Laura’s Journey to Motherhood

Laura is one of Egg Helper's amazing Intended Mother's who recently gave birth to a beautiful set of twins. She is 44 years old, resides in Ontario, Canada and is a brave single mother by choice. After trying several rounds of IUI and IVF, she turned to egg and sperm donation to make her dream of becoming a mother a reality. We asked Laura to share about her experience with Egg Helper's audience, and she wrote this inspiring story of perseverance and love:

I always knew I wanted to be a mom growing up, but I never thought it would be in the way that I had my babies. At about 36 years old while out with some friends the subject came up about having children by myself. A few friends encouraged me to look into doing it alone. Some of the thoughts I had at first were: "Oh my gosh where do I start?" and "Can I do this alone?" After working in childcare for about 7 years and earning my Early Childhood Education diploma, I quickly got over my concern of being able to handle raising children on my own. So, the real question became: where do I start?

That night I started to look into how I can make my dream a reality. I ended up talking to my family doctor who immediately wrote a referral for Life Quest (now Trio) for both my sister and me. I finally got an appointment, but because my BMI was too high (about 40) they wouldn’t treat me. I moved on to Mount Sinai where I did about 6 IUI’s, and to my shock I became pregnant, but sadly for 2 of those IUI’s I never made it past the 8-week mark. They then suggested I move on to IVF, but then Mount Sinai wouldn’t treat me, so back to the doctor I went.

I recently had a new family doctor who was amazing, and she told me that she was going to find someplace that would go through with IVF with me, as except for my weight, I was beyond healthy. My new doctor then referred me to Hannam Fertility where I started my journey with IVF. I proceeded to have 3 egg retrievals (my own eggs) with Dr. Hannam, and again I was able to get pregnant but of the four-time that I was successful, I wouldn’t make it past 8 weeks. I started to look at alternates to have a child. I did plenty of searching and asked many questions and decided to give egg donation a try. Dr. Hannam was very reassuring about the new road I was going to go down.

I looked at a few clinics where they would do egg donations, but I called Egg Helpers and they returned my call very quickly, which is a big thing to me. I ended up with a list of questions and spoke to Lorne at great length about the process. He was amazing at helping me out! Once I decided to use Egg Helpers, the process moved very quickly. Lorne sent me a profile that he thought was a great fit, however, the donor wanted to wait until after summer and I didn’t want to wait that long (it was April of 2018). He quickly sent me another donor who was ready to start right away. She was a first-time donor, and I received all of her eggs with a non-shared cycle. She did amazing and I was very pleased with the number of eggs that were retrieved.

On October 4th, 2018 I transferred two amazing grade embryos. The two-week wait was hard, and I found it hard to wait, so I took a home pregnancy test at 6 days past the transfer of a 5-day embryo. My transfer worked! The test line was dark, darker than I’d ever seen it before, but with my history, I was super cautious and yet optimistic.

I emailed the fertility clinic to go in for a beta test earlier than planned and the numbers came back great. At the end of October, I went for my first ultrasound and the nurse turns to me and says: “Well, it’s twins with two strong heartbeats”. I was shocked, but I knew the possibility was there. With this pregnancy I made it past the 8 weeks, then past 12, and all the way to 36 weeks and 5 days when I finally gave birth and had my beautiful babies in my arms.

I used an anonymous donor so I have no relationship with her, other than the fact that she gave me something I couldn’t give myself. She has given me the best gift I could ever ask for, and without her, I would never be able to call myself a mom.

My experience using Egg Helpers far exceeded my expectations about using an egg donor. The process was easy and the staff at Egg Helpers always answered any questions I had very quickly and efficiently. My favourite part of my experience with Egg Helpers was how well they facilitated the connection with my donor and provided me with any information that I required along the way.

I will be forever grateful and thankful for my children, and even though I needed help getting to where I am, I love these babies more than anything. I want to say thank you to all the women who give women like me the hope of having a family. It takes a lot of courage, time, commitment, strength, and being selfless to be willing to donate your eggs. I for one will always think of women who struggle with infertility and the women and clinics who help us.

Thank you again for me being able to experience a love I never knew existed.

Thank you, Laura, for sharing your incredible story with us! Are you interested in finding an egg donor to help complete your family? Click here to register with Egg Helper’s Donor Program.