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. 😀