I Regret…

I have read through many of the stories and different points of view here. I hope it’s ok but I wanted to post my point of view which is very different from any of the others I’ve read here.

I am an older mom of 1 young child conceived of my own egg and my husband’s sperm via IVF. We recognize what a blessing our child is.

This may sound very odd to some out there but my regret is that I never donated my eggs. I very badly wanted to donate my eggs, not for the money but for my own selfish reasons of wishing I had more children out there somewhere. By now these children would be in their early 20s and I would have loved meeting them if they wanted. I know it sounds strange but it’s truly how I feel.

I saw several egg donor ads when in college but back then it was still a fairly new procedure. I wanted to donate so badly I clipped these ads from newspapers and carried them around in my wallet. I was a little frightened of possibly losing my fertility to a new procedure, a common topic of discussion around campus back then, but I was much more frightened of my disapproving parents finding out I had donated my eggs. I tried to tell my mother I wanted to do this and she was very upset to say the least. My parents believed it was not mine to give. They believed my fertility was also theirs, at least in part, since I carried their genetic material. They were not my eggs, they were “our family’s eggs” because I was not “old enough” to understand what I was truly doing. They were very strict with me and controlled me very much. Since I am an only child and my parents are my only family, I didn’t want to lose what little family I had. Today I feel I was bullied into not donating by my parents and I am so regretful of having allowed them to do that to me. My mother constantly told me I would regret the decision later and that I was not capable of truly understanding this decision until I had children of my own. Well I believed her, but now that I’m much older, after much reflection, I am sure I would not have regretted my decision. As a parent I can’t say I have any different understanding or feeling about it either. I feel it was such a wonderful opportunity that was taken from me and I regret not having gone against my parent’s wishes and satisfied my own. I’m much too old to donate now but if I could I would in a heartbeat.