Month: January 2019

Vegas Baby!

Posted on by Egg Girl

If you are reading this you are probably wondering what on earth Vegas has to do with my journey to have a baby! This is a fair thing to be wondering and this post is definitely a little different to previous posts about stimulation injections, panic attacks and egg collection! But this post is very much part of my “having a baby” journey in more ways than I initially thought…. let me tell you how.

So now I have made the decision to do this next chapter alone, chosen my clinic, selected my donor sperm and I am in the process of organizing to ship my eggs from my clinic in the UK to the clinic I have chosen in Cyprus, it is just a matter of time until I try and get pregnant. The thought terrifies me to be honest, but as I wrote in my “It’s Time” post, a few weeks ago, I’m trying to just “close my eyes, breathe calmly and trust that the universe will guide me wherever I am meant to be”.

The first sign I had from the universe since my  2019 “self proclaimed” need to trust it will show me the way, helped me make my decision on clinic and donor sperm (read ‘It’s a Minefield out there’) and the second sign that is telling me I’m exactly where I need to be on my journey is explained in this post!

So… with the process of shipping my eggs to Cyprus underway (apparently can take upto two months!) and a last minute business trip to the USA, I decided to extend my business trip by 36 hours and go to Las Vegas for a “rockstar” like weekend, that could well be my last of its type, for a very long time. I love Vegas, not too often, once or twice a year at most, but it has good energy. You can just go there, go hard and then go home.  And that is exactly what I intended to do, let it be my “last horrah” before trying to get pregnant I told myself!

I spoke to a couple of friends who live in the US and tried to persuade them to come and join me for 36 hours of Vegas fun, but was unsuccessful in my attempts, so I decided to go it alone. I needed to get braver about doing more on my own, it’s always so rewarding when I do, I learn so much about myself and grow as an individual, so this would be a good test to go it alone and just live and be open to whatever adventure was in store.

I needed to get serious about getting my body in the best possible shape for a pregnancy, I didn’t need any reasons for getting pregnant not to work, other then my already aged eggs I had frozen.  I worked hard for those eggs, so I wanted to make sure I was giving them the best possible chance to survive and that was having a healthy body as an incubator.  This trip would be a good chapter close of “what was” and a great segway to what hopefully “will be”…and to do this there would need to be some serious healthy living, lots of sleep and a much less selfish approach to my-life! ie: you can’t just decide to go to Vegas for 36 hours on your own!

The plan for Vegas was not to sleep much, gamble like no one was watching and party like a rockstar, then on the long 18 hour flight home sleep like a baby and wake up back in the UAE all grown up and ready to be responsible and adjusted to hopefully being a parent. I knew this trip to Vegas was likely going to be the last one for me for a very long time, or maybe ever, so I was going to make it a good one!

After a hectic three days of business meetings on the East and West coast, I departed San Francisco Friday early evening and was Vegas bound, I had 36 hours to live it large!

I arrived at 8pm and 10 hours in I had  gambled away US$ 800, drank copious vodka redbulls and hadn’t slept in 24 hours so although I hadn’t planned on sleeping at all while I was there (needed to maximize every hour of this short trip) it was 6am and I was exhausted and I knew if I didn’t have at least a few hours of sleep I would never last the 36 hours!

I woke after 2 hours, ravenous, so I had some breakfast and then hit the casino again. I was down about US$1,000 when I won what was called a “Major Jackpot” it was $1,500. In heinsight it wasn’t that major at all, but I was just so excited I had won anything! This $1,500, would pay for my trip and as I was trying to be a bit more cost conscious lately, (knowing I’m going to be forking out a lot of money in a few months to pay for my treatment), I was thrilled with my win.

After a brief 4 hour nap to sleep off the excitement of winning, I headed back to the casino and was approached by a very official looking man as I slid another hundred into my “guilty pleasure of a machine”.  This formal man was in fact the hotel casino manager, he knew exactly who I was and where I was and wanted to come and introduce himself and tell me that he’d taken care of my room and food bill as it was “on them” now that I was a jackpot winner (his exact words!!!!!), and if I were ever to come to Vegas again I should email him and he would “sort out” my room free of charge!

Well if my win earlier wasn’t enough, I now had basically a free trip….. and an invite for a future trip, this was epic! Definitely worth my last big rockstar weekend in Vegas!

With this great news in hand, I thought it only fitting that I spend the money I had set aside to cover the two nights of hotel and food for the trip, on the slot machines!

I packed my suitcase, showered, changed and then gave myself 4 hours in the casino until I had to leave for my flight at 3am.

It was 2.15am I’d had a good night, a few drinks, lots of fun games, slots and blackjack and it was almost time to leave. I thought…. just one last game before I must go and get my bags and head to the airport. I found my favorite slot machine, slipped in a 50 and hit the “spin belt” button.

Seconds later everything was a blur…A massive “Grand Jackpot” picture came on the screen of the machine, sirens stared whaling, lights flashing….. I started shaking…. I had won US$21,000!!!!!

Almost instantly I was surrounded by several members of Casino staff congratulating me.  I literally didn’t know what to do, I think I was in shock. I really wanted to jump on the chair and shout “fuck yeah, Vegas baby, that’s what I’m talkin about” but obviously being on my own and British, I thought better of it, I needed to act cool, take this in my stride, this kind of thing happens to people like me all the time!!!! Yeah right, who was i kidding! I have never won anything in my life, this kind of thing NEVER happens to people like me!!!!! I had won the grand jackpot in Las Vegas!!!! I was a jackpot winner!

I think I was in shock and In disbelief at least for the next few hours, people were asking me how I was going to spend the money and instantly I thought to myself, this whole thing is a sign….. here I was in Vegas for my last horrah before trying to have a baby on my own, I had 5 minutes before I needed to get going to the airport and get back to “reality” and I win a jackpot!!!!

If I am ever lucky enough to have a child then they are going to know they were a very special type of “Vegas baby”, not the kind you would never tell your child about, but the kind that makes a great story, the kind you do tell your friends and family about. So with this amazing 36 hours behind me and a clear sign from the universe that I am where I need to be, I am thankful that someone is watching down on me on this amazing and eventful journey to hopefully one day become a solo mum.

It’s a Minefield out there

Posted on by Egg Girl

This journey is full of so many decisions, when should I freeze my eggs? when should I use my eggs? How many eggs are enough? what clinic should I use? What “optional extras should I pay for? What should I look for in a donor sperm? The list is endless and you never quite know if you are making the right decisions, you just have to trust your gut, have a little faith and jump right in with both feet.

So I have researched a lot of clinics in a number of different countries the world over, not wanting to be closed off to any clinic because of the location or because of costs, but rather I want to find a clinic that is going to give me the best possible chance of success and that in my gut feels right.  As mentioned in my post  ‘Choosing a Clinic‘  some decisions as to where to have treatment are out of my hands. For example I am doing it alone and there are some countries that don’t legally allow treatment for single women.  I also want to use my frozen eggs and again there are clinics that don’t have experience with the “thaw process”, then there is the donor sperm, I want to be open to an anonymous or non anonymous donor, and again some countries like the UK don’t allow anonymous donors.  With all this in mind I have narrowed down my search to five clinics in three countries all of which I have had phone consultations with. Two in the USA, one in Denmark and two in Cyprus.

The Danish clinic was quickly ruled out when they were very unresponsive to my emails and didn’t seem to want to give me a clear picture of the costs involved. The two clinics in the USA were strong contenders but the costs seem very high and they didn’t seem quite as diligent in answering my questions as the two clinics I had short listed in Cyprus.

So with two strong contenders in Cyprus both of which had good reviews on closed Facebook groups I’m a member of I knew it had to be one of these two clinics for me.  I was slightly nervous about Cyprus because the country has had problems in the past and I have a good friend who warned me to stay away from that area, however I just felt in my gut that one of these two clinics was going to give me the best possible chance of success and I had really done my homework.  I was however torn about which one to go with.

Simultnaiously to choosing my clinic I was also searching through hundreds (and I mean hundreds) of donor sperm profiles from two different European sperm banks. This part I had been doing for months and it actually became quite fun.

I still find it funny and slightly odd that when wading through profiles I wanted to find someone who I might actually have wanted to have sex with….. I really don’t know why because the reality is that most of these donors are young enough to be my son, but I wanted to find someone who had characteristics I would look for in a partner.   Obviously they would need to check all the “healthy history” boxes, that’s a given, but then it’s down to physical appearance (eye color, hair color, skin color, height, weight etc), baby picture, likes and dislikes, career aspirations etc. Do you go broad with your search, do you go narrow? (yet another decision).  People told me not to be picky, but hey….. if you have the choice there needs to be some ‘upside’ to doing this process this way… right and its not like it isn’t costing me a fair bit for the privilege, so I decided to be picky about who i chose, if I had the choice, which I definitely did!  The other thing I wondered was…. should I be choosing someone like me or opposite to me???? I still don’t quite know the answer to this. It’s a minefield to be honest and not one to be taken lightly, Infact I found it best to shortlist and then grab a girlfriend and a bottle of wine and weigh up the pros and cons of each one, make the process as fun and memorable as possible…. hell… you are choosing the DNA for your potentially unborn child, it needs to be almost as fun as a first date… right!

Once you have your shortlist, you check to see if he has had any live births.  From what I have read it is good to find one that has had at least one live birth.  Then the final clencher is….. does the one you have picked actually have readily available samples?

So I found my favorite donor. I chose him for a number of reasons, obviously the baby pictures were cute but in his profile he seemed kind and caring. He loves animals, is sporty, loves the outdoors, is tall and all in all seemed like he ticked a lot of boxes. Before I could order his sperm I needed to decide on which clinic I was going to use as I had to ship it to the clinic. I was so torn. There were pros and cons for both and I’d spoken to both doctors. Both very different but I just didn’t have clarity on which clinic to go with.

I kept checking on my donor, almost as if it was this amazing one off item of clothing that I was saving up and that I just had to have…. I checked the availability almost daily!  Then one day I looked and whilst his profile still came up, it said there were no available samples!  NO AVAILABLE SAMPLES! I was mortified. It felt like it had been such a hard decision to choose him and now he wasn’t available!  I started looking at some of the others I had short listed but kept going back to my favourite one and kicking myself for not ordering it when I had the chance.

One of my two Cyprus shortlisted clinics told me that they did carry some samples from one of the sperm banks I was looking at and that I could send them the donor profile details and they would tell me if they had it “in stock”. This was becoming more like online shopping than I had realized! I knew the chances of this clinic having my favourite donor sperm choice in stock were slim to none but in a last ditch hope they might (and not wanting them to say they did even if they didn’t) I sent them the donor ID details of my top four choices. I didn’t tell them which was my favourite one, but secretly hoped and prayed that they might have it in stock.

A week passed and one of the clinics emailed me and told me they did, in fact, have one of the donor IDs I had requested in stock.  Would you believe that the one they had was the one that was my favourite?!  I didn’t, until I did. I think I will always remember where I was when I read this email.  I was ecstatic,  it was a sign from the universe that this was my clinic and this was my donor!

With this information in hand my decision of which clinic I was going to go with was made easy.  I told them instantly I wanted to move forward with them and asked them to “hold” the donor ID sperm for my use. I started to get excited. I felt like I had taken this giant step forward in my journey and it was starting to become real and very exciting.

So now I wait. I have filled out lots of paper work, had quotes for transporting my eggs and am just waiting for approvals in the UK and Cyprus to move my eggs. Apparently this whole process can take a couple of months so I just need to be patient and trust the process.

With these two major decisions made, now I move onto the decision of genetic testing or no genetic testing? The pros and cons are endless so I’m glad I’ll have two months to make this next decision. 😀

Choosing a Clinic

Posted on by Egg Girl

I am the member of a couple of Facebook groups, one that was specifically set up for single females wanting to have a baby on their own and another group that is specifically for people wanting to do IVF abroad. Both groups are filled with people from all walks of life, each with their own unique story. I often wonder if there is anyone in either group who has a story like mine, but as yet I haven’t found anyone.

Most are using fresh eggs or doing double donation (donated eggs and sperm) rather than using their own frozen eggs it seems.  So whilst it’s comforting to know there are people in similar situations to me, it seems everyone’s journey is different and you are intact alone in your own personal journey. I think what this means to me is that I know what’s ultimately best for me. I know my body well and whilst there are medical options, friendship opinions and options of others who have been in similar situations, I must trust my gut for this next chapter.

I am in the process of choosing a clinic which in itself is a mine field. As a single women doing this there are some countries that won’t treat you (eg: Czech Republic), then because I think I want to use an anonymous sperm donor there are some countries (such as the UK) that don’t allow that, then there are countries like Spain who choose the sperm donor for you. Then you look at Greece and there are some good, highly recommended options there, but many clinics there haven’t had experience with using frozen eggs, so at the moment it is a process of elimination, what clinics in what counties can I use. Once I have determined that, I think a Phone consultation with each of the shortlisted ones and the follow my gut.

Hopefully in the next couple of weeks I will have made my decision and then it will be moving on to transporting my eggs and picking the donor sperm  so many decisions to make!