Fertile ground

For many couples, a donor egg provides a last chance in their effort to conceive a child. Here, a multiple egg donor and a woman desperate for a baby reveal what egg donation means to them.

Faith Haugh, 38, lives in Altona, Victoria, with her husband, Glenn Watson, and daughter Ashlyn, 19. She has made 38 egg donations resulting in 17 donor children, with another baby on the way.

"I clearly remember the day I first decided to become a donor. I was browsing The Age newspaper when I spotted an ad placed by a couple who'd had one child, stillborn, and had been trying for 10 years to have another. They were looking for an egg donor.

The ad touched me. I'd never known anyone who was infertile. I had no idea what was involved but, at 23, I knew that I was fertile. I'd had Ashlyn the day before my 19th birthday.

The way egg donation works is that the donor and recipient are put on the contraceptive pill to bring their menstrual cycles in sync. Then you have a tablet to suppress ovulation and you start taking daily hormone injections to help produce more eggs. Then there's a scan to see how many eggs [are produced] and what size they are. They're graded, like the ones you buy in cartons!

You give yourself a 'trigger' injection to release the eggs. I used to average between 18 and 25 eggs. Out of those, only two might be viable.

It's not a comfortable process and that deters people from donating. There are women who go through the whole process and when they wake up from the anaesthetic, they change their mind. Once the eggs are fertilised, they're the property of the couple.

Before that, they're yours. I was counselled, but I was blasé . Because it was anonymous, there was no personal attachment. The couple had twin girls - that's as much as I knew.

Over the next three years, I did another three anonymous donations. Once I got a thank-you card, and it would have been nice if the others had done that, too. But that's their prerogative. Before 2006, they hadn't introduced the law in Victoria that at the age of 18 a donor child can find out how they were conceived. (Similar legislation has been passed in NSW, but not yet implemented.)

I stopped donating because my partner at the time didn't approve. After we broke up, I saw a two-line ad in the public notices in the paper. I responded because I thought no one else would.

That first face-to-face donation was an introduction to what people go through. It all changed for me then; I became passionate about helping people. These couples spend years and years doing the right thing - not drinking, not smoking - doing anything they can to be parents.

I was never a compassionate person - I never went out of my way to give to charity - but with this I am compassionate. With Ashlyn, I was pregnant in March, married in September and divorced by December. I struggled, working days and nights.

I wasn't around for bedtime stories. To see people have the patience they do with their children... I think I would be like that now.

A lot of women think that sisters or nieces are the best people to help [by donating an egg], but it doesn't make it better. The recipient might worry if the donor is playing with the child, wondering if she's regretting it. It can bring up problems.

I have never asked to see the children. Parents always say they would love to keep in touch but sometimes they change their minds, and that's OK.

I do ask for a phone call on the day of the birth to find out if everyone's OK, and what the sex is.

I get a buzz out of keeping in touch with the parents. We catch up and talk about our lives - it's not just based on the children. I always ask, 'How is your gorgeous girl/boy?' It helps reassure the parents that I don't feel any connection to their children, and I don't.

Ashlyn doesn't look at the children like they're half-brothers or -sisters. She's met the ones I'm in touch with. I started telling her about it when she was eight or nine. She says she'd like to do it one day.

Friends haven't always understood. We live in a society where there are few people who will do something for nothing. Often the nurses would ask me if I was doing it for money. I was insulted.

I do it because I can. [Federal legislation prevents payment for eggs, sperm or embryos.] I have been offered money. A woman and her husband offered me $30,000. I don't own a house. I was driving a 15-year-old car. I said no.

You are legally permitted to donate to create 10 families and I've got my 10. But I do seminars and I've got six other couples to help.

I've only had one failure; there were sperm issues. Each time it didn't work I was so disappointed. She tried everything - if you'd told her to chant naked on a full moon, she would have done it. She ended up just getting too old and her husband told her he wanted to give it up.

Glenn and I have been together for eight years, and married for four months. He didn't think about the donations until he saw me talk at a seminar and looked around at the people. Having said that, he reckons I've done my bit for humanity. He'd prefer us to have a child of our own now.

Part of me would love to have another child but I'll be 39 this year, so I doubt it will happen. I'm not sure I'm ready to change my life that much. But the biological clock is ticking."

Melbourne-based Jannie Meli, a nanny, and Joseph Di Nuzzo, a postal worker, have been together for eight years and trying for a baby for six. After two miscarriages, Jannie was advised by a doctor to look for an egg donor.

She is still looking.

"I cried when I was told I needed a donor. We had conceived twice on our own in 2003 and 2004, but I miscarried both times. At that point, it was suggested we consider IVF. I was 40 and I knew that the chances of conception were diminishing.

We tried the IVF process three times, but they couldn't get the eggs they needed.

So I went to a specialist. He was a man of few words who took one look at my file and told me not to come back unless I had an egg donor with me. I just cried. I'd been given pamphlets during my IVF treatment and I knew how difficult it was to find a donor.

Then, within a week, we found a donor. I couldn't believe it. We told a girl we knew from bingo what the specialist had told us and she said, 'I can do that.' It was so simple. Unfortunately, she had abnormal cells in a pap smear. That ruled her out.

We started searching for a new donor. We talked to everyone we knew, asking if they were interested - friends, friends of friends - but nobody wanted to do it. You get a lot of negativity; the idea of hormone injections turns them off.

We even appeared on Kerri-Anne Kennerley's morning TV show. We got a huge response, but most women turned out to be too old. The younger the donor, the better the chance that a healthy pregnancy will result. I'm looking for someone

over 21 and under 35, who already has kids of her own. I wouldn't like to use a donor who hasn't had a child. There's a 1 per cent chance that a donation might affect their ability to conceive later on, and I'd hate to take that risk.

I know donating is not without its risks. There's the possibility of overstimulating the ovaries, which can make you very unwell or, in rare cases, kill you. That's one reason I wouldn't object to paying cash if it wasn't illegal. You get to a point where you'd be happy to pay for that person's time and effort.

We did find one potential donor, but it didn't work out. She seemed lovely at first, but she had an issue with the fact that I'm a bit overweight - the doctor told me it's only a matter of losing three to six kilos as far as fertility is concerned. She ended up not wanting to donate eggs because she didn't want 'her' child to be a 'fat child'. She didn't seem to understand that it wasn't going to be her child. Joe and I are not jealous people and are happy for a donor to have occasional contact with the child, but if you're going to have hassles down the track it's not worth starting.

We've had three potential donors in all. The last one I found through a friend. She'd sit in the waiting room and not even acknowledge us, but she never missed an appointment - except the last one. My weight was an issue with her as well, and she told the counsellor she was annoyed with me for not losing it faster. Plus she was worried about the 1 per cent chance she might lose her fertility. Joe and I call the last two 'time wasters'. You're not talking about a week out of our lives; you could be talking three to four months. They've taken that time away from us.

I've always wanted to be a mum. If I had my own way, I'd have my child myself, but I don't have a choice. When something's out of your control, you have to do what you can. I'm not a person to give up. Sometimes I wonder if I'm getting too old for it.

I look fine, but what you feel like is a different thing.

We'll keep going as long as we're both happy to do so and can afford to. So far, it's cost us about $6000, but we've never managed a full cycle of IVF. Joe's with me all the way. He will often turn to me and say, 'I wonder what our baby will look like.' He wants a Jacinta. I tell him it might be a boy."

For more information on egg donation, go to the Essential Baby egg donor forum.