An SMC via IVF – Single Mothers by Choice

I waited for a long time to find Mr. Right and start a family but that never happened. Finally, I was at an age where I needed to make a choice.  I investigated adoption and hit many barriers.  So, I decided to see a fertility specialist.  I decided against insemination because of my advanced maternal age (I was 45 at the time), but decided to go the IVF route.  I initially wanted to use my own eggs, and according to my test results, I could have tried.  However, after much research of my own, the percentages I was finding for successful term pregnancies using my own eggs vs. a donor egg were about 5% vs. 50%.

I thought and prayed about it and finally decided that if I was willing to adopt a child, a genetic connection wasn’t all that important to me.  However, knowing that the fetus was well taken care of during pregnancy and having the ability to breastfeed were important to me. Plus, if I was going to dish out 20+K on this venture, I wanted to give myself the best odds of having a successful pregnancy.  Thus, I decided on using a frozen donor egg and donor sperm.

Fortunately, I live in an area where my fertility specialist has a donor egg bank. I was also impressed with all of the information available to me about the sperm donor. I think I know more about my sperm donor than most of the men I’ve dated.  I also decided to do genetic chromosomal screening of the embryo before my transfer because I felt that if I was going to spend 20K, I might as well spend 24K to make sure my child doesn’t have a major chromosomal abnormality.  And, I’m very glad I did it because of the 2 blastocysts that grew to the point of being able to be transferred, one was chromosomally abnormal. As a result, I had one viable, healthy embryo to transfer and it worked the first time.

I’m now 18 weeks pregnant with my first, healthy, child.  I was ok with only having one embryo from the experience because I was only planning on having one child anyway.  I feel that the genetic testing probably increased my chances of pregnancy even more, because if I hadn’t done it and they had transferred the other embryo, I probably would have miscarried.

I was a little guarded at first about telling people how I had achieved pregnancy because I wasn’t sure how they would respond to my decision, but I am happy to say that the support and encouragement from my family and friends has been overwhelmingly positive.