In 2016 I had tried to conceive a sibling for my child for approximately 4 year and time was running out. We have had 3 miscarriages, unsuccessful own egg IVF cycles my age was rapidly progressing and the quality of my eggs declining. My husband was adamant, one more cycle and then we will need to give up, he wasn’t prepared to keep going indefinitely, both our hearts were broken. So I had to make the choice that was more likely to give me a baby at the end of the cycle. I won’t lie, it was not an easy journey deciding to use a donor egg and I ended up talking to many people who have done this before, including people with ‘mixed families’ i.e. own egg child as well as donor egg child. I also had counselling, which helped me understand I had to grieve the loss of my own fertility before I could move on.

When I found out about Ruth I was delighted. Not only she helped the decision answering a myriad of questions. But here was somebody really experienced to guide through a really tricky process selecting the clinic to making important choices as regards to the donor the clinic recommends. To have her on our side I think it’s what made this work so far. Ruth was there with consultations, with advice all the way through responding promptly and always offering a really valuable take on things. Her knowledge of clinics here in the UK made the cycle super smooth as I could do all my tests here and only had to travel for embryo transfer which is great as I have a little one in school and we kept disruption to a minimum. She also put me in touch with other moms of donor egg babies so that I could talk to them and their experience.

We did one cycle in Spain and ended up having a frozen embryo transfer as consultant could not transfer first time round due to a blockage in my womb. I was very upset at the time about not being able to do a fresh transfer. But Ruth was amazing, she organised a dummy transfer in the UK so I could be sure to find out where the problem was. Thanks to this I avoided a costly hysteroscopy. She also liaised with the clinic on my behalf sorting out dates and timings of medications so precisely I could safely attend my son’s nativity and travel the following day! Second time round that I went to Spain, embryo transfer was successful and I am now 12 weeks pregnant so fingers crossed we will end up having a baby at the end of this process. The clinic she helped us pick was also amazing in terms of their embryology and their success with single embryo transfers.

I could not recommend Ruth enough her commitment and passion are fantastic and to have that support during a challenging and emotional time is so precious.

Good luck to everybody!

V.

February 2016