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Golden Gater [ Golden Gater Online November 30, 1995 ] Egg donors help infertile couples by Michelle Ihle The motto on the stationary for the Family Fertility Center in Walnut Creek reads "when your heart is open ... all things are possible." Workers at the center hope that through their ads in newspapers such as the Golden Gater, the hearts of female students will be open to being egg donors. The FFC has taken out ads for egg donors in the classified sections of not only the Gater, but also college newspapers at Stanford, UC Berkeley and San Diego State in search of the perfect match. M'lyn Butterfield, a registered nurse and the owner
of the FFC, has begun every working day since 1993 helping infertile
women start the process of finding an ovum donor. "We are just recruiting, screening, evaluating and matching the ovum donor and the couple she is going to work with," said Butterfield. The Attraction The temptation for college students to respond to ads may be because of the monetary compensation being offered. The FFC's ad offers a $2500 stipend. Yet according to Butterfield, this is not the reason why college women are in her program. "The majority of the women who enter our program as donors do so because they feel a need to help those who cannot have children," said Butterfield. The money, though, is what attracted SF State student Susie Kwan to donate her eggs in response to an ad in a local paper. "I had decided to go to college here, and I was really a little bit short on cash," said Kwan, "so when I saw (the ad), I said 'well that sounds easy, what's the big deal?'" Kwan said. Kwan's name has been changed to protect her privacy, by her request. The Process For Kwan, the first step began two years ago with a phone call to the FFC. They arranged for her to talk to another donor in order to better understand what kind of commitment was necessary. "They were looking for college women, women
who were physically fit and Asian donors, and considering I fit
the bill, they gave me an interview and numerous tests," said
Kwan. Commitment is crucial because there is a three-week period when the donor is on call to the medical program for monitoring. Butterfield said this is the part that some people don't really comprehend, and this means an interruption in the their life. In order to assure they fully understand the time involved, Butterfield goes over it with the donor again when she interviews her and when she starts the medical program. "A lot of times we go over it just to make sure the person really understands what that means," said Butterfield, "because the monitoring consists of a blood draw, an ultra-sound, and is done in the beginning maybe once a week and then right around the time when the eggs mature on a daily basis," she added. After the interviews, prospective donors fill out a lengthy application and take a psychological test. After the personality inventory test is administered at the FFC, Butterfield examines the application and looks to see whether the donor has a support system, and if there are others supporting her decision. Butterfield also sees whether the donor is open to meeting the couple. "We encourage meeting. We don't work with somebody who wouldn't meet the couple or who would not want to ultimately meet the child," said Butterfield, who explained that because she had a child through this process, she is "very sensitive to how the child would feel if they were conceived in this way and then somebody rejected them." The information on the application is crucial for the child and the recipient family, so the child can get the history of their genetic mother without having to find the donor. Due to a 1991 California case in which the genetic mother sued to keep the baby after delivery, the contract at the FFC explicitly states there are no legal ties binding the genetic mother to the child. This ensures the genetic mother will have no claim to the eggs or to any children born as a result of the eggs. The Ideal Donor According to Butterfield, the ideal age of a donor in the FFC program is between 21 and 28 years old, and she is typically in an educational setting. "The recipient population often wants a donor who is similar to them 10 or 15 years ago," said Butterfield. Having college students as donors means the donors are usually more "educated and seem to be more technologically minded, more interested in their bodies," said Butterfield. "They are more aware of what is happening, and often the donors have worked in a health field or they are interested in women's health issues," she said. Butterfield began working in an infertility program in 1987 as a nurse therapist whose job was to screen all applicants. "I was the gatekeeper," Butterfield said. In 1992, this process hit home for Butterfield when
she herself was the recipient of a donated egg. After adopting one
child, she conceived a son through a donated embryo. "I think that is a good part of why I do this, I felt like this is my karmic debt," she said. The Meeting This application stays on file at the FFC and is seen by the couple in the office. "We don't mail out the application to (couples) because we feel that is a confidential piece of information, but people are welcome to come in here and look at the application," Butterfield said. "If they match with somebody, they are going to have that file for the child, and that does include a lot of family history and photos of family members." The part of the process which Butterfield considers to be the most crucial is the meeting between the donor and the possible or future recipient family. "My philosophy is to work with people who would be open to it," she said. The input of boyfriends and husbands on this process is also crucial because their support will be needed. "We have had boyfriends talk their women friends out of this. We do have a place for partners to give input in the evaluation process," she said. Interaction between recipient and donor is not limited to a face-to-face meeting. The FFC has developed three ways for the donor and the recipient couple to interact. The first type of meeting is called "semi-anonymous" because even though they meet, they do not exchange last names or phone numbers. The second form of interaction is letter writing. The FFC acts as an intermediary by forwarding the letters. The last way is by phone appointment, when donors and recipients talk to each other over the phone but do not meet in person. The Procedure After the interview and screening process, the actual medical program leading to the retrieval of the eggs begins. During the first two weeks, the donor starts the program at a clinic such as the Center for Reproductive Medicine Center in San Francisco. She begins going once a week, but when the eggs start to mature, the donor may have to visit the medical program as much as every day or every other day. "Because they give this medicine human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) when the eggs are ready to be harvested, that is a crucial moment. The difference of one day or another could really make the difference," Butterfield said. All the eggs harvested, usually between 25 and 55, are fertilized with the sperm of the husband or a donor. The embryos that result are transferred 48 hours later, and are implanted into the uterus of the recipient. "We try to be conservative, and transfer three or four embryos and freeze the remaining ones," said Butterfield. This leads to a higher occurrence of twins, which Butterfield said excites the recipient family. "Because they have been on a desert for so long, twins sound great, and there are some advantages because they are complete. Their family is complete, and they don't have to go through another procedure," she said. There is a success rate of between 60 and 70 percent the first time recipients try using an egg donor, Butterfield said. Special Needs By reading the application and meeting with the donor, the recipient not only gets to choose a donor based on her physical looks, but also her emotional, psychological and educational status. Recipient couples get to examine photographs, medical histories and grade point averages in search of their perfect match. But probably the most decisive factor comes down to the cultural background of the donor. This is especially important, Butterfield said, for Asian recipients. In many ads there are special requests for East Indian, Chinese, Japanese and Korean donors. "There is such a demand for Asian donors in this area I have donated five times and that is about the medical limit," said Kwan, who is Chinese. In Tuesday's issue: a look at Susie's decision to become a donor and the procedure she went through.
[ Golden Gater Online November 30, 1995 ] |
