Patients’ stories

Report on our experiences — Egg donation in St. Petersburg (translated from German)

After various failed ICSI infertility treatments our fertility clinic recommended that we think about an egg donation.
I was pretty skeptical at first. Would that still be my child? Would I be able to accept it?
…In the meantime, we’re into the 27th week of pregnancy and I don’t think I could possibly love my child even more than I do.

She’s here at last! (translated from German)

Every morning I can hear my daughter’s laughter coming from her room, it wakes me up and I’m overjoyed. She is one-and-a-half years old by now, fit as a fiddle and pretty as a picture. This child is mine through and through and I don’t give it a moment’s thought …

Success story 28

…For me it was like the worst nightmare. I had never thought there would be any problems to get children. To live my life without having a family felt impossible. I started to read about embryo-donation… I gave it a lot of thought how it would feel to carry a child who genetically wasn’t ours. Would it feel like ”my own”? How would it look like, and how would the child feel about it when it got older…. …one girl and one boy were born. We love them above all. And we like to think there was a reason that these two beautiful children came to us.

Success story 29 (translated from German)

The wish to have a child together was of enormous proportions. But still, I needed time to get used to the idea of an egg donation. I’ve never regretted my decision and I am the happiest person in the world now that I have twin daughters.

Success story 30

När jag bestämde mig hade jag passerat en ålder på 40 år och jag visste att mina chanser att bli mamma med mina egna ägg var minimala. Därför bestämde jag mig för en äggdonation och valde St Petersburg med anledning av deras goda statistik för graviditet samt att det inte är någon väntan på äggdonator.

All we wanted to do was become a small family…

.....and we had to look on how everyone around us seemed to be able to have children, usually without any major problems, just like that. We, on the other hand, were in our late thirties in the meantime and were considered the incorrigible childless couple that didn’t want to give up their careers…

Success story 32

Jeg gjennomgikk et vanlig prøverørsforsøk med partner i Norge som ikke lyktes og gjorde også ett embryodonasjonsforsøk i utlandet som singel før jeg kom i kontakt med Dr. Olga.
Her sitter jeg i dag med en fantastisk flott gutt på ti måneder. Min største drøm her i livet har gått i oppfyllelse, og det har vært verdt alt.

Fighting to get pregnant

I had two choices only: Adopt a child or try an egg donation. However, only an egg donation will let you capture the experience of a pregnancy as well. You can feel the baby growing inside you and live through all the ups and downs of being pregnant. And pregnancy is a special, irreplaceable time…

Success story 34

…Because of my age they refused to help me further here in Sweden. The fact that my boyfriend is 15 years younger than me and the fact that we are a young active couple was not taken to a consideration here in Sweden. Adopting a child was not an option…
We stayed in St. Petersburg ten days…The result of these 10 days is a beautiful baby boy.

Finally, I have become a MOTHER!!!

It was a very hard and long road that I had to travel, but it was worth the effort. I made it! Becoming a mother was my fondest wish and most cherished dream and this dream has come true…

Success story 36 (translated from German)

…I got pregnant again — and I had yet another miscarriage. All of this was wearing me down. Our nerves were frayed, we were very emotional and there was a lot of pressure on our relationship. We had a number of arguments and during one of those disputes I told my husband that I was so desperate, I might even be willing to consider an egg donation. Much to my surprise, he didn’t seem to have a problem with that either. So don’t lose heart, maybe one does misjudge one’s partner after all!..

En jobbig resa med ett lyckligt slut

Vi genomförde två stycken försök där utan att lyckas och modet sjönk igen. Det fina i detta är att vi kom närmare varandra i vår relation och vi bestämde oss för att gå ett steg längre. Efter rekommendation från vår svenska läkare beslutade vi oss för att prova äggdonation...

Success story 38

…We did as I remember two embryo transfers with fresh donor eggs and three with frozen embryos with no results. We did the last embryo transfer with fresh eggs and fresh sperm from my husband… At this time I was almost 50 years…
…Our angels come in week 36. She was 3.67 kg and he was 3.05 kg.
Until now it has not been any specific problems with being parents in our age.

Egg donation in Saint Petersburg

What are you supposed to do if you biggest dream is proving hard to fulfill?

…now we are looking forward with excitement and joy, instead of pain with thought that we maybe never will be parents.

Success story 40

We made four attempts using normal IVF, but to no avail. The doctors then advised us that it might be better for us to try using donated eggs...
..Our girls are now ten months old. Not a day goes past when we don’t say to each other how happy they make us. The only thing we know about the donor is her height, weight, eye colour, hair colour and education. But who ever she is, judging by our loverly girls, she must be fantastic!

We used to read and dream about it – but here we are, telling about it!

We used to read and dream about it – but here we are, telling about it!
We found out quite fast that it would never be possible for us to get pregnant on a natural way, as I in the age of 28 found out that I was in early menopause - which means NO EGGS to fertilize.
Further my husband got tested and he was told that his sperm quality was bad and not good enough for natural fertilization so there we were.
We talked about our situation and decided that 2 times minus will be PLUS!

The most precious baby girl in the whole world....

…Our little baby girl was finally born in springtime this year 2011. She cried vividly the moment she saw daylight, and was in excellent condition from this very beginning!
At first it felt quite unreal, but after 2-3 days I suddenly and completely fell in love with her – and have been so ever since !
To become the mother of our little daughter is the most wonderful thing I have ever experienced – almost impossible to try to explain.

Success story 43

I have always wanted a family, a large one, but it never occured to me that this dream might not come true…
Now, I became pregnant at the first attempt. The pregnancy was completely normal and when my son was born I know immediately that he was the one I´ve been waiting for all my life.

Success story 44

…For him to say yes to one oocyte donation was like saying no to the opportunity of giving life to a future family member of the family, erasing any possibility of recognizing me through this child…
…For me the egg donation was in a way like closing an attic-window to open instead a proper gate. I finally saw a solution to the problem of fertility!...
…Our hearts are finally at peace and grateful since our happiness was born one a fine day during the fall 2012. Since then, we’re no orphan parents anymore, we finally are a little family.

Success story 45

I had always thought, I don’t know why, that I would have a child, that the failed IVF's were not the end of my story - it is that thought that kept me going.
I did however have tiny thoughts that kept creeping into my head that if I was to get pregnant the baby might not feel like it is mine and a sadness that kept washing over me that my baby would never look like me…

Success story 46

Since I have two children, one made with my own eggs and the other with donor eggs, I can say that for me there is no difference in my emotional attachment to my children…

My Russian princess

Our journey of becoming parents started at the age of 28. My husband was only a few years younger. After trying the "normal way" a few years with only negative results every month, we decided to contact a specialist. Unfortunately my husband sperm was proven to be of low quality. We were therefore advised to attempt IVF. Unfortunately this neither gave us the result we dreamed of, only an early miscarriage. After our IVF attempts we were told there also could be something wrong with my eggs. Even though egg donation is illegal in my country, our clinic had a doctor that advised us to look in to it. So our next step was then to do some research.

How to grow life in 8.5 millimeter of hope.

After years of being single I reached the conclusion that it was time to stop waiting for the”right” man. Men my age (then 40) were mostly engaged with younger women or were weekend dads with enough on their plates. I stopped looking for the man that was my equal and decided that I would be a mother on my own. I had been inspired by a good female friend of mine who was a few years older than me to look into IVF with a male donor. What had struck me the most about this proposition was all the hard work that I would have to do on my own and all the dependency on my family and friends that would follow...