Category Archives: pregnancy

Is Egg Donation Right for You? An Explanation and Guide to Choosing a Donor

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Couples struggling with infertility often find themselves in a perpetual cycle of grief and loss. Every negative pregnancy test and monthly period is a reminder of the child they do not have and a dream that is going unfulfilled.

For a woman, having low-quality eggs or a small egg reserve can feel like the greatest disappointment of all.

Donor egg IVF is an alternative fertility treatment that often offers the ideal solution to this situation. Serving as a guide to egg donation, allow this text to help better explain the ways that this revolutionary process can help you create the family of your dreams.

Deciding Whether Donor Eggs are the Right Choice

As a woman, accepting that you may never carry your own child is not easily achieved.

Laura Bush once said – “For those who deeply want children and are denied them, those missing babies hover like silent, ephemeral shadows over their lives. Who can describe the feel of a tiny hand that is never held?”

Providing yourself with the time and energy needed to overcome this loss is the first step in a successful donor egg process. Whether it’s a day, a week, or a month, you will only feel confident about your decision to use an egg donor if you’ve come to terms with your situation.

Compared to alternatives like adoption, egg donation provides a unique opportunity for women who are unable to conceive through traditional methods. While your baby may not have the genetic connection you’d always hoped for, you will still have the chance to carry and nourish their little bodies throughout gestation. The bonds formed between mother and child throughout pregnancy are undeniable and everlasting.

Pregnant woman carrying her child’s ultrasound picture.

Finding an Egg Donor

Deciding to choose a frozen donor egg, as opposed to a fresh cycle, provides a much larger selection of possible donors.

Various online databases offer hopeful parents a wide range of donors to search through. During your quest to find that perfect person for you and your family, you can find confidence in the fact that each potential donor has undergone an extensive pre-donation screening process.

Not only do clinics test for various sexually transmitted diseases, donor egg bank storage facilities also give potential donors background checks, psychological evaluations, and full medical history screenings. Online profiles will even contain a potential donor’s education and career experience.

Frozen donor eggs offer options in terms of choosing an egg. Whether a couple is interested in a child with similar physical characteristics or personality traits – they will have a large pool to choose from.

Understanding the Donor Egg IVF Process

After you’ve decided to grow your family with donated eggs and have found the perfect donor, the next step is to prepare the woman’s body for implantation.

Most IVF cycles will begin with a few weeks of birth control pills to regulate your menstrual cycle. During this time, you will also undergo some initial screening tests, such as blood work and ultrasounds that provide your fertility specialist with information on your current reproductive condition.

Once you’ve completed these tests and cycled through your birth control pills, you will begin taking various medications and hormones to support your body during the process. Drugs like estrogen and progesterone work to thicken a woman’s endometrial lining and make it a more accepting environment for an embryo.

When your body has been successfully prepared and is almost ready for the embryo transfer, the donor egg storage facility will ship your chosen eggs to the fertility clinic for thawing and fertilization. An advanced flash-freezing process called vitrification now helps to ensure that eggs will survive the thawing stage and removes the risk ice crystal formation during freezing and storage.

After fertilization, your specialist and their team will watch the embryo develop until it’s ready for transfer into the woman’s uterus.

Two weeks after the embryo transfer has been completed, you will return to the clinic for a blood pregnancy test to confirm that the cycle was successful.

Growing Your Family with Donor Egg IVF

When infertility is the reality for you and your spouse, the battle can seem impossible to overcome. Pregnancy announcements on Facebook and baby showers for friends become the salt in your never-healing wound and the baby section in stores is your enemy.

When all feels lost, however, draw confidence from the fact that there are other options. Becoming a parent with donor eggs not only offers the gift of a child but also the pregnancy experience a woman may be dreaming of.

Taking the first step and looking into egg donors could be a simple task that will change your life forever.

Receiving The Care You Need Both Before And After The Birth Of Your Baby

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According to research undertaken by Your Legal Friend, having a baby is the most common reason for a hospital admission in the UK, with 1.3 births every minute. Yet for some, the time that should be the most happiest and exciting as they finally meet their new son or daughter, can actually be a time of pain, stress and fear. It is no surprise that when it comes to the NHS compensation budget, 41% of it is being used in claims relating to obstetrics. I have experience of poor care both before and after the birth of my son Joe that illustrates that there are real issues in this area.

My maternity and delivery were not easy, they were fraught with problems from the beginning, I have type two diabetes and suffer with high blood pressure, both of which made me a higher risk pregnancy. I also lived on a border between two authorities. This meant I had to have two midwives. This sounds like double the care, but in actual fact was just double the stress. My main midwife was the one I saw at my surgery. She did not fill in my book properly, leaving major gaps in the records, she did not inform me about the risks of my pregnancy, the real chance it wouldn’t go to term, or the fact it would probably be a caesarean section. In short, she was severely lacking in all areas and left me very uninformed about my pregnancy and my risks. My second midwife was so much better, and was left to fill in these gaps during home visits, but because I saw her so much less, this really added to my worries. What was I not being told when I visited my surgery midwife?

 

As I got nearer to my time more things happened to fill me with dread of the birth. What should have been a routine blood test saw me pass out after six nurses had tried, unsuccessfully, for more than 20 minutes to get a blood sample in a tiny, hot room. I had informed them I was hard to bleed (I know this well from frequent diabetes fasting tests) and that they would be better to transfer me to the Path lab for the test, but they persisted in trying to get the sample, making me ill.

Two weeks before Joe was delivered (at 7 and a half months) I was admitted with suspected preeclampsia. I was also feeling unwell due to a sore and watery eye. I mentioned this in my examination, but it was dismissed as unimportant – it wasn’t even looked at. Within an hour, the whole of the left side of my face had sunk and stopped moving. I was told I’d had a stroke by the doctor examining me. It turned out to be Bells Palsy, but the fear I’d had a stroke and that the paralysis was permanent was devastating for both me and my family.

Even finally being admitted proved to be a nightmare. I had not eaten since lunchtime, and with diabetes, need to eat at regular intervals. I kept mentioning this, but was still not fed. When I was finally taken to my room I was told the kitchen was closed, but that they might be able to find a sandwich from somewhere. I was advised by my nurse to take a whirlpool bath to ‘relax’. I decided against it as I was so tired, which was lucky, as a nurse nearly battered the bathroom door down telling me not to take a bath as it was used to induce labour, not something you want to do at 7 months pregnant.

After the birth of Joe two weeks later, I struggled to get pain relief when needed, particularly when I was not sleeping at night due to stress headaches that were actually reducing me to tears. I eventually signed myself out of hospital in the early hours of Christmas Eve – I just wanted to get home and away from that place.

I suffered terrible post natal depression in the months after Joe’s birth, I think that my treatment and experiences during my maternity and in my care after it certainly contributed to my mental condition. I did not pursue a claim, but I truly wish that I had, sometimes the only thing that brings real change is the threat of litigation, and if it stops other people from receiving poor care and treatment, then that can only be a good thing. Companies like Your Legal Friend can offer free advice if you think you may have a case for a claim, you were entitled to good levels of care, if you didn’t receive it, you should act.

The Stylish, Comfy Maternity Attire to Gift Soon-to-Be Moms

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As a parent, brother/sister, husband, or friend, you might be wondering what gift to get a lady you care about who is expectant. Because you’re thoughtful, you decide you need to get her something that will not only make her feel great, but also make her pregnancy easier because of the gift’s practicability. So you settle on gifting her with a maternity outfit.

The decision of what outfit to buy for the soon-to-be mom might seem overwhelming at first because of the vast variety of options to choose from. However, you’re decision becomes a whole lot easier when you start with the basics: giving priority to style and comfort. The body of a woman goes through significant changes during pregnancy.

The options are numerous and you wouldn’t want to hold back because this is a special gift. Therefore, the best approach to take might be keeping in mind things you need to avoid when buying maternity clothes as a gift. Here are a few tips.

No seams at the waist

Seams on clothes will cause discomfort around the waist area as her belly expands. In addition to getting her clothes that make her look great, you want those clothes to last her throughout the period of her pregnancy. So make sure whatever outfit you buy for her is seamless at the waist so that her belly easily grows into it.

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Classic silhouettes are a safe bet

The simplest outfits are usually the best when it comes to gifting maternity attire to expectant moms. Admittedly, they may not seem as exciting as dresses with elaborate designs. However, expectant mothers are most likely to wear the simplest dresses in their wardrobes most often because comfort is crucial, especially in the summer.

Think layers

It is often the case that during the second trimester where an expectant mother’s belly is in a sort of transition phase, a cardigan becomes increasingly preferable. They could easily layer it over dresses and tops from Love Trendify such that it hides certain features while accentuating others, such as her cute baby bump.

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Favour darker colours

Maternity clothes with darker colors have the optical effect of making the expectant mother appear somewhat smaller. In addition to that, the dark hues have a way of hiding problem areas that may be otherwise conspicuous. These colors are also easier to match with other clothes compared to brighter colors.

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Flowing pieces are preferable

You need to be careful here not to get her outfits that are exceedingly billowy as they tend to make her look bigger. A go in-between option works best, such as a cotton blouse that hugs her body in all the right places while still ensuring she is comfortable.

Buy one size up

Choosing for her dresses that are one size up ensures that the expectant mother will be able wear them during and after the pregnancy. For instance, you might want to buy her are formation dress that is one size up. It would look great and fit without the belt during her pregnancy, and she can have it resized afterward.

Bio:

Sofia P. Sanders has worked as a stylist in the fashion industry for 13 years. She has written numerous articles and blog posts on topics related to fashionable maternity wardrobe. Learn more about gifting mothers at Love Trendify.