone for treatment.

I suppose the clinic was our ‘egg broker’, but it certainly didn’t feel like it — then or now. We saw the clinic as our last hope in a long struggle to start a family; its fertility experts the people who were going to help us try to achieve our elusive dream.

We know very little about the woman who donated her egg to me because, unlike in the UK, egg donation in Spain is anonymous. According to the information sheet we received, she was 19, 5ft 5in (the same height as me), with the same light-brown hair colour as me and the same green eyes.

Parents at last: With husband Andrew and three-month-old Gabriella

I have often wondered: did she donate her egg because she wanted to help childless couples like us? Or because she needed the money? I don’t know, though I can guess that £720 — the payment our Spanish donor received — would be useful to a student.

People talk about the need for egg donation to be an entirely altruistic procedure — and, in an ideal world, it would be.

I certainly know of women who have donated their eggs for the very best of reasons — because, for example, they have seen their friends suffer, as we were suffering, through years of childlessness.

But there has long been a shortage of donors in the UK because the women who did it weren’t compensated for the treatment they had to go through.

Whatever our donor’s reasons for what she did, I am profoundly grateful to her for her donation.
'By our fourth round of IVF, Andrew begged me not to do it again. He just couldn't bear to see me in such pain'

There are, of course, concerns about young, vulnerable students being exploited. We were careful to ask at our clinic about the process so we could be reassured that no one was put under duress to donate an egg for the wrong reason.

We were told that all donors are carefully screened, not just for medical or genetic problems, but also to ensure they understand what they are doing, and they are sent to a psychologist.

An egg donor has to give herself daily injections of fertility drugs for several weeks and then the eggs are retrieved under local or general anaesthetic.

By contrast, I had to do nothing more than take the contraceptive Pill so that our cycles could be co-ordinated.

But the critics can say what they like: all the controversy in the world about babies being created via sophisticated scientific intervention cannot mar the unbounded joy motherhood has brought me — and many women like me.

Of course, it was never meant to be this way: I had always assumed I would have my own children. But a succession of failed relationships meant the moment just kept getting later and later. When Andrew and I met, I was 39, he was 44. Much as we loved each other, we shared a feeling that there was something missing in our lives.

It was something that couldn’t be filled by our jobs — I work in TV news, Andrew in the music industry — travelling or spending time with friends. We desperately wanted a baby, but knew our chances of conceiving were decreasing every year.

As it turned out, it was already too late. Four times we went through IVF, and four times it failed. Even now, I remember with absolute clarity the inexpressible disappointment of looking, in vain, for that blue line on the pregnancy test stick.

By our fourth round of IVF, Andrew was begging me not to go through it again. He couldn’t bear to see me in such pain.


Tender: Victoria holds her daughter as a newborn


There was anguish for him, too, but he hid it so he could look after me, holding me while I cried for something I feared might never happen.

We discussed adoption, but Andrew was less keen than me: he wanted any child to be genetically his own.

If I was honest with myself, what I wanted more than anything was to be pregnant, to give birth, to experience that moment when a newborn baby is placed in your arms, then to nurture him or her, making them as safe and happy as possible.

My consultant at Guy’s Hospital’s assisted conception unit in London, Yakoub Khalaf, had suggested egg donation, but by then we were running out of money.

The IVF had cost a fortune. Because of my age, we’d had to pay to have it done privately — by that stage we’d spent well over £12,000. We were told that unless we could find an egg donor in the UK ourselves, we could expect to wait at least two years for one.

In the end, my father gave us the money we needed, without even being asked, and that meant we were able to go to Barcelona for treatment.

I had chosen the clinic after reading a magazine article: it had a good success rate.

So we handed over another 10,000 euros (about £8,000) — £720 of which went to the egg donor. It took three months for the clinic to find a suitable donor. I started taking the Pill to align our reproductive cycles, then hormones to prepare my body for pregnancy.
'During my pregnancy, we took photos of me every month so we could show our baby that this was her Mummy: I had carried her and given birth to her'

Sadly, that first attempt was unsuccessful. I felt terrible for the donor, who’d had to take fertility drugs and then have her eggs removed under anaesthetic. I told Andrew, relatives and caring friends that it was over: I was giving up. I could take no more. Instead, we decided to get married and get on with child-free life.

We bought a flat in West London, near my sister, so I could help look after her two children. Yet deep down I was feeling desperation about not having my own child and, after the wedding, I begged Andrew to let us have one more go.

We still had four embryos in storage, frozen after the first cycle in 2007. In October 2008, we went back to Barcelona and I had two embryos implanted.

I kept telling myself not to get my hopes up. For those two long weeks before the pregnancy test, I steeled myself for the moment that the blue line failed, yet again, to appear.

Only this time, there was a clear blue line — I was pregnant! I still get tearful when I remember waking up Andrew at 5am to tell him the news.

When we went for the first scan, I cried so hard that the sonographer thought something was wrong. One embryo had implanted, and there it was on the screen, its little heart pumping, its little hands waving.

During my pregnancy, we took photos of me every month so we could show our baby that this was her Mummy: I had carried her and given birth to her.

Andrew says that, in a way, the baby’s heartbeat was my heartbeat. She grew inside me, nurtured and loved from the beginning.

Our donor had done a great deal, but in the end it was an egg that would otherwise have been disposed of.


No regrets: When Gabriella is older, her parents will explain how she was conceived

Pride of place in our family photo album is a picture of Gabriella Grace laying on me just hours after she was born on a sunny morning in July 2009, at Queen Charlotte’s Hospital in West London. Our perfect baby.

From that moment, what mattered was that we make her as happy as possible, and make sure she knew she was loved.

Gabriella is nearly three now, desperate to start climbing trees and playing football with her cousins. She loves dancing like the penguins in Happy Feet, and clomping around the flat in my shoes.
Of course, Andrew and I have talked about what we will tell Gabriella about her beginnings, and when we will tell her. When the right time comes, we will simply say: ‘Mummy needed some help, and so we went to a clinic where they found us an egg.’

The fact is that a woman helped us conceive and we are grateful to her, but we are Gabriella’s parents.

I think Spain may change its anonymity laws on egg donation at some point, and Gabriella may decide when she’s older to seek out more information about the egg donor.

WHO KNEW?

In 2009, 3.4 per cent of all UK births were achieved as a result of donor eggs

We will support her in that and help her find out whatever it is she needs to know. But as Andrew and I see it, this is very different from an adopted child deciding to look for a birth parent. I nurtured Gabriella inside me, from a tiny bunch of cells to a fully-formed human being. I gave birth to her, and held her in my arms within seconds of her first breath. I do worry about her medical history.

When my sister was diagnosed with breast cancer, for example, we were able to trace back through the family to see if it was genetic.

Gabriella won’t have access to some medical information, though if anything serious arises, the clinic will investigate on her behalf. Otherwise, my fears for her are those of any parent. Will she be happy? Will she be healthy?

As we snuggled up together the other day reading a book, Gabriella turned to me and asked: ‘Mummy, can I have a baby brother?’

I had always expected the question would be asked at some point, but I didn’t know how to respond. I felt a knot in my stomach: regrets for me, regrets for her.

I told myself this was one of the chances I’d been waiting for to begin the story of how she came to be our daughter.

‘I’m sorry, darling,’ I said. ‘Mummy can’t have any more babies. I could have only one baby, and it was you, and even then I needed some help from another lady.’
Fortunately, Gabriella didn’t ask any more questions. She is, after all, a little young for the details of baby-making.

But that poignant exchange reminded me that, one day, we will have this conversation again, and in much more detail.

We had two embryos left after the two procedures in Barcelona, but we didn’t want to push our luck. Instead, we look at Gabriella, our funny, clever little girl, and know we are the luckiest parents in the world — and all because, for whatever reasons, a young Spanish woman gave us her eggs.

Culled from The Daily Mail UK.

xoxo
Simply Cheska...