👶 One journey for a child #8 👶
Authorization obtained from the creator of the picture (Facebook)
I adapt my post on one journey for a child whose French version can be found here.
September 2011
We had agreed that, in the first instance at least, we were not going to ask directly,
You want to give me your eggs?!?
Of course the goal was to find a donor but given my character and my growing impatience I had to get around the problem.
I had to find a woman, my fairy, and get her to agree to donate her eggs to me. Finally, that more precisely by donating her oocytes, she would allow me to gain places on a waiting list and thus be able to benefit more quickly from the oocytes of another donor (Mrs. X) who would have donated, for example, to help her sister (Mrs. Y).
Because obviously and fortunately in France:
Donations of any kind (gametes, organs, tissues and blood) are subject to two fundamental principles.
They are anonymous and free of charge. Therefore, it is easy and logical to understand that, I would not benefit directly from the oocytes of my fairy I knew and necessarily Mrs Y would not be given the oocytes of her own sister, Mrs X.
This system had been set up in order to make up for the lack of donors in my opinion, partly due to the lack of information, awareness and interest on the part of the public authorities.
Someone once had the indelicacy to tell me, obviously through an intermediary social network, that infertility was not fatal, that we lived very well without children and that, in any case, children were ungrateful... and that he did not really understand that I was doing so badly, that I fought so hard and that I was so critical of the French system.
I had to assimilate as much knowledge as possible quickly because I really needed to be a master on the subject in order to carry out my quest more serenely.
After having spent several hours going through all the legislation, the different criteria, the path that awaited the donor, it was totally exhausted, demoralized and worried that I told my husband,
"We'll never make it, I can't take it, I don't have the strength, it's lost...
— Stop it Christel, I can't even imagine how difficult this must be for you, much more so than for me, but we're going to make it, I promise you.
— But, um...
— I don't understand, calm down, sit down, breathe and repeat calmly, gently, I'm here, calm down."
It was only after a few hours that my husband was finally able to calm me down and give me back some courage and hope, even though inside I began to think that I would never be a mother.
It was exhausted, emptied by that day, that for once I went to bed very early.
The next day, rested and full of dynamism, I set out, in my garden, accompanied by the magnificent sunshine in the middle of the summer of St. Martin's Day, to draw up cards that could serve as a silly thought and thus allow me to verify that I had understood everything.
I think that subconsciously I knew that my husband was not going to be of much help to me in this process. I was sure that in spite of his shyness and his introverted side, if I had to, he would have told the whole world about our quest, but to ask, explain, motivate it was going to be me instead.
I was in a relatively good mood and rather fit when I was interrupted by a call on my landline phone.
My heart immediately started beating as if my body had understood before my mind what was going to happen.
I thought it was odd because it was early and nobody had my number. Dumè had just left and had forgotten his number...
"Hello, yes.
— Hello, I'm a midwife in PMA in La Conception...
— Yes, hello, it's me.
— We're having a problem with your file and he couldn't make it to the commission."
It was with incomprehensible sentences that I asked a lot of questions, clearly cutting him off, which made him look even more unpleasant.
"Madam, you'll have to let me speak or we won't be able to do it!
— Okay, sorry, I'm listening.
— Your file could not go to committee because there were some missing documents and the fact that it did not go through poses a second, more important problem."
If we had been opposite each other, I think I would have shaken him like a plum tree. I think she was a thousand miles away from imagining that words used together such as "problem, important, commission" sounded to me like the sound of a gong. Its very slow flow gave my mind time to go to all the senses with the unpleasant sensation of seeing my future rushing towards a future where everything is falling apart. His art of not getting to the heart of the matter, his obvious absence of any empathy or any other psychology, was beginning to seriously worry me, to annoy me, to make me anxious...
Apparently two pieces were missing from the file and for good reason, we discovered in the course of the conversation that they had not been requested. Obviously, it would have been too simple, logical, easy, normal for a member of the commission to take a few minutes to contact me to at least try to obtain the missing documents... Instead, our case had not even been examined at all, just put back in the pile of incomplete and/or rejected files. I had told myself that in these conditions, beyond the shortage of donation, the organization, the care was really very particular.
The second more annoying problem was indeed that my file not having been studied during this commission the next one being in two months, I would be 37 years old.
"And then what does that imply, excuse me, but it's really not clear and it seems serious."
It was with great indifference that she announced the disaster.
You will have to wait for the rest, hoping that you enjoyed it, allowed you to reflect, and especially to learn more about medically assisted reproduction with oocyte donation.
See you soon.
Christel @corsica
One journey for a child #1
One journey for a child #2
One journey for a child #3
One journey for a child #4
One journey for a child #5
One journey for a child #6
One journey for a child #7
To go further, here are some articles that I have selected with great care, unfortunately only one is in English because they are important articles for which I do not find an equivalent in English (mainly French problem):
- PMA ET GPA : Ce que dit la loi en France / Article Le Parisien
- La filiation de l'enfant issu d'une assistance médicale à la procréation
- Échecs de la FIV par don d’ovocytes ou un lieu pour la subjectivité
- Psychological considerations of anonymous oocyte donation
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