Episode 5 - 1st Step of My Donor Egg Journey

Hello and welcome to 'My Donor Egg IVF Journey – Raw + In Real Time'.   

I am Claudine, your podcast host. I want to share my Donor Egg IVF journey via my podcast in the hope that my experience will help others.  This is our safe holding space. If you haven’t already listened to Episode 1, my introduction, please do so.   

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In this episode, episode 5 of my podcast, I share with you the first step that I took in commencing my donor egg journey. 

Thank you for stopping by. Please follow me if you are on a similar journey or are interested in the Donor Egg experience,    

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I would be most grateful if you could rate or review my podcast. Please also share my podcast with anyone who you think will benefit from the content.    
    

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Thank you for sharing your time with me. From my heart to yours, sending healing energy to all of my listeners.🤍  
     
Claudine Xx 

***** DISCLAIMER ***** 

I am not a medical or mental health professional. All content in this podcast (and any material I have created relating to this podcast) is created for informational purposes only. I am only sharing my personal l journey. The information that I share is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical and/or mental health advice and should not be relied on as health or personal advice.  

 Always seek the guidance of your doctor or other qualified health professional with any questions you may have regarding your health or a medical condition. Never disregard the advice of a medical professional, or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on this podcast or read on any material I have created relating to this podcast.  

 If you choose to rely on any information I have shared with you, you do so solely at your own risk.  

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Transcript

0:03

Welcome to my Donut Egg IVF journey, raw and in real time. I'm Claudine, your podcast host. I want to share my Donut Egg IVF journey via my podcast, in the hope that my experience will help you and others. This is your safe holding space, created with a heart centered approach. A place to land to share all things related to Donut Egg conception. I want you to feel safe, supported and informed during our shared journey. Now let's start today's episode. If you haven't already listened to episode one of my podcasts, please do my recommendation is that my episodes are listened to in the order that they're released. But of course, it's up to you to decide how you go about listening to my podcast in that regard, the initial episodes of this podcast, we'll get you up to speed. And from thereafter, I'll update you in real time. Please pay attention to the disclaimer at the end of the show notes of this episode, by continuing to listen to this podcast, you understand and agree to that. Disclaimer, in its entire. Entirety. Today's date is Tuesday the 28th of January, 2025. Now, before I start today's episode, I want to give a special thank you to the listeners who have sent me fan mail. I really do wish I could reply to all of your messages directly, but unfortunately my podcast hosting service doesn't have that feature. That's why at this stage, all I can do is be so, so grateful to you all from afar. Also to those people who wrote to me, I want to also thank you for, sharing a snippets of your journey with me, I really did love reading about your individual journeys. And I could relate to, of course, relate to parts of your journey as well. And from the bottom of my heart, I wish you all the very best of luck on your journeys. It was really touching to receive the messages, knowing that others benefit from me sharing my story. It really does mean so much to me. I really do want to send you all a deep heartfelt, thank you once again. Before I move on to today's episode, I just want to let you all know that, um, in episodes from here in I'll make reference to things which include, but aren't limited to. Uh, skills and resources that I've utilized to better manage my mental and physical health during this journey or both in the past. And this journey. Uh, templates and forms that I've either created or been, uh, given by professionals as well as my online research and so much more. So, what I've done is I've decided to launch a website which will enable you to download resources digitally. Um, resources that interest you, that is, um, so you can pick and choose what you like. And look, I know that others in the world of fertility with, uh, by law they're considered professionals or not. Um, I know that they charge for information like that, but I won't be charging you for those resources. I'm sharing my journey in the hope that my story will help others. Um, now. I will post a podcast solely to let you all know that that website and possibly even, um, social media pages. Alive once they're ready. Now in the last episode of this podcast, I described the emotions resulting from the suggestion of, um, the donor egg pathway. Why I felt each emotion. And the immediate questions that occupied my mind from thereafter. I stated that people fear things or situations that make them feel unsafe or unsure. And on the contrary knowledge is power. Also that procrastination feeds fear and that action kids fear, cures, fear. So in this episode, episode five of this podcast, I will share with you the first step that I took in commencing my donor egg journey. From where I left off. In my last episode, there was some brief discussions on the subject, um, with a couple of friends. Um, now like me, they knew nothing about donor eggs. So all they could do is be supportive to the extent that they agreed with my thoughts to obtain updated fertility tests. Uh, to seek a second opinion and to make an informed decision. So. I did take time to reflect specifically on what emotion I felt and why. So those emotions I described in the last, our last episode, um, now what I did is I put pen to paper. I made a note of those emotions, um, and you don't. Just what I, where I thought they were coming from. And look, there is a skill that I learned in past therapy that I could have performed at that stage. And I'll share that with you in a later episode. So at that stage, I was already a member of a couple of IVF related Facebook groups. So what I did was I posted in one of those groups and in that post, I provided a brief summary of that consultation that we had with the fertility specialist. And that the donor egg was suggested to me. I also shared that I was disappointed and that I was hurt. Also that the news was unexpected and heartbreaking. So I received an influx of responses. In response to that post. So there were varied responses, within those, uh, so some of them were supportive comments that wished me well on the decision that I made. There were also some suggestions to follow my heart or to listen to my intuition. Um, others shared their experiences of having similar or lower AMH levels and either their IVF success or their IVF failures. Uh, there were also others that suggested to seek a second opinion and there were also suggestions to try, continue trying with my own eggs. Now, if I read every single comment to you, we'd be here for hours. Instead what I've done is I've just noted down some extracts from some of the comments. Comment one. I was on the rollercoaster ride of own egg IVF for 10 years and no luck. I'm so grateful for selfless donors who help women like myself. Comment too. I've spent a lot on IVF with my own eggs money. That would have been better invested in cycles with a higher probability of positive outcomes is probably not what you want to hear, but I wish I'd gone to donor eggs earlier. Next comment. It's hard, but it's the reality and we can waste so much time and money on no outcome. Next comment. He probably is being realistic. However, I would definitely get a second opinion and I would at least want to try a cycle with own egg before going to donor. Sorry, how. To have a sip of my coffee. It's that time of the morning. Okay. So those pro donor ed comments warn me too. The idea of further considering that pathway. So they made me feel less alone in the experience. And I also found comfort in knowing that other women pursued this path. And that they were happy that they did. So. I did experience. Uh, contradicting emotions. So some of the comforting words and shared experience relieved my anxiety, but at the same time, I felt further overwhelmed by the number of messages and my self-inflicted pressure to reply to them. So it's the thoughts that were running through my head was, you know, these women Kylene took their time to reply to me. So the least I could do was reply. Then I'd beat myself up about, you know, why I couldn't do that. Now I want to speak about emotions. So emotions are temporary. They're like waves. They come and they go, so some are big, some are small, they ebb and they flow. So during past therapy, I learned a number of skills that I like to say, help me learn how to surf the waves of my emotions. So I'll share with you one skill. Ah, that's a skill that I like to refer to or what I like to call, um, the art of distraction. So what I did was I decided to perform that skill I'm at the point that I read the comments to my Facebook post, I do want to say that it's not the best idea to pretend that everything is great and to never address uncomfortable emotions or situations. Distractions can potentially lead to avoidance and that's not a good thing. However it is okay to momentarily escape your present emotionally distressing situation. Uh, in order to prevent your emotions, getting worse and to attempt for your emotions to completely fade away. Also so that you can return to your situation in a bit of mindset. So in these situations, I'm mindfully and I highlight the word mindfully, choose an activity. I perform that activity and I try not to allow my mind to return to those distressful emotions, um, until I've completed that activities. So. In regards to that, the more active the activity, the easier obey to distract myself from my distressful emotions, however, or I should say distressing emotions. However, if I can't do that and all I can manage is for instance, to lay in bed like more sedentary. Um, activity that is also okay. So I shouldn't judge myself for that, but sometimes I do, and that's also okay. But when I do that, I try to catch myself. Um, and that way I can stop the thought process. So following that, I decided to watch TV to distract myself from that the whole donor egg situation. As that that's all I could manage at the time, and that's what I did for some time. Now. While watching TV. I wondered what my partner was thinking. I asked him whether he was upset, what he thought of the situation. Uh, whether he thought of me as less than a woman. Um, you know, and so forth and to the letter, he said, no. So essentially you said he was fine. And he basically just said it is what it is. So I asked him if he was open to the idea of donor egg and all he said was, yes. So, of course I didn't want him to be upset, but I was also somewhat annoyed, he didn't the same phased about the situation. Um, and basically that he didn't say more. I guess I was looking for some sort of, I don't know, reassurance, or maybe even, um, you know, wanting to talk through things myself. Anyhow, what I did was I settled on the idea that at least it was a good thing, that he was not rejecting the idea of donor egg and that perhaps I could ask him to share his feelings at another stage. Look, I do know that people have varying ways to cope with that sort of news sometimes when attempting to distract myself, I've involuntarily returned to, you know, my distressful thoughts. I was attempting to distract myself from. So you can see that I did that when I asked my partner those questions. I try to catch myself when I do that. Now, the great thing about that is that when you catch yourself doing that, you can then re direct yourself back to the out of distraction. And that's what I did. So by the end of my TV session, I'd observed that I'd calmed down somewhat. Following that my partner went to sleep. And then of course, I fell into my old patterns when stressed. What that looks like was I felt really tired, but was unable to sleep. But then at the same time, I felt wide. I felt glued to my phone. Um, and I just felt like I was unable to move out of bed. Like my body was frozen, but all I could move where my fingers are, my eyes and my fingers that were navigating my phone and my eyes that were just fixated on my phone screen, you know, reading, um, Moving in all directions and so on. Um, So the hours that followed that looks something like this, you know, scrolling on the internet, clicking on a website, reading that, learning to another website. Um, another thought leading to another Facebook post, um, to a comment than reading 10, 20, 30 comments and so forth and round and round. You know, it was just basically me falling further into the rabbit hole as we got closer to the early hours of the morning. So then what happened was I found after all my, you know, Googling and scrolling and everything else, I found that I could access a donor database. So I can't recall the site. But this donor database allowed me pretty much immediate access. It was basically sign up, confirm your email. then set up an account and scroll through the donor database. So while doing that, I had a look at one Darnell. So she caught my eye because she had slight, slightly similar features terrain. I say just, just ever so slightly. But that made me think that perhaps there's someone out there that resembles me. I thought maybe that way, if that would, you know, if I found during the like that, um, maybe that way I would be better connected to our, Potential child. Also the may be no one would question whether that was my child. I then found that the donor profiles included detailed, personal and medical histories. Um, so I kind of liked that. I guess it made me look at them, not the donor donors. Uh, not human, but I guess. I kind of humanized and personalized. The process, you know, that experience. Anyhow, then following that, I looked at the pricing and then that's when I got really shocked and my anxiety heightened again. I looked for more donor websites and I got really frustrated that like I did find donor websites, but I could not sign up and have immediate access. I had contact. Uh, these agencies or these clinics and ask and request the access. And of course I'd have to wait for them to contact me. Anyhow. Eventually, finally, I felt so exhausted that I was able to put my phone down and go to sleep. Ah, so it was after 3:00 AM. By that stage, I fell asleep between three and 4:00 AM. Now, some of you are probably asking a wonder asking, you know, didn't you do years of therapy. Shouldn't you know how to manage your emotions. Told us you learned skills to do that and so forth. Well, If you are thinking that what I've got to say is that, sometimes we know what we should do. And we have access to resources to prevent us from falling yet. We still fall. That's okay. You know, we're human after all and in my eyes, what's important is that we stand up again. So that concludes today's episode. Please do chain into the next episode of this podcast, where I'll share with you. What led to my decision, not to attempt falling pregnant via my, or an egg or IVF. I am my own egg. Despite the facts that I had not yet sought up-to-date fertility testing. Thank you for sharing your time with me. From my heart to yours, sending healing energy to all of my listeners.