People often tell me how much my daughter, Imogen, looks like me. In playgrounds, at school assemblies, and while watching her perform in dance classes, other parents will comment, completely unprompted, how she is “the image of me”.
True, we both have blonde hair and blue eyes, and big, toothy smiles. We also have the same way of pursing our lips when we’re concentrating.
But, although I carried my daughter for nine months and gave birth to her, genetically she has no more to do with me than any of the other children running around.
She was created using a donor egg from a complete stranger – albeit one carefully selected in the knowledge that she had my colouring, is a similar height and, like me, a music lover – and my husband John’s sperm.
Having a baby this way was a serious leap of faith; one I was very reluctant to take and could not be certain would lead to a happy ever after for our family.
What if I couldn’t bond with this child, who didn’t share my DNA? What if I became resentful of my husband, thinking she was “more his” than mine? What if I spent the rest of my life scanning faces in crowds looking for “her” – or children of “her” – the donor mother? What if I simply couldn’t love what I then thought of as “another woman’s” baby?
This anxious journey into the unknown began back in the summer of 2015 when, aged 36, after two years of trying unsuccessfully to conceive, I made an appointment with my GP. My husband, whom I married in April that same year, already had a son, Joel, now 13, from a previous marriage, so we doubted any issues came from him.
A raft of blood tests later, I found myself sitting in a gynaecologist’s consulting room at St Mary’s Hospital, near our home in Manchester.
What were my periods like, he asked. “Light and erratic,” I answered. And did I experience any night sweats? “Well, actually yes,” came my reply – although I just put it down to having a too high tog on my duvet.
I could see where this conversation was going, but I was only 36 – far too young for “the change”. The shock when I was told that was exactly what was happening to me was profound.
“You have premature ovarian failure,” he told me, bluntly. “So, in essence, you have no eggs. The odd one might release, but, essentially, you’re in early menopause.”
I remember covering my face, wet with tears; with no tissues to hand, he passed me a rough green paper towel, the kind you get in primary school to wipe up spills.
As John put his arm around me and the doctor talked about hormone replacement therapy, bone density and the risk of future fractures, I honestly thought things couldn’t get any worse. But I was wrong.
I imagined that, with the help of IVF, we would still be able to have a baby. However, he explained that, as any remaining eggs would be such low quality, it would not be possible.
There were, he told us, only two ways I would be able to realise my most precious dream, one I’d nurtured since childhood – playing with baby dolls and writing lists of names for my future children – of having a family of my own.
The first was adoption, and the second via an egg donor.
My consultant asked if I had sisters who might act as donors – they would need to be under 35 and have completed their own families to be considered – and, while I have three, none of them fitted the bill.
Nor would I have wanted to ask them; this already felt like my own personal hell, and I wouldn’t want to put them through the egg retrieval process which, I’ve heard, can be brutally invasive.
I also thought it would be harder, for me, to raise a child alongside their ‘biological mother’. Far better for it to be a stranger.
The alternative to a family member, he said, was selecting a donor at a private clinic. Although I could have the treatment on the NHS so we wouldn’t have to pay for the egg, the only stocks of donor eggs were held privately – usually donated, altruistically, by women going through IVF treatment themselves, or sometimes just out of the goodness of their hearts, and for a small fee.
For weeks afterwards I oscillated between feeling utterly numb and sobbing, paralysing tears that came out of the blue.
John and I came up with a code word, “jelly”; something I’d say when I knew I was going to cry, and he would put his arms around me until the tears subsided.
What I was experiencing was pure grief. Grief, not for someone I’d lost, but for something I desperately wanted but would now never have: my own, biological child, someone with the white-blonde hair I sprouted as an infant and who had inherited my love of reading and dancing and dislike of mushrooms.
At that point, I couldn’t contemplate raising a child without a genetic connection to me. How would I recognise, or bond with, a baby born in those circumstances? The thought, given how I’d fantasised about the blissful early days of new motherhood, terrified me.
I worried that a baby created from a donor egg wouldn’t feel like it was actually mine, as it wouldn’t have any of my family genes. It would belong to John – and a total stranger we might pass in the street without even realising.
Whenever I sobbed about how unfair it was, that the baby would be biologically his and not mine, John reminded me how much I loved and cared for his son, my stepson.
I also worried my body wouldn’t be up to the job of carrying a baby to term. It had already failed me once, so what if it let me down again, if we did decide to use a donor?
The August bank holiday weekend was coming up and John and I had booked to go to Barcelona, a trip we’d really looked forward to. However, instead of wandering around the art galleries or enjoying leisurely lunches in the sunshine, I spent the whole time googling early menopause and egg donation.
There was plenty of information about the mechanics of using a donor but nothing about the complex emotions that come with carrying, giving birth to and raising what may feel like another woman’s child.
The grief was so all-consuming I had to be signed off sick from my role at Macmillan Cancer Support. My job involved a lot of driving and, as I was always on the verge of tears, it wasn’t safe for me to be hurtling up and down the M6.
I spent a lot of time at home, mostly sleeping and weeping, feeling frustrated that family and friends – who would say “Well at least you have the option of a donor egg” – didn’t appreciate the magnitude of my grief.
Yes, I might have a baby, but I’d never have my baby.
John, a chartered surveyor, says he seriously feared, at one point, I was so lost in grief I might never recover and get back to my old self.
I had a lot of counselling, and a turning point came early the following year, 2016, when my sister introduced me to a friend of a friend called Meg, a woman in her 40s who had a three-year-old daughter born with the help of a donor egg.
Meg was so incredibly matter-of-fact about it all. “Just make an appointment at the IVF clinic, you’re not committing to anything, just find out more,” she told me.
A couple of weeks later John and I were sitting in a consulting room at Manchester Fertility Clinic and, shortly after that, were sent details of two potential donors. It felt surreal; they were a bit like dating profiles, but without photographs.
The first was described as tall with dark brown hair – too different to me, as I knew I wanted my child and I to share some physical similarities – while the second was blonde with green eyes and 5ft 7in to my 5ft 4in. She also, like me, enjoyed amateur dramatics, another bonus.
Hearing Meg talk about her gorgeous little girl, whom she adored, had given me hope that we could still have our happy ending after all.
In May, after I’d been given oestrogen and progesterone to ‘prep’ me for a potential pregnancy, the procedure began. Of course, I felt trepidatious – this was not how I’d envisaged becoming a mum – but my desire to have a baby was greater than my fear.
Eggs were retrieved in a ‘fresh cycle’ from the donor – though I wasn’t there that day, and our paths didn’t cross – and mixed with John’s sperm. Three went on to develop over the following five days into blastocysts – early-stage embryos – before one was transferred into my womb, in a simple, quick procedure using a catheter tube.
Within days of the transfer, I felt very different, so exhausted, with very sore boobs, that I couldn’t resist (against the advice of the clinic) testing on day ten. The two lines appeared on the pregnancy test instantly and – feeling utter elation as well as disbelief – I shook John awake to tell him.
I also felt: “Whoever this baby is, it’s growing inside me now and meant to be.”
I was further reassured by something I read about a small Spanish study which showed that, even if there’s no genetic link, during pregnancy cells are exchanged between mother and foetus via the placenta, and have been found to remain in the mother’s body – in her liver, heart, brain, lungs and blood – for decades, if not for ever. And vice versa, meaning we would always carry a little bit of one another.
I had a strong sense she was a girl, and that was confirmed at the 20-week scan, which somehow made it even more important she resembled me in some way.
When I was in labour, I remember telling the midwives, repeatedly: “Pass her straight to me, when she’s born, I want to look at her.”
I’m not sure what I was looking for – reassurance, maybe, of that first bolt of love I was so terrified would be missing?
In the event, all I saw was this little newborn, with a shock of dark hair, and covered in gunk.
I felt a rush of maternal love for her, instantly, and had this visceral sense that she was now my absolute priority in life.
However, those early weeks were not plain sailing. Half of me was just so thrilled that she was there, and the other half was still grieving the fact that it didn’t happen the way I thought it would, that she wasn’t biologically mine. The only resemblance I could see at all, in those early days, was to John’s dad.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say I was depressed, and I was able to meet all my baby’s needs, but everything felt muted, grey, when it should have been in colour – not helped by being in the depths of January.
My GP thought it may be hormonal and recommended HRT, though I refused – only starting it when Imogen was around three and I was worried about my bone density, which can be impacted by early menopause.
I started searching online ‘how to feel like yourself after having a baby’ and came across someone promoting a three-day online “confidence course”.
It sounded a bit vague, but I signed up and one of the main teachings was Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), an alternative therapy which involves tapping, with the tips of your fingers, the 12 meridian points on the body, the same ones targeted with acupuncture.
The teacher told us that it helps relieve symptoms resulting from negative experiences or emotions, though I was highly sceptical. However, I was wrong. Tapping – my head, brow, nose, chin, collarbone, under arm – somehow helped alleviate the sadness I’d been carrying since my menopause diagnosis, freeing me to just enjoy being a mum to my baby girl.
In fact, so impressed was I with the impact, that a few months later I trained to be an EFT therapist myself and, soon after that, a menopause coach, and now use the technique to support midlife women with their myriad symptoms.
I know some people may judge me for the way I initially felt about using an egg donor, but I’m speaking out because I want other women in my position to know that they are not alone in feeling this way – and that it will pass.
Seven years after becoming a mum, I can honestly say I rarely think about the fact Imogen is donor-conceived. She’s just mine.
Her hair grew blonde, while John is dark, and she has blue eyes, which is why I think so many people, including Imogen, insist she looks like me. I can’t see it; I think she’s just like John – which is not a problem. Many children look just like their dad. We initially kept the other two blastocysts, but decided that, with two children – Imogen and Joel – our family was complete.
Imogen’s never not known the story of how she came to be – the clinic was clear that we needed to tell her, not least because she might otherwise one day fall in love with a half-sibling from the same donor. Children are told they always need to be upfront about their origins with partners, just in case, not that we would have kept it from her.
We talk about the donor and, although we know little about her other than physical appearance, that she was 22 and lived on the coast, I say: ‘She must be wonderful – because look at you!’
At school on World Book Day this year, Imogen took in her book about how she was conceived, which was a gift from the Donor Conception Network. She’s proud of her story.
She’s also on a register of donor-conceived children, so she can check it for half-siblings once she turns 18 – an age at which she will also, should she wish, be able to trace the donor.
I certainly won’t stand in her way and am also interested to know more about this incredible young woman.
It would feel different, I think, if she were adopted and wanting to find her ‘real mum’.
However, I’m Imogen’s mum, and I love her with all my heart. The donor was just an incredibly generous woman, who gave us the most precious of gifts. For that I will always be grateful.
