I Had Spare Embryos From IVF—Their Potential Recipients Revealed My Biases

In 2014, a little over two years into my marriage, my husband and I felt an overwhelming need to have a baby. It was an exciting time: Prenatal vitamins, contemplating baby names, imagining the bedrooms.
Unfortunately, getting pregnant wasn’t as easy as we thought. After a year of trying, I was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS).
Two more years passed as we worked through fertility drugs, artificial insemination, and devastating pregnancy loss.
All we had to show for it was countless trips to the fertility clinic, a pile of bills, and a growing despair that was no longer mitigated by our lifestyle of carefree consumption of raw seafood, alcohol, and unpasteurized cheese.
Eventually, I received a call from the fertility clinic saying that my name was next on the Ontario government’s list for funded IVF, and I would start my cycle in October.
At that point, the month of October had been tainted by a previous pregnancy loss, so I was happy to have that sadness displaced by a more hopeful event.
I tolerated IVF well; my cycle resulted in four frozen embryos. Then, in a turn of events that is almost too cliche to write about, I got pregnant “naturally” the month after IVF.
Of course, friends and family told us that since we finally “relaxed” it happened. Although I had grown to resent that narrative over years of infertility, I was now far too happy to be bothered. I had a dream pregnancy.
I was also grateful for the four embryos waiting patiently in the freezer. I thought I may need them for my second pregnancy if this natural conception was a fluke.
Apparently, infertility was a temporary affliction because our second baby, a daughter, was also conceived naturally.
When we brought her home from the hospital, I knew the family was complete. The storage fees for my frozen embryos had felt like a good investment, but with two children, I no longer needed this insurance policy.
Couples going through IVF sign consent forms to address the fate of surplus embryos. The options are to discard, to donate to science, or to donate to someone trying to conceive.
When we signed, our experience with infertility and pregnancy loss had informed our desire to donate to another couple. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I could only dream of having the problem of surplus embryos.
Five years later, and with four embryos still on ice, this suddenly became real. To assist my decision-making, I joined two Facebook groups for embryo donation; one strictly for donors, and one for donors and potential recipients.
My decision to favor open over closed adoption resulted from the time I spent on the “Donor Conceived Persons” Facebook group.
It consisted mostly of very vocal experiences of adults who were conceived with donor sperm and some conceived of a donor egg. Given the short history of IVF, there were no adults from embryo donation, likely because the oldest ones are only in their teens.
The scientific community and donor-conceived persons agreed: Open adoption is the only reasonable and ethical way forward, especially with the rise of genetic testing services which render “anonymous donations” a thing of the past.
When I posted on the recipients’ group about my four embryos, I received roughly 100 messages begging me for my embryos. The messages confronted me with something I hadn’t yet considered: I had a lot of biases.
My self-proclaimed progressivism came into question when I didn’t jump for joy over many of the potential recipients.
I had mixed feelings about the prospect of a “single mom by choice”, about geographical proximity. Even a half-day drive seemed “too close”…what if I ran into my biological child at the mall?
When a Muslim couple inquired, I felt uneasy at the thought of my Jewish embryo in a Muslim home. The pool of potential recipients reflected the diversity of Canada: Gay and straight; different ethnic backgrounds; low and high levels of education; couples in their 20s up to those in their 50s; affluent families and those that were struggling, and everywhere in between.
Suddenly, selecting a recipient went from an interesting challenge to the highest stakes and most daunting exercise in consequential life decisions.
Finding the ideal recipient parent felt like an impossible task. In reading the experiences of other donors in various stages of the embryo donation continuum, even the best matches can be fraught with jealousy, insecurity, miscommunications, and sometimes, a complete dissolution of the relationship.
Some of the most heartbreaking stories included ‘ghosting’ despite an agreement of an open relationship with regular contact and updates. The donor has no recourse in those cases; their experiences served as a cautionary tale.
On the flipside, many families beamed with happy stories of close relationships with recipients and their recipient’s children (the term is to reflect that these are not your children).
Members occasionally shared photos of recipients’ newborns and stories of joint Disney vacations with smiling “bio siblings”.
The common theme in both the happy and unhappy matches is the amount of emotional labor they require.
The near-constant analysis of whether your involvement is deemed to be excessive or insufficient: You don’t want to merely be a “genetic donor” but you also don’t want to infringe on the recipient parents’ role and title.
As a prospective donor, you can only hope that potential recipients are honest and are not simply telling you what you want to hear; once the embryos are transferred, your views on vaccination, circumcision, politics are moot.
You have no say in how the child is raised.
After nearly two years of immersing myself in the world of embryo donation, speaking with potential recipients, reading about good relationships, and good relationships gone bad, it was ultimately my god-daughter’s 7th birthday that helped me decide.
I fell short, once again on buying her a gift on time, and was unable to connect via FaceTime. I know this was hurtful to both her and to her parents (my friends from high school).
It dawned on me that with embryo donation, I would have a lifetime responsibility to maintain relationships that are likely to be more complex than any others in my life.
After a lot of soul searching, it was ultimately the prospect of this life-long emotional work that made me decide to donate the embryos to science.
Embryo donation felt like I was trying to fit a circle into a square, it guaranteed me a lifetime of nuanced gray, where all I wanted at this stage of life was some black and white. Infertility and pregnancy loss was a core aspect of my identity for many years.
By donating my embryos to science, I was ending this chapter of my life.
Vicki Meyouhas is a Canadian living in Washington DC with her husband and two children. She is a registered nurse. Today more than ever, she believes in a woman’s right to choose what happens to her body and that reproductive health should be secured, regardless of who is in office.
All views expressed are the author’s own.
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