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Becky: Hi, everyone, and welcome to Becky and Ben’s Fertility Spotlight. I’m Becky.
Ben: I’m Ben.
Becky: We’ve supported IVF patients for over 10 years, and we’re an IVF couple ourselves, with two rapidly growing daughters, our pride and joy.
Ben: Our conversations will take you to the heart of the fertility narrative. We want everyone to feel included, well-informed, and cared for.
Becky: In this episode, we’re talking about donor eggs, a topic close to our hearts, and we’ll be joined by TV producer and donor egg mom, Julia.
Ben: Do remember, our podcast is general information only. For a personalized diagnosis, always speak to a healthcare professional.
Becky: Let’s jump straight into this fascinating topic.
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Becky: We have our two gorgeous daughters, Ida, age 11, and Coral, age 9. Today we have a very special guest, a donor egg mom, and her name is Julia. She has kindly agreed to talk about her personal story. We first of all want to talk a little bit about our journey and what we went through.
Ben: We talked about it in episode 1, didn’t we? Everything we went through. We met quite late in life, in our late 30s, and we knew we wanted children. We tried naturally for possibly a bit too long.
Becky: Yes, and then we had our IVF cycles, with various failures, and then we went into having donor egg treatment. I was 41, and I realized that my eggs were too old. I’d been through IVF cycles with my own eggs before, and had various failures. We reached the decision, didn’t we, Ben?
Ben: We did. It was a great decision, although it took us a long time to get our heads around it. The first time it was suggested to us, as we said in an earlier episode. We were really not sure, were we, at all, about doing that?
Becky: No, we were actually quite shocked, and we were like, “Oh my God, donor egg treatment, no way.” Then we came around to it, and we decided to have counseling, because we’d been through a lot of failure, and we felt the need to have at least six months’ counseling, which was very, very helpful in terms of grieving the loss of our own eggs, but also, as you say, approaching a fertility mindset where we were ready and willing to do donor egg treatment.
Ben: Because I think half the battle was developing a positive, pragmatic approach to treatment. We knew that the donor egg route was the one for us, and once we made the decision to do it, we actually almost enjoyed it.
Becky: Yes. It felt very novel, but it also felt incredibly positive in the sense that we knew that the success rates were higher. In a way, we felt more in control, and we knew that it was very different from the IVF with your own eggs process.
Ben: Exactly. Let me just talk about the tech for a minute, because people often think, “How does it possibly work?” I think the main thing to remember is that your donor is going through the IVF bit. If you’ve had IVF before donor egg treatment, you’ll know the IVF bit and all the injections, but your donor does that herself, and you, as a donor egg recipient, are synchronized with the cycle of that donor.
Becky: It’s very clever, and the clinic work out exactly the synchronization that’s needed.
Ben: They do. You take medication at a particular point, and it may sound extremely complicated and daunting, but actually, the clinics know exactly what they’re doing in terms of synchronizing your cycle with the donor’s cycle, and medication comes to your aid. I think a typical donor egg protocol sees estrogen and progesterone support, and it also involves switching off your ovaries with an injection. In fact, the very first thing that you ever had at the start of the donor egg cycle was an intramuscular injection, which is not a very romantic start to the proceedings.
Becky: I’m not sure romance really played much part in the fertility process, and that’s something we can talk about in future episodes, is how do you sustain your relationship? How do you keep the romance in your relationship when you’re going through such a grueling, tough process medically? It’s not very sexy, is it, Ben?
Ben: It’s not sexy, but you just have to hang in there, and I think once you’ve made the decision, as we said, your next route is thinking about the right clinic to use, and this is a very interesting area, isn’t it? Because we are very, very fortunate in our world to have lots of wonderful fertility clinics. Some of those do specialize in donor treatment, so we did a lot of research ourselves and read the reviews, and looked at the success rates.
Becky: Yes, that’s true. We spent a lot of time on the internet talking to people, trying to find reviews that really complemented certain clinics that had young donors that were accessible and so on, and clinics with a choice and a range of donors that we felt would suit us. When we went to our clinic in the Czech Republic, we knew that we would have a donor that was anonymous, but we were able to say, “I would like a donor with blonde hair, blue eyes, university-educated, likes sport.”
Ben: The matching was good. It’s worth remembering, though, isn’t it, that not all countries allow donor egg treatment. This is a podcast, we’re recording this in the UK, where it is allowed, and in many parts of Europe, but there are some countries where you’re not allowed to have donor egg treatment. If there’s anyone listening now in a country where perhaps it’s not allowed, do write us a comment, because we’d be interested to hear your viewpoint.
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Becky: When you actually carry a donor egg baby, it’s very interesting, because there’s been a lot of research on how much your uterine environment, how much the DNA, how much your blood, how much your emotions actually influence the baby in your uterus.
Ben: It’s a very interesting area. There are university departments devoted entirely to [crosstalk].
Becky: I think Southampton, Cambridge.
Ben: Yes, epigenetics is a name rather complicated, but I think the reason that donor egg recipients are interested in this is because they do want to feel a bond with their baby, but what we found was that actually the bond with your baby happens anyway.
Becky: Yes, that’s very true. I found the moment that I was pregnant with my donor egg baby with Ida, that I immediately, A, felt incredibly happy and so relieved that I was actually pregnant. I think I remember a friend of mine saying that I was the happiest pregnant person she’d ever seen.
Ben: I remember this. You were a proud mother.
Becky: I was very, very happy, even when I felt incredibly sick, like I was on a Towsend-Torreson ferry for the first three months. I was so happy, and I felt myself bonding with my baby from literally day one. It was an incredible experience, and then when I was privileged enough to have Ida through a caesarean section, because of my past situations. I can go into more details with that another time. When I had Ida, I immediately looked at her and fell in love.
Ben: I think what it is we hear this story all the time. There was maybe one patient out of about 1000 that we’ve helped over the years who said, “Guys, I’m not sure I bonded very well [crosstalk].
Becky: She was very honest, wasn’t she?
Ben: She was very, very honest.
Becky: Very interesting.
Ben: We thought, “Oh dear, oh dear,” because that was not the norm. Do you remember? About six weeks later, she called us and she said, “Forget what I just said.” She’d absolutely fallen in love with her child.
Becky: It’s something that is so special, and if you think of IVF patients who have been through so much hardship and so many difficulties, that when you actually are privileged enough to have donor egg treatment, when you have your baby in your arms, it is the most wonderful thing in the world.
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Ben: Let’s move on to another topic, which, again, is very, very popular on the forums, as you can imagine, and that is, do you tell your child that he or she is donor conceived?
Becky: Yes, that’s really interesting. I remember thinking about this a great deal. I think it was when Ida was around three or four, I started talking to her, and I did the same with Coral when she was about three or four, about the miracle of her, of having three people that had created her, which is amazing.
Ben: I think the general consensus in the counselling world, as far as I can understand it, is that if you do decide to tell your child– You don’t have to. There’s no right or wrong. It’s entirely your decision. It’s a very private matter, but if you do decide to tell them, do it around that age. If you leave it to when they’re going off to university, age 18, and drop the bombshell there, you can see why that’s not going to work.
Becky: Of course, or when they’re a teenager, and they discover some notes in your drawer about you going off to a donor egg clinic, it’s not ideal. As you say, it’s your decision, obviously. Some couples say, “No, we’re never going to say anything,” and that is your decision.
Ben: They may have personal or religious reasons for that.
Becky: Or religious reasons. Exactly. We always talked about the egg lady, and how delightful, and how wonderful and lucky we were to have her in our lives.
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Ben: We want to speak very, very briefly about anonymity. This is a question we’re going to ask Julia in a minute. Thank you, Julia, for standing by. We’ll bring you in a sec. We know that in the UK, where we’re recording this podcast, a donor-conceived child is allowed to trace their donor at the age of 18. Now we were happy to go abroad for treatment, where, of course, it’s complete anonymity in most EU countries. There’s no right or wrong answer, is there?
Becky: There really isn’t. Some people prefer to have the option of their donor egg child being able to trace their genetic donor at the age of 18, but some people are, I suppose, more relaxed about it. It’s an interesting one, isn’t it, Ben, that I think we once had a patient who said, “Oh, what happens if, when my daughter’s 20, she has a problem and she has an illness and we don’t know where it comes from?
Ben: I think each clinic would do things differently, but I think probably what would happen is that the clinic would make the necessary investigations and would be obliged to do that. I don’t know how that would work in terms of any contact with that donor, but these things are very, very rare. It must be said, very, very rare, that there is some kind of medical condition that comes back.
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Ben: I just wanted to move on to finally introduce Julia. Julia, thank you so much for joining us. It’s lovely that you’ve agreed to speak about your experience as a donor egg mum, because I don’t know if you feel this, Becky, but not everybody wants to go public about it, do they?
Becky: No, I think it’s a very personal thing, and I think it’s actually very courageous of you to come in and talk to us, so thank you.
Julia: That’s very sweet. I don’t feel it’s courageous, but I do feel it’s something I like to talk about, or certainly in the right settings, because there is taboo around the notion of donor egg conception, and I hate that. I’ve been on an interesting journey with it, and it’s probably the thing that I am most proud of doing in my whole life. I’m a typical woman of a certain sort, I suppose. I worked very, very hard, played very, very hard, did not find the right person until I was in my late 30s.
Becky: I can relate to that.
Julia: Ollie and I got together when I was about 39, I think. A year or two later, I’m terrible on time, I took a fertility test, and I had zero fertility. I will never forget that date. Not a blip, not a thing, nothing.
Becky: I’m so sorry. That must have been really hard. Really shocking.
Julia: Yes. There followed many months of weeping and locking myself in the toilets at work. I worked at Channel 4 at the time, and it felt like every day there would be a fresh email saying, “So-and-so is pregnant, come to so-and-so’s baby shower.” Those moments are so hard.
Becky: They’re so hard.
Julia: I sometimes think that big organizations should take a look and maybe think about managing that a little bit differently.
Becky: Yes. Of course.
Julia: It’s not to say that one isn’t happy.
Becky: Of course.
Julia: Anyway, that was a long and painful period. Look, I, to be honest, just wasted loads of money doing fertility treatments that might have made a difference, and I think it was because I was so numb, I just wasn’t thinking straight. I took advice from a friend and did this, did that, and really wasted my own time, I think, and a lot of money, our time, and money. Then we did a round of donor egg with a British donor, and that was really painful because we were on a waiting list for a very long time, I was doing follicle stimulation just to fill in the time, I think, and it didn’t work.
The whole process had not felt great because, like most women who go into this, I’m smart enough to do a bit of sensible Googling, and it just didn’t look like the chances were good at the outset. We were sharing the eggs. Of course, they’re the lady’s eggs, that’s good, but you’re halving a set of eggs that were already not good because the lady herself was not in a great state of health.
Becky: Can I ask how old the lady was?
Julia: I can’t remember. In her 30s, probably.
Ben: Egg sharing is a strangely English thing, isn’t it? As far as we’re aware, we don’t see it happening that much in Europe.
Julia: Or in America, I think, because I remember going out for lunch with an American colleague and telling her about what I was doing, and she just looked at me and, “Julia, I’m going to draw you a diagram.” Terrible American, my apologies. She just divided a set of eggs or something like that on a piece of paper and held it up and said, “This makes no sense, Julia, what are you doing with your life?” That gave me a bit of a shake. I think the clinic where I’d been slightly messing about for some time had right early on mentioned, “We have a connection with the clinic in Spain.”
I think my husband was slightly more cautious about anything that was outside the NHS. I, by that time, would have given birth to a cat. I was that desperate. Seriously, I used to talk about, “If I could give birth to a kitten, I would be happy. Can we just make that happen?” It took us a long time. We took a flight, probably about two, three years, and then we just booked a flight to Madrid, went to the clinic. It was amazing. It was just lots of incredibly friendly people, really well-resourced, everyone spoke amazing English, beautiful hospital, and someone who just held on hand for the rest of the process.
We just got in the taxi back to the airport, and I looked at Ollie, and he’s like, “Yes, of course, why not? Absolutely, let’s do it.”
Becky: Amazing.
Julia: After that, everything was much easier and much simpler. Madrid still holds a very special place in my heart. We took the train back from Madrid because I was so paranoid about getting on the plane, and it made us laugh in a slightly hysterical way, because actually the train was just so jolting all the way back.
Becky: So bumpy.
Julia: Yes. It was a overnight sleeper to Paris, and it was just jolting.
Ben: We were told, weren’t we, that an embryo newly implanted or ready to be implanted in your uterus is like a bit of rice in a jar of jam, I think we were told. We worried about the bumpy thing, the bumpy trains, but apparently it really doesn’t matter.
Julia: The jam was keeping it safe all the way to Paris and then London.
Ben: Yes.
Julia: Good. Now we have Eve. Eve is 12.
Becky: Congratulations.
Julia: She’s lovely. She’s absolutely lovely. I think that in terms of the taboo around it, Eve has always known. We took advice, which is excellent. I would say this to everyone, start talking about it when they are a baby. You can start to find the words, you can start to find the story to tell as you change their nappy, as you cuddle them, as you feed them, just tell them. For Eve, it was like, “You are incredibly special. I love you so much. We made you thanks to a really kind lady who gave us an egg.” Now it’s more complicated than a really kind lady who gave us an egg, but with a baby in your arms, there it is.
Eve has always known. We’ve said to her, “Think about who you tell this to. It’s your story to tell. You probably don’t want to say it to people who will just tell it to lots of other people as though it’s something to chat about.”
Becky: Yes. I think that’s really wise.
Julia: She may have not always followed that advice. There are a few times when she’s come home– all people have just been kids and not known how to respond. She’s come home and said, “Mummy, am I adopted? Because so and so says you’re not my real mummy.” I’m like, “Okay, interesting. Let’s talk about the concept of real mummy. There are many kinds of real mummy. Then two, you’re not adopted. You came out of me. I would love you just as much if you were adopted, but you’re not. You came out of my body. You grew inside me, fed on my blood.” I know, a bit gory.
Ben: On that point, you mentioned, Julia, about telling Eve at an early age. That’s what we did, wasn’t it, Becky? We did the, as you say, “The nice egg lady came to the clinic and helped us out. Nine months later, you appeared.” I’m glad we did it because actually, when we speak about this to Ida and Coral now, they’re quite bored.
Julia: Absolutely. This is the thing. Eve has no curiosity.
Becky: They say, “Mummy, where’s the iPad?” Literally, “Oh, Mummy.”
Julia: Being a filmmaker, I insisted we took photos, not even video so much as photos, because they could be more accessible. There’s one of me, this is so insane, looking like I am high on drugs, because the implantation and transfer thingy has just been done. Literally, I was just like, “Take a photo of me now.” I’m just beaming radiant. There’s that. There’s us on the train back. There’s all of this.
Becky: There’s a whole journey coming back.
Julia: Is Eve interested? Absolutely not, but I love these images.
Becky: Of course.
Julia: Then one of her on my breast straight after being born. For me, that’s her origin story.
Becky: I thought it was interesting when you said that she came back and her friend said, “Your mummy isn’t your mummy,” because Coral came back when she was eight years old. No, sorry, she was seven. She came through the door and she said, “Mummy, you’re not my mummy.”
Julia: Oh.
Becky: I was like, “Whoa, hang on a second.” We sat down, and I said, “Well, you know what? I am your mummy, and you are a very lucky girl because you are such a miracle as we’ve talked about before. You were created by three people. I am your mummy. I carried you. You had the egg lady, who was your genetic parent, donor, but I am your mummy and I always will be, and I love you so much.” She looked at me and she went, “Yes, that’s right, Mummy.” She’s never mentioned it again.
Ben: She was okay with it.
Becky: She was okay with it. It was really interesting. She’s a very bright little girl, but it was really interesting how she was like– She remembered the history of us telling her. Obviously, donor egg kids might be thrown, as you were saying, with Eve, in the playground, into a, “Oh, what’s going on?”
Julia: I think the idea is that they’ve just always known and there’s never a identity jolt.
Becky: Exactly.
Julia: I went on quite being a worrier. I worry away at things as well in all the various waiting times when you’re getting jabbed in the butt and across the course of weeks. A friend at work, his mother was a epigeneticist.
Becky: Oh, yes.
Julia: His father was a moral philosopher. I had a nice little glass of sherry with each of them. Epigenetics, oh my God, it’s the third way whereby-
Becky: It’s so interesting.
Julia: -actually, the child in your womb is receiving all sorts of influences. It sits between nature and nurture. There’s not this polarity between nature and nurture.
Becky: It’s your DNA, your blood.
Julia: Yes, it’s your stress levels, it’s your mood, it’s everything that’s going on as you, the housing for this child that’s coming into being. There’s a load of you that goes into the baby whilst pregnant.
Ben: It’s an extremely interesting subject, epigenetics.
Julia: Yes, it’s a big and complex one.
Ben: For example, I think there’s a Cambridge faculty just devoted to epigenetics, isn’t there?
Julia: It feels like no one’s heard of it, but to me, it felt really important because that tick-tock of nature and nurture, nature and nurture, nature and nurture is just too binary. It’s abrasive, really. Epigenetics helped me because it made so much sense, but then moral philosophy was hilarious. I went to see David’s father, who sat me down for a rather sticky glass of sherry. I said, “I worried about this. Is it fair to bring a child into the world who won’t know her genetic mother? Am I being wildly selfish? Will she have identity crisis?” He just looked at me for a moment, head on one side, and said, “Julia, are you going to love this baby?” I said, “Yes.” “Julia, are you going to work really hard to give her the best life you possibly can?”
Becky: It’s very emotional.
Julia: I said, “Yes.” He said, “Darling, just have another glass of sherry and don’t worry about it.”
Ben: Because you do worry about everything under the sun, don’t you? [crosstalk].
Becky: Of course you do. That’s perfectly natural to have these questions.
Ben: I remember after you were pregnant with Ida, Becky, you were saying to me, “She feels completely like my child,” then.
Becky: Yes, when I was pregnant.
Julia: Yes.
Becky: Absolutely.
Julia: Same here. Totally. I used to talk to her.
Becky: Exactly. The bond that you form is huge from day one, isn’t it, when you’re pregnant?
Julia: I chose to find out what sex she was because I’m like, “Dear God, there’s been so much construction.” We decided that she was going to be called Eve really early on. I’d go off and get my sandwich at lunchtime and chat to Eve. It was lovely.
Ben: I think also what you said there is we meet our children earlier than everybody else. We see the speck on the screen.
Julia: Oh, my goodness. Yes, I thought that. There were two. I had two specks.
Ben: Two specks?
Julia: Yes.
Ben: Very good.
Julia: The next scan, one.
Ben: You’re having scans before anyone else even knows that they’re getting pregnant.
Julia: Yes, it’s true. I’d forgotten that.
Ben: You said you’re with the journey just much longer.
Julia: Yes, it’s magical, actually.
Ben: I wanted to ask a quick question. It’s a question we were often asking ourselves. Using an anonymous donor, how did you feel about that?
Julia: Using an anonymous donor, lots of different feelings about that. One, I was desperate. It really didn’t matter. Motherhood wasn’t that for me. Not because I was desperate, because even now it’s not that for me. It’s not important to me whether Eve looks like me. I actually think it’s quite liberating for me that she doesn’t look like the spit of me. I look like the spit of my mum. It was always a bit of a cross to bear. I think it’s wonderful. She and I talk about this. She can write her own history slightly freer of some of these things. She does look a lot like her dad. She perhaps looks like some lady in Madrid. I could walk down the street in Madrid and pass her. I sometimes think about that.
Becky: Me too. When I go back to Brno, when I’m with my girls, and boy, are they bored of going to the clinic, I can tell you.
Julia: God, they have a much closer relationship with it.
Becky: Yes, of course. Of course, they’re very sweet and they’re very well behaved and so on. When I walk down the street, I do think, “I wonder if you’re there.” In fact, we wrote a poem to our egg donor.
Ben: We did a video poem, wasn’t it? Which was actually quite nice.
Becky: To say thank you.
Ben: We filmed the children going round Brno, and we had some nice music, and we had the poem coming up. I think it’s on the website, isn’t it?
Becky: Yes, I think we felt immensely grateful.
Julia: Dear God, yes. Immensely grateful. It’s a complicated mixture. Intense gratitude, some wondering about who she is, where she is. I imagine that she was a student, perhaps. The clinic that we went to is surrounded by universities on the edge of Madrid.
Ben: It’s possible.
Julia: When I found out I had no fertility, I’ve had an absolute crisis of femininity and had a massive feeling of failure. I worked through that, and I don’t carry that around.
Becky: No.
Julia: Actually, once I got to the pregnancy stage, or even into the process of egg donor treatment, the anonymity, I think, it’s only ever bothered me potentially for Eve. As I say, perhaps because we’ve always talked about it, it doesn’t seem to be a thing. I always said to my husband, “One of these days–” When she was a baby, I used to look at her and say, “One of these days, this little squealing blob is going to say to me, ‘You’re not my real mum.'” You have that moment.
This is the thing that I am incredibly proud of, for both of us, all of us, is that when that day happened, not that long ago, Eve’s now 12, so relatively recently, it was like bouncing a pea off an elephant hide. It’s like, “Dear God, I’m not your mum. Tell that to my undercarriage, love. Seriously.”
Becky: “Come on.
Julia: “If I’m not your mum–” I was just really, really proud that that cannot find a chink of insecurity in me, because
Becky: That’s interesting.
Julia: -I’m her mum.
Becky: Yes, absolutely. Just our final question. Was your partner totally on board from the start of the donor egg process?
Julia: Ollie is a gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous man. He’s one of those people who would do anything to support me at that time. I think he had nervousness about going abroad. I don’t think he had nervousness about the whole process. I think he was being ripped to pieces by seeing me as I was. I remember just weeping over a pizza one night, and he was just like, “This just cannot go on.”
Ben: As a man, I can completely relate to that. We’re going to have to do an episode on the male perspective.
Julia: Yes.
Becky: Yes, IVF dads, actually.
Julia: Yes.
Ben: The cliche is the idea that the man just goes along with it, doesn’t really care that much. Of course, the opposite is the case. It was not easy, but I also didn’t speak about it.
Becky: What’s interesting is that it strengthened our relationship.
Julia: [crosstalk], absolutely.
Becky: For some couples, it can go the other way.
Julia: Absolutely. Boy, was it a journey.
Becky: Thank you so much for talking to us.
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Becky: You’ve been listening to Becky and Ben’s Fertility Spotlight. You can find out more about us and our work as IVF coordinators on the website www.fertility-spotlight.com. Please join our community at facebook.com/fertilityspotlight and instagram.com/fertilityspotlight.
Ben: Do leave us a comment, and please tell your friends about this podcast. If you feel like making a donation to the show, we’d massively appreciate it. You can also message us with any questions.
Becky: In episode 4, we’ll be sharing some interesting tips on improving your chances of successful embryo implantation. Get ready for a few surprises.
Ben: Don’t forget, Becky and I aren’t doctors. As I always say, always speak to a health care professional for medical advice specific to you.
Becky: See you at the next one. Remember, don’t despair.
Ben: We’ll get there.
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Our Donor Egg Kids: 5 Things We Didn’t Need To Worry About
The decision to use donor eggs is huge. That said, having done it, and with two amazing donor-conceived daughters to show for it, we worried a great deal about that decision. Would we bond with our children? Was the technology safe? Were donors rigorously screened? These, and many more questions and concerns, occupied our thoughts at the start of our journey and during the two pregnancies.
This, by the way, is totally normal. Opting for egg donation is one of life’s big decisions. We rightly asked questions and reflected on our choices. Donor conception has many emotional and medical implications. However, once our children were born, almost all our worries disappeared. The joy of a new baby put everything into perspective.
If you’ve been listening to our podcast, we talk about many aspects of donor conception, our journey and others. We recently talked to donor-egg mum, Julia, who speaks very honestly about the things that made her anxious before and during her pregnancy. (Have a listen to that episode below.)
So what were the things we worried about? Here they are. And remember that worrying is okay. It’s part of the donor-fertility journey, and a key aspect of the mental process we go through as we prepare to be parents of a donor-conceived child.
1. Will we bond with our donor-egg baby?
The short answer is yes. We felt an unshakeable and profound bond the moment we found out we were pregnant. That closeness got stronger and stronger throughout each of our two pregnancies. It wasn’t simply the joy of conception, or the wonderful feeling that we were, at last, successful. It was the feeling of anticipation and delight at our future family. Once Ida and Coral were born, they felt totally our children. Because they were, and are, our children. The fact that we used an egg donor is neither hidden nor forgotten. She is valued and loved by us all. But our day-to-day lives are as a family. No regrets, no sadness, just the glorious present. Many of the patients we have helped tell us they feel the same way.
2. Should we have used an anonymous donor?
We chose to have our donor-egg treatment abroad, not in the UK. One reason for this was that we could access a larger, younger donor pool. Another was that the clinic we chose had a fabulous reputation – and we certainly received a service that was far better than some of the clinics we had used in the UK. Donor anonymity is the norm in most EU countries, and we were happy to accept an anonymous donor. There’s no right or wrong answer to this. We did worry, of course, if our children would be unhappy at being unable to meet their donor in later life. But, as parents, we took the view that discussing this with our children honestly and openly from an early age was the way forward. They have accepted the status quo and understand our decision. They are very happy children. We respect all views on the pros and cons of donor anonymity, but we have learned to politely ignore those who choose to lecture us about our life choices.
3. Was going abroad for treatment the right call?
In the early stages of our donor-egg journey, we did worry if using a fertility clinic abroad was a step too far. How could everything be coordinated? Were foreign clinics safe? What about aftercare? Our anxieties quickly fell away. We had researched the clinic very carefully and it clearly had an international reputation. EU fertility laws are stringent. On the medical side, the drugs we took, and the donor synchronisation process, were easily managed remotely. I suppose we felt relief when we finally arrived at the clinic and saw it for all its spotless and welcoming glory. But we knew it was going to be a good experience, and it was. Going abroad gave us better donors, better service and better overall care. It was also nice to have a pleasant break in a beautiful country. True, our treatment was never far from our minds. But there were no real downsides to our trip.
4. Will the donor be a good match?
We worried about this a lot. But we were able to put the preferred characteristics of our egg donor on the forms. These went into some detail: hair and eye colour, height and weight, educational level and lifestyle details. We were also allowed to send photos, although photos of the donor were not permitted. We were okay with that. As it turned out, we were given a great match. Both of our girls look similar to us. But we would not have minded if they did not. It’s very easy to overthink and over-worry about donor matching. Most clinics do a good job, but they can only match you to donors they have on their books. Our advice – be flexible and open-minded. And always use a clinic donor: we are not yet convinced that egg banks offer the best solution.
5. How, and when, should we tell our donor-egg kids about their origin?
It’s number 5 on the list, but perhaps it deserves a higher place. We were anxious, about when and how to tell our two daughters they were donor conceived. But we relaxed. Parenting came first. Worries that they would react badly abated. Some parents choose never to tell – and that’s fine because it’s their family and nobody else’s business. We chose to tell our girls around the age of four. Yes, we were nervous when first broaching the subject. But they were calm, interested and accepting. They remain so. We often talk about ‘the egg lady’ and her kindness. The Czech Republic, where we had our treatment, remains a favourite destination for us all. Only the other day, we noticed a Czech photo on Ida’s bedroom wall. She, and her sister, are proud donor-conceived children. Above all, they know they are our children as well as children of the world.
Here’s the podcast episode featuring Julia, a donor-egg mum, whose worries fell by the way side like ours. Hope you enjoy it!
To listen to more episodes, and to find out more about our IVF journey, have a listen to Becky & Ben’s Fertility Spotlight. Hope you enjoy it!
[music]
Becky: Hi, everyone, and welcome to Becky and Ben’s Fertility Spotlight. I’m Becky.
Ben: I’m Ben.
Becky: We’ve supported IVF patients for over 10 years, and we’re an IVF couple ourselves, with two rapidly growing daughters, our pride and joy.
Ben: Our conversations will take you to the heart of the fertility narrative. We want everyone to feel included, well-informed, and cared for.
Becky: In this episode, we’re talking about donor eggs, a topic close to our hearts, and we’ll be joined by TV producer and donor egg mom, Julia.
Ben: Do remember, our podcast is general information only. For a personalized diagnosis, always speak to a healthcare professional.
Becky: Let’s jump straight into this fascinating topic.
[music]
Becky: We have our two gorgeous daughters, Ida, age 11, and Coral, age 9. Today we have a very special guest, a donor egg mom, and her name is Julia. She has kindly agreed to talk about her personal story. We first of all want to talk a little bit about our journey and what we went through.
Ben: We talked about it in episode 1, didn’t we? Everything we went through. We met quite late in life, in our late 30s, and we knew we wanted children. We tried naturally for possibly a bit too long.
Becky: Yes, and then we had our IVF cycles, with various failures, and then we went into having donor egg treatment. I was 41, and I realized that my eggs were too old. I’d been through IVF cycles with my own eggs before, and had various failures. We reached the decision, didn’t we, Ben?
Ben: We did. It was a great decision, although it took us a long time to get our heads around it. The first time it was suggested to us, as we said in an earlier episode. We were really not sure, were we, at all, about doing that?
Becky: No, we were actually quite shocked, and we were like, “Oh my God, donor egg treatment, no way.” Then we came around to it, and we decided to have counseling, because we’d been through a lot of failure, and we felt the need to have at least six months’ counseling, which was very, very helpful in terms of grieving the loss of our own eggs, but also, as you say, approaching a fertility mindset where we were ready and willing to do donor egg treatment.
Ben: Because I think half the battle was developing a positive, pragmatic approach to treatment. We knew that the donor egg route was the one for us, and once we made the decision to do it, we actually almost enjoyed it.
Becky: Yes. It felt very novel, but it also felt incredibly positive in the sense that we knew that the success rates were higher. In a way, we felt more in control, and we knew that it was very different from the IVF with your own eggs process.
Ben: Exactly. Let me just talk about the tech for a minute, because people often think, “How does it possibly work?” I think the main thing to remember is that your donor is going through the IVF bit. If you’ve had IVF before donor egg treatment, you’ll know the IVF bit and all the injections, but your donor does that herself, and you, as a donor egg recipient, are synchronized with the cycle of that donor.
Becky: It’s very clever, and the clinic work out exactly the synchronization that’s needed.
Ben: They do. You take medication at a particular point, and it may sound extremely complicated and daunting, but actually, the clinics know exactly what they’re doing in terms of synchronizing your cycle with the donor’s cycle, and medication comes to your aid. I think a typical donor egg protocol sees estrogen and progesterone support, and it also involves switching off your ovaries with an injection. In fact, the very first thing that you ever had at the start of the donor egg cycle was an intramuscular injection, which is not a very romantic start to the proceedings.
Becky: I’m not sure romance really played much part in the fertility process, and that’s something we can talk about in future episodes, is how do you sustain your relationship? How do you keep the romance in your relationship when you’re going through such a grueling, tough process medically? It’s not very sexy, is it, Ben?
Ben: It’s not sexy, but you just have to hang in there, and I think once you’ve made the decision, as we said, your next route is thinking about the right clinic to use, and this is a very interesting area, isn’t it? Because we are very, very fortunate in our world to have lots of wonderful fertility clinics. Some of those do specialize in donor treatment, so we did a lot of research ourselves and read the reviews, and looked at the success rates.
Becky: Yes, that’s true. We spent a lot of time on the internet talking to people, trying to find reviews that really complemented certain clinics that had young donors that were accessible and so on, and clinics with a choice and a range of donors that we felt would suit us. When we went to our clinic in the Czech Republic, we knew that we would have a donor that was anonymous, but we were able to say, “I would like a donor with blonde hair, blue eyes, university-educated, likes sport.”
Ben: The matching was good. It’s worth remembering, though, isn’t it, that not all countries allow donor egg treatment. This is a podcast, we’re recording this in the UK, where it is allowed, and in many parts of Europe, but there are some countries where you’re not allowed to have donor egg treatment. If there’s anyone listening now in a country where perhaps it’s not allowed, do write us a comment, because we’d be interested to hear your viewpoint.
[music]
Becky: When you actually carry a donor egg baby, it’s very interesting, because there’s been a lot of research on how much your uterine environment, how much the DNA, how much your blood, how much your emotions actually influence the baby in your uterus.
Ben: It’s a very interesting area. There are university departments devoted entirely to [crosstalk].
Becky: I think Southampton, Cambridge.
Ben: Yes, epigenetics is a name rather complicated, but I think the reason that donor egg recipients are interested in this is because they do want to feel a bond with their baby, but what we found was that actually the bond with your baby happens anyway.
Becky: Yes, that’s very true. I found the moment that I was pregnant with my donor egg baby with Ida, that I immediately, A, felt incredibly happy and so relieved that I was actually pregnant. I think I remember a friend of mine saying that I was the happiest pregnant person she’d ever seen.
Ben: I remember this. You were a proud mother.
Becky: I was very, very happy, even when I felt incredibly sick, like I was on a Towsend-Torreson ferry for the first three months. I was so happy, and I felt myself bonding with my baby from literally day one. It was an incredible experience, and then when I was privileged enough to have Ida through a caesarean section, because of my past situations. I can go into more details with that another time. When I had Ida, I immediately looked at her and fell in love.
Ben: I think what it is we hear this story all the time. There was maybe one patient out of about 1000 that we’ve helped over the years who said, “Guys, I’m not sure I bonded very well [crosstalk].
Becky: She was very honest, wasn’t she?
Ben: She was very, very honest.
Becky: Very interesting.
Ben: We thought, “Oh dear, oh dear,” because that was not the norm. Do you remember? About six weeks later, she called us and she said, “Forget what I just said.” She’d absolutely fallen in love with her child.
Becky: It’s something that is so special, and if you think of IVF patients who have been through so much hardship and so many difficulties, that when you actually are privileged enough to have donor egg treatment, when you have your baby in your arms, it is the most wonderful thing in the world.
[music]
Ben: Let’s move on to another topic, which, again, is very, very popular on the forums, as you can imagine, and that is, do you tell your child that he or she is donor conceived?
Becky: Yes, that’s really interesting. I remember thinking about this a great deal. I think it was when Ida was around three or four, I started talking to her, and I did the same with Coral when she was about three or four, about the miracle of her, of having three people that had created her, which is amazing.
Ben: I think the general consensus in the counselling world, as far as I can understand it, is that if you do decide to tell your child– You don’t have to. There’s no right or wrong. It’s entirely your decision. It’s a very private matter, but if you do decide to tell them, do it around that age. If you leave it to when they’re going off to university, age 18, and drop the bombshell there, you can see why that’s not going to work.
Becky: Of course, or when they’re a teenager, and they discover some notes in your drawer about you going off to a donor egg clinic, it’s not ideal. As you say, it’s your decision, obviously. Some couples say, “No, we’re never going to say anything,” and that is your decision.
Ben: They may have personal or religious reasons for that.
Becky: Or religious reasons. Exactly. We always talked about the egg lady, and how delightful, and how wonderful and lucky we were to have her in our lives.
[music]
Ben: We want to speak very, very briefly about anonymity. This is a question we’re going to ask Julia in a minute. Thank you, Julia, for standing by. We’ll bring you in a sec. We know that in the UK, where we’re recording this podcast, a donor-conceived child is allowed to trace their donor at the age of 18. Now we were happy to go abroad for treatment, where, of course, it’s complete anonymity in most EU countries. There’s no right or wrong answer, is there?
Becky: There really isn’t. Some people prefer to have the option of their donor egg child being able to trace their genetic donor at the age of 18, but some people are, I suppose, more relaxed about it. It’s an interesting one, isn’t it, Ben, that I think we once had a patient who said, “Oh, what happens if, when my daughter’s 20, she has a problem and she has an illness and we don’t know where it comes from?
Ben: I think each clinic would do things differently, but I think probably what would happen is that the clinic would make the necessary investigations and would be obliged to do that. I don’t know how that would work in terms of any contact with that donor, but these things are very, very rare. It must be said, very, very rare, that there is some kind of medical condition that comes back.
[music]
Ben: I just wanted to move on to finally introduce Julia. Julia, thank you so much for joining us. It’s lovely that you’ve agreed to speak about your experience as a donor egg mum, because I don’t know if you feel this, Becky, but not everybody wants to go public about it, do they?
Becky: No, I think it’s a very personal thing, and I think it’s actually very courageous of you to come in and talk to us, so thank you.
Julia: That’s very sweet. I don’t feel it’s courageous, but I do feel it’s something I like to talk about, or certainly in the right settings, because there is taboo around the notion of donor egg conception, and I hate that. I’ve been on an interesting journey with it, and it’s probably the thing that I am most proud of doing in my whole life. I’m a typical woman of a certain sort, I suppose. I worked very, very hard, played very, very hard, did not find the right person until I was in my late 30s.
Becky: I can relate to that.
Julia: Ollie and I got together when I was about 39, I think. A year or two later, I’m terrible on time, I took a fertility test, and I had zero fertility. I will never forget that date. Not a blip, not a thing, nothing.
Becky: I’m so sorry. That must have been really hard. Really shocking.
Julia: Yes. There followed many months of weeping and locking myself in the toilets at work. I worked at Channel 4 at the time, and it felt like every day there would be a fresh email saying, “So-and-so is pregnant, come to so-and-so’s baby shower.” Those moments are so hard.
Becky: They’re so hard.
Julia: I sometimes think that big organizations should take a look and maybe think about managing that a little bit differently.
Becky: Yes. Of course.
Julia: It’s not to say that one isn’t happy.
Becky: Of course.
Julia: Anyway, that was a long and painful period. Look, I, to be honest, just wasted loads of money doing fertility treatments that might have made a difference, and I think it was because I was so numb, I just wasn’t thinking straight. I took advice from a friend and did this, did that, and really wasted my own time, I think, and a lot of money, our time, and money. Then we did a round of donor egg with a British donor, and that was really painful because we were on a waiting list for a very long time, I was doing follicle stimulation just to fill in the time, I think, and it didn’t work.
The whole process had not felt great because, like most women who go into this, I’m smart enough to do a bit of sensible Googling, and it just didn’t look like the chances were good at the outset. We were sharing the eggs. Of course, they’re the lady’s eggs, that’s good, but you’re halving a set of eggs that were already not good because the lady herself was not in a great state of health.
Becky: Can I ask how old the lady was?
Julia: I can’t remember. In her 30s, probably.
Ben: Egg sharing is a strangely English thing, isn’t it? As far as we’re aware, we don’t see it happening that much in Europe.
Julia: Or in America, I think, because I remember going out for lunch with an American colleague and telling her about what I was doing, and she just looked at me and, “Julia, I’m going to draw you a diagram.” Terrible American, my apologies. She just divided a set of eggs or something like that on a piece of paper and held it up and said, “This makes no sense, Julia, what are you doing with your life?” That gave me a bit of a shake. I think the clinic where I’d been slightly messing about for some time had right early on mentioned, “We have a connection with the clinic in Spain.”
I think my husband was slightly more cautious about anything that was outside the NHS. I, by that time, would have given birth to a cat. I was that desperate. Seriously, I used to talk about, “If I could give birth to a kitten, I would be happy. Can we just make that happen?” It took us a long time. We took a flight, probably about two, three years, and then we just booked a flight to Madrid, went to the clinic. It was amazing. It was just lots of incredibly friendly people, really well-resourced, everyone spoke amazing English, beautiful hospital, and someone who just held on hand for the rest of the process.
We just got in the taxi back to the airport, and I looked at Ollie, and he’s like, “Yes, of course, why not? Absolutely, let’s do it.”
Becky: Amazing.
Julia: After that, everything was much easier and much simpler. Madrid still holds a very special place in my heart. We took the train back from Madrid because I was so paranoid about getting on the plane, and it made us laugh in a slightly hysterical way, because actually the train was just so jolting all the way back.
Becky: So bumpy.
Julia: Yes. It was a overnight sleeper to Paris, and it was just jolting.
Ben: We were told, weren’t we, that an embryo newly implanted or ready to be implanted in your uterus is like a bit of rice in a jar of jam, I think we were told. We worried about the bumpy thing, the bumpy trains, but apparently it really doesn’t matter.
Julia: The jam was keeping it safe all the way to Paris and then London.
Ben: Yes.
Julia: Good. Now we have Eve. Eve is 12.
Becky: Congratulations.
Julia: She’s lovely. She’s absolutely lovely. I think that in terms of the taboo around it, Eve has always known. We took advice, which is excellent. I would say this to everyone, start talking about it when they are a baby. You can start to find the words, you can start to find the story to tell as you change their nappy, as you cuddle them, as you feed them, just tell them. For Eve, it was like, “You are incredibly special. I love you so much. We made you thanks to a really kind lady who gave us an egg.” Now it’s more complicated than a really kind lady who gave us an egg, but with a baby in your arms, there it is.
Eve has always known. We’ve said to her, “Think about who you tell this to. It’s your story to tell. You probably don’t want to say it to people who will just tell it to lots of other people as though it’s something to chat about.”
Becky: Yes. I think that’s really wise.
Julia: She may have not always followed that advice. There are a few times when she’s come home– all people have just been kids and not known how to respond. She’s come home and said, “Mummy, am I adopted? Because so and so says you’re not my real mummy.” I’m like, “Okay, interesting. Let’s talk about the concept of real mummy. There are many kinds of real mummy. Then two, you’re not adopted. You came out of me. I would love you just as much if you were adopted, but you’re not. You came out of my body. You grew inside me, fed on my blood.” I know, a bit gory.
Ben: On that point, you mentioned, Julia, about telling Eve at an early age. That’s what we did, wasn’t it, Becky? We did the, as you say, “The nice egg lady came to the clinic and helped us out. Nine months later, you appeared.” I’m glad we did it because actually, when we speak about this to Ida and Coral now, they’re quite bored.
Julia: Absolutely. This is the thing. Eve has no curiosity.
Becky: They say, “Mummy, where’s the iPad?” Literally, “Oh, Mummy.”
Julia: Being a filmmaker, I insisted we took photos, not even video so much as photos, because they could be more accessible. There’s one of me, this is so insane, looking like I am high on drugs, because the implantation and transfer thingy has just been done. Literally, I was just like, “Take a photo of me now.” I’m just beaming radiant. There’s that. There’s us on the train back. There’s all of this.
Becky: There’s a whole journey coming back.
Julia: Is Eve interested? Absolutely not, but I love these images.
Becky: Of course.
Julia: Then one of her on my breast straight after being born. For me, that’s her origin story.
Becky: I thought it was interesting when you said that she came back and her friend said, “Your mummy isn’t your mummy,” because Coral came back when she was eight years old. No, sorry, she was seven. She came through the door and she said, “Mummy, you’re not my mummy.”
Julia: Oh.
Becky: I was like, “Whoa, hang on a second.” We sat down, and I said, “Well, you know what? I am your mummy, and you are a very lucky girl because you are such a miracle as we’ve talked about before. You were created by three people. I am your mummy. I carried you. You had the egg lady, who was your genetic parent, donor, but I am your mummy and I always will be, and I love you so much.” She looked at me and she went, “Yes, that’s right, Mummy.” She’s never mentioned it again.
Ben: She was okay with it.
Becky: She was okay with it. It was really interesting. She’s a very bright little girl, but it was really interesting how she was like– She remembered the history of us telling her. Obviously, donor egg kids might be thrown, as you were saying, with Eve, in the playground, into a, “Oh, what’s going on?”
Julia: I think the idea is that they’ve just always known and there’s never a identity jolt.
Becky: Exactly.
Julia: I went on quite being a worrier. I worry away at things as well in all the various waiting times when you’re getting jabbed in the butt and across the course of weeks. A friend at work, his mother was a epigeneticist.
Becky: Oh, yes.
Julia: His father was a moral philosopher. I had a nice little glass of sherry with each of them. Epigenetics, oh my God, it’s the third way whereby-
Becky: It’s so interesting.
Julia: -actually, the child in your womb is receiving all sorts of influences. It sits between nature and nurture. There’s not this polarity between nature and nurture.
Becky: It’s your DNA, your blood.
Julia: Yes, it’s your stress levels, it’s your mood, it’s everything that’s going on as you, the housing for this child that’s coming into being. There’s a load of you that goes into the baby whilst pregnant.
Ben: It’s an extremely interesting subject, epigenetics.
Julia: Yes, it’s a big and complex one.
Ben: For example, I think there’s a Cambridge faculty just devoted to epigenetics, isn’t there?
Julia: It feels like no one’s heard of it, but to me, it felt really important because that tick-tock of nature and nurture, nature and nurture, nature and nurture is just too binary. It’s abrasive, really. Epigenetics helped me because it made so much sense, but then moral philosophy was hilarious. I went to see David’s father, who sat me down for a rather sticky glass of sherry. I said, “I worried about this. Is it fair to bring a child into the world who won’t know her genetic mother? Am I being wildly selfish? Will she have identity crisis?” He just looked at me for a moment, head on one side, and said, “Julia, are you going to love this baby?” I said, “Yes.” “Julia, are you going to work really hard to give her the best life you possibly can?”
Becky: It’s very emotional.
Julia: I said, “Yes.” He said, “Darling, just have another glass of sherry and don’t worry about it.”
Ben: Because you do worry about everything under the sun, don’t you? [crosstalk].
Becky: Of course you do. That’s perfectly natural to have these questions.
Ben: I remember after you were pregnant with Ida, Becky, you were saying to me, “She feels completely like my child,” then.
Becky: Yes, when I was pregnant.
Julia: Yes.
Becky: Absolutely.
Julia: Same here. Totally. I used to talk to her.
Becky: Exactly. The bond that you form is huge from day one, isn’t it, when you’re pregnant?
Julia: I chose to find out what sex she was because I’m like, “Dear God, there’s been so much construction.” We decided that she was going to be called Eve really early on. I’d go off and get my sandwich at lunchtime and chat to Eve. It was lovely.
Ben: I think also what you said there is we meet our children earlier than everybody else. We see the speck on the screen.
Julia: Oh, my goodness. Yes, I thought that. There were two. I had two specks.
Ben: Two specks?
Julia: Yes.
Ben: Very good.
Julia: The next scan, one.
Ben: You’re having scans before anyone else even knows that they’re getting pregnant.
Julia: Yes, it’s true. I’d forgotten that.
Ben: You said you’re with the journey just much longer.
Julia: Yes, it’s magical, actually.
Ben: I wanted to ask a quick question. It’s a question we were often asking ourselves. Using an anonymous donor, how did you feel about that?
Julia: Using an anonymous donor, lots of different feelings about that. One, I was desperate. It really didn’t matter. Motherhood wasn’t that for me. Not because I was desperate, because even now it’s not that for me. It’s not important to me whether Eve looks like me. I actually think it’s quite liberating for me that she doesn’t look like the spit of me. I look like the spit of my mum. It was always a bit of a cross to bear. I think it’s wonderful. She and I talk about this. She can write her own history slightly freer of some of these things. She does look a lot like her dad. She perhaps looks like some lady in Madrid. I could walk down the street in Madrid and pass her. I sometimes think about that.
Becky: Me too. When I go back to Brno, when I’m with my girls, and boy, are they bored of going to the clinic, I can tell you.
Julia: God, they have a much closer relationship with it.
Becky: Yes, of course. Of course, they’re very sweet and they’re very well behaved and so on. When I walk down the street, I do think, “I wonder if you’re there.” In fact, we wrote a poem to our egg donor.
Ben: We did a video poem, wasn’t it? Which was actually quite nice.
Becky: To say thank you.
Ben: We filmed the children going round Brno, and we had some nice music, and we had the poem coming up. I think it’s on the website, isn’t it?
Becky: Yes, I think we felt immensely grateful.
Julia: Dear God, yes. Immensely grateful. It’s a complicated mixture. Intense gratitude, some wondering about who she is, where she is. I imagine that she was a student, perhaps. The clinic that we went to is surrounded by universities on the edge of Madrid.
Ben: It’s possible.
Julia: When I found out I had no fertility, I’ve had an absolute crisis of femininity and had a massive feeling of failure. I worked through that, and I don’t carry that around.
Becky: No.
Julia: Actually, once I got to the pregnancy stage, or even into the process of egg donor treatment, the anonymity, I think, it’s only ever bothered me potentially for Eve. As I say, perhaps because we’ve always talked about it, it doesn’t seem to be a thing. I always said to my husband, “One of these days–” When she was a baby, I used to look at her and say, “One of these days, this little squealing blob is going to say to me, ‘You’re not my real mum.'” You have that moment.
This is the thing that I am incredibly proud of, for both of us, all of us, is that when that day happened, not that long ago, Eve’s now 12, so relatively recently, it was like bouncing a pea off an elephant hide. It’s like, “Dear God, I’m not your mum. Tell that to my undercarriage, love. Seriously.”
Becky: “Come on.
Julia: “If I’m not your mum–” I was just really, really proud that that cannot find a chink of insecurity in me, because
Becky: That’s interesting.
Julia: -I’m her mum.
Becky: Yes, absolutely. Just our final question. Was your partner totally on board from the start of the donor egg process?
Julia: Ollie is a gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous man. He’s one of those people who would do anything to support me at that time. I think he had nervousness about going abroad. I don’t think he had nervousness about the whole process. I think he was being ripped to pieces by seeing me as I was. I remember just weeping over a pizza one night, and he was just like, “This just cannot go on.”
Ben: As a man, I can completely relate to that. We’re going to have to do an episode on the male perspective.
Julia: Yes.
Becky: Yes, IVF dads, actually.
Julia: Yes.
Ben: The cliche is the idea that the man just goes along with it, doesn’t really care that much. Of course, the opposite is the case. It was not easy, but I also didn’t speak about it.
Becky: What’s interesting is that it strengthened our relationship.
Julia: [crosstalk], absolutely.
Becky: For some couples, it can go the other way.
Julia: Absolutely. Boy, was it a journey.
Becky: Thank you so much for talking to us.
[music]
Becky: You’ve been listening to Becky and Ben’s Fertility Spotlight. You can find out more about us and our work as IVF coordinators on the website www.fertility-spotlight.com. Please join our community at facebook.com/fertilityspotlight and instagram.com/fertilityspotlight.
Ben: Do leave us a comment, and please tell your friends about this podcast. If you feel like making a donation to the show, we’d massively appreciate it. You can also message us with any questions.
Becky: In episode 4, we’ll be sharing some interesting tips on improving your chances of successful embryo implantation. Get ready for a few surprises.
Ben: Don’t forget, Becky and I aren’t doctors. As I always say, always speak to a health care professional for medical advice specific to you.
Becky: See you at the next one. Remember, don’t despair.
Ben: We’ll get there.
[music]
[00:28:51] [END OF AUDIO]
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