SART Fertility Experts - LBGTQ Fertility

The information and opinions expressed in this podcast do not necessarily reflect those of ASRM and SART. These podcasts are provided as a source of general information and are not a substitute for consultation with a physician. Welcome to SART Fertility Experts, a podcast that brings you discussions on important topics for people trying to build a family.

Our experts are members of SART, the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology, an organization dedicated to ensuring you receive quality fertility care. Hi everyone, welcome to the podcast. I'm Dr. Mark Trolice and today we're going to talk about reciprocal egg sharing bonding through IVF with two wonderful people that have presented their story in a very compassionate and engaging way.

Reciprocal egg sharing is where a lesbian couple use the eggs from one partner for the other to carry after fertilized with donor sperm. I talked with Lauren and Lisa about their experience of going through this cycle. Lauren, Lisa, welcome to the podcast.

Hi there, thanks for having us. Thank you for sharing your story. Let's start with how you met.

When was that and what was the circumstances around that? Well, it was back in the last month of 2016 at a birthday dinner for her sister, actually. Very relaxed circumstances, I'd say. And it was immediate that you all hit it off? Not quite.

It was not immediate. A few times later of hanging out, it sealed the deal in terms of knowing there was something there. That's great.

So you're with each other, you all got married, and when did you start saying, hey, I think it's time for us to build a family? Immediately. My fourth date. We knew we wanted to have family way before we even got married.

So how soon after the wedding did you actually go through your first cycles with IUI? About two or three weeks after the wedding. And you were successful after how many? First try. So for baby number two, what made you go to high-tech, assisted reproductive technology? From the beginning, we both knew that we wanted to have children from both of us, both of our eggs, with the same donor.

And so we knew the first one was going to be hers. And then from the beginning, we knew the second one, we were going to try IVF with mine. And Lisa, you did not want to carry, correct? I did not, no.

So you met with a reproductive health counselor just to talk about the unique form of reproduction, of sharing eggs and using donor sperm, of course. What went through your mind about this? Because were you aware that this was an option when you went through the first cycle of IUI or even before that on your own? Yeah. We knew the egg sharing was an option.

I wasn't fully understanding on everything that it entailed at that point, but I got more information with the counselor and stuff like that. And let's fast forward now. You're going through the cycle.

You're going to start doing the stimulating injectable medications, getting ready to start that process. What goes through your mind during this time? I hope it all works out. I hope it doesn't hurt.

Did you share the experience with friends that are also LGBTQ? Yeah, we talked to a lot of our friends about it and some who are single, some are married, and everyone's been asking questions. Have you known others to do this? Personally, I don't think so. Not egg sharing, no.

Yeah, not egg sharing. We've had, of course, friends who have fertility issues and things of that nature, but I don't think we had anyone's brains, any one of our friends or family's brains to pick about this specifically. So how was the experience, Lisa? This was visits to the clinic, ultrasounds, blood work, all that fun stuff.

It was good. Everyone made me feel super comfortable. I'm not a very open person, but no, everyone made me feel extremely comfortable and made it go by with the breeze.

Did you have any concerns? What were some things in the back of your mind that you were worried about? That I had a lot of eggs and that they were growing and doing what they're supposed to do. Obviously, I never wanted it to be my fault or for any reason that we can't do our plan as have my egg and her carry it, and so that was going through my head. Besides getting shots.

Oh, yeah, and the shots. Was the shots the most challenging part of the cycle? Outside of the egg retrieval? Yeah, I don't take medication regularly, so it was more difficult keeping on top of it because I'm not a schedule type person, so I had to set the alarms. She had to remind me back to back, make sure you're doing it, all those type of things.

So you bonded not just by sharing your eggs, you bonded going through the cycle. Yes, yeah. What did you learn? What did you learn about each other going through this? That I'm a baby.

Um, no, a little bit. No, it's hard. The shots, of course, are difficult.

Um, I think for me, I learned. So I'm in our relationship, the worry wart, the, you know, the schedule, the keep everything orderly and neat, and Lisa's more of the lackadaisy, kind of go with the flow and like the ying to my yang, literally. So I, to see her almost afraid sometimes that, you know, closer to the retrieval that maybe it wasn't going to work, is my body doing what it's supposed to do? It was, I never want to say nice to see her worry, but it was a different side of her that we haven't that I haven't really seen.

Personally, of course, caring for our daughter, she's amazing and worries about all those things. But for herself, personally, making sure that the medicine was doing what it was supposed to do for her. And she was kind of taking all those boxes, if that makes sense.

So that that's I learned something about you worrying about yourself, for once, which is great. Normally, she worries about us. What were you worried about, Lauren, in terms of you going through this type of cycle? So a couple things.

I was worried for her, you know, for what she does for work and everything like that. I was a little nervous about all those medications. And you know, everyone always hears about the hormones and things like that.

I was I was scared on what that was going to do for her and our house. But I was scared of what that was going to do for her specifically, especially at work. And then for for my end of it, of course, you know, there's the same, I think, fear that she was having, is my body going to do what it's supposed to do? Am I going to be able to you worked so hard getting all these medications and doing this for our family? Was I almost going to be the letdown, you did all this work, and then something doesn't work out.

And I can't, you know, fulfill what we're working on. So it's, I think we both had the same fear for different reasons about ourselves. So that's that.

Lisa, what what did you learn about Lauren during this time that you that you weren't aware or would not have predicted she acted that way? Um, I mean, going through the last pregnancy with her, I know that she's just like a total champion with it all. So this I mean, she she's been a warrior with this as well. So I don't know that I didn't like to shoot you.

Yeah, she she really did not like to give me the shot. She felt bad, but I wasn't helping because I kept freaking out. So so Lauren had to take the progesterone injections during the cycle.

How did that go? For me, it's hard because I can't do it for me. I can't do it to myself. So, you know, I had, I think you were scared to hurt me, too.

Yeah. But luckily, it's the tiniest pinch. So it's really not that bad.

But on the nights where she works, if we've created a schedule, we had a please come shoot me, you know, in the cheek who wants to sign up and make sure it was the same time every day. So it's been interesting in that aspect. But it's, it's not that it's way easier.

I was so afraid. You know, when you hear like, okay, now you have to get injections and you order your medication. You're like, oh, my goodness, when you see them, but they're not.

It's not it's such it's for such a good reason. So we keep both of us just kept saying it's for such a good reason. I'll do this every day if I have to.

It's for such a good reason. Your personalities are amazing. And I think that obviously is what helped you go through this.

So let's fast forward to egg retrieval day. Lisa, tell us about that. I was excited for a little nap.

No, I was I was nervous. Because going into it, we knew like estimate of how many eggs there were going to be from the ultrasounds and stuff like that. But of course, the day of changes, some grow some no.

So I was just I was just hoping that the ones that are growing kept growing and that we had some good ones. So and then we had embryos that developed and comes down to the transfer day of the embryos into Lauren. And I want to ask you a profound question.

You use donor sperm from anonymous. But now you have an egg inside you from this embryo of the person you love. Yeah.

What what could could you put that into words as to as to how you felt? So I'm a very sappy person. I'll start with that. He says my polar opposite in that as well.

But I you know, from the beginning, you always get questions from people or at least we did, you know, as a lesbian couple. It's not Lisa sperm releases egg for our first daughter. And you get those questions on if do you love them the same? Do you feel like their mom? And I mean, Justin, I'm watching her with our daughter.

I know that it's just like she had her herself. She is an amazing mom. And so I got very sappy and knowing that I could potentially incubate, you know, Lisa's egg and, you know, the same the same donor sperm as our daughter now.

And that I could almost be the we call it the easy bake oven as a joke, but that I could be this, this vessel that makes that for her, because that's not her desire to grow, you know, her own and her body. And so for me, I driving to the retrieval or to the transfer, I had like my calm, sweet music on and I was getting all sappy thinking about like, I can I can grow Lisa's baby, it's my baby, too. But I can grow Lisa's physical baby, you know, myself, and I loved being pregnant the first time.

And so it was a little teary pulling into the office because I was I was super excited that I, you know, had the opportunity in general to be able to, to still have such a huge part in our second child that just happened to be Lisa's egg. It was it's I don't know that I can describe it. I don't but it is magical beyond words truthfully.

So Lisa, you were there during the embryo transfer, right? Yes. How was that experience knowing that your eggs was going into the person you love? It was kind of surreal. I'm like, watching it in and just thinking about because like, I was there for the IUI as well.

And so it's similar in the aspect of we're trying to have a baby. And something's getting injected. But it was just surreal to see that the actual possible baby of my egg and our donors from going inside her and it was mind blowing.

And all the technology of actually watching it happen was really cool. So obviously, significantly different than the first go around of the IUI. But this was your first embryo transfer.

And like your first IUI before you went on the air, you shared some information here. So this is a few days before your pregnancy test, about a week or so after the transfer. And what what news do you want to share? That any pink lines are good.

No, that we are as hopefully everything continues to go well pregnant on our first try with our second kiddo, but with Lisa's egg. So our IVF hopefully stayed and everything was great because we got a positive pregnancy test. Well, congratulations.

That's absolutely wonderful. I'm so happy for you both. So we have baby.

Your daughter is how old now? 10 months, 10 months. So let's wait till she gets a little bit older and think about how do you share the way that firstly, she came into the world? And then how do you share this? The way her sibling comes into the world? How do you tell her? So we luckily before we had done both our IUI and our IVF before we got started, we got to meet with I think her label is a psychologist, if I'm correct, but she was so wonderful and giving us so many resources. So now I know and I think both of us are excited.

There's books, you know, that you can at different levels of your of your kiddo's life that you can read to them. And it kind of helps them understand, you know, how how mommy and mommy made you and brought you into the world and things of that nature. Although our daughter says dada right now.

So we're trying to cut back. But it there, there's so many resources we hadn't I don't think we had any idea we're out there. That can help kind of put it at their level to explain to them until they're old enough to actually understand, you know, the science behind the things that we did to make a family possible.

So that's definitely we have a list of books that we cannot wait to read to both of our kids. And what's nice is there's so many out there that are personalized to IUI and to IVF and like the actual different ways, you know, to create children. So we will absolutely be reading those to our kids to try to help them understand.

So you have an audience now of thousands of people listening to this podcast. What would you want to share to the the the population of fertility specialists and patients about your experience, but also how to find the clinic? What what to look for? What are what are some tips that you'd want to share? I would say stay positive. Going into it with the negative head is never good.

We did whatever we could to try and think of the positive outcome and all the what were like the myths, like she wore socks to keep her feet warm. It was a whole bunch of things. But yes, I would say staying positive.

And then when it comes to finding a doctor, speak with people who've been through the process, because they're firsthand going to know who's good, who's not all this type of thing. I agree. I'm a huge person for things that we go do or things that we take part in and how other people have have gone through things and their experiences and, you know, who we used, we got referred to.

And we're so happy we did. And we refer him and we refer them the entire office constantly. I think we may get tattoos of it.

I don't know, because we tell so many people. But we, we, we asked, I asked lots of questions. I'm a Googler.

So I typed as many questions as I could find out, you know, all the information beforehand, I would say for the specialists themselves, all the information for your patients is wonderful. We were blessed and lucky to be with an office that gave us all the information and gave us all of our options. And we're wonderful during all of our processes, since we've been through to now and I and an IVF process.

They're the same, but different, very, very different at the same time. So I would agree with Lisa for the for the other patients, you know, like us, we're very lucky that our UI and IVF worked for us on the first try. But if it doesn't keep going, keep trying, it is beyond worth it.

We're, I think we are both sappy in the aspect of that we're happy to have a family already. So just don't give up on it. Just try.

It's wonderful, truthfully. You touched on, you felt welcomed in the clinic. And in some way, I feel sad that we have to talk like that.

It's 2021. And that shouldn't even be part of the conversation. In my, in my opinion, LGBTQ, heterosexual, single mom, however, good people want to be parents is the diagnosis and management, not necessarily or not at all due to lifestyle.

But I'm so happy that you had that experience. And I'm speaking for my colleagues in our society that we are indebted to you both for sharing such a personal story. You're, you're remarkable in terms of your relationship with each other, your approach to fertility, how your ease of sharing the experience.

And so I'm so, so overjoyed for your success and wish you continued pregnancy, uneventful and healthy, healthy pregnancy for you and baby. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Thank you for spending time with us today. And until next time, this is Dr. Mark Trolice, take care. Thank you for listening to SART fertility experts, your resource for information on IVF.

If you found this podcast useful, please like us on your favorite social media platform and tell your friends about us. For more family building resources, visit www.sart.org slash patient dash information or www.reproductivefacts.org