and even lesbian couples can encounter egg problems.
Female couples also turn to egg donation for reasons other than infertility in both of them. For legal reasons and for parity, some lesbian couples decide that one will donate her eggs to the other, who will carry their baby. Hence, each becomes an equal player—legally and emotionally—in creating their child. In some instances, there may be medical reasons for the donation: the partner desirous of pregnancy may not be the one with “good eggs,” allowing her partner to be the donor. Or the couple may simple prefer to conceive this way if one woman prefers to be pregnant and the other to pass on her generic heritage. I (Ellen) know one such couple in which the Vietnamese-born partner wanted to pass on her cultural heritage and her American-born, Caucasian partner wanted to be pregnant.
To state the obvious, lesbian couples require sperm donors. Hence, those who are also pursuing egg donation travel down a path that is complicated medically and logistically. It is also expensive and, in many ways, emotionally uncharted. Sometimes the woman who ends up carrying the baby is not the partner who really cared—at the beginning—about being pregnant. Sometimes the one donating her eggs didn’t care as much about a genetic connection as a gestational one.
As we have seen throughout this chapter, people enter the departure lounge of egg donation for a variety of reasons. Many of our travelers carry a heavy load. They are women who have wanted to become mothers for years and, for one reason or another, time has run out (or is running out) on their eggs. Others travel somewhat lightly. They may have had children years ago and now, much older and in a second marriage, feel grateful that there is way that they can still bear a child. Male couples probably feel overwhelmed by costs and the complexity of the process but appreciate finally having a place in any departure lounge for parenthood.
Some of our travelers will spend time in the departure lounge of egg donation but ultimately decide to take a different course to parenthood. Others will acquaint themselves with egg donation and feel fortified to pursue it. In the next chapter we will take a look at the ways in which people approach egg donation, at the questions you are likely to ask yourselves and at some of the answers you may find.
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