“I was filled with doubt at first, but it’s a baby you feel inside, you feed with your energy, you’ve given birth to…it’s my child and you forget that the first cell is not yours because all the others are.”

 

This is Esther’s story. A woman who, aged 46 and after plenty of suffering, managed to become a mother due to egg donation. It’s a true, challenging story, but with a wonderful ending. Esther wanted to share her story to help other women or couples going through the same thing.

Esther and Manuel’s story

Esther and Manuel, like many couples, met in their thirties and soon shared the same goals: living together and a family. They’d been trying for a baby since 2005, but it wasn’t happening. Instead, a cold, hard diagnosis was forthcoming.

Like her sisters, Esther was diagnosed as a carrier of Fragile X syndrome, a genetic disease that can cause intellectual disability in offspring and possible premature ovarian failure (early menopause) in female carriers.  Despite being 35 and after several Artificial Insemination treatments, her only option to become a mother was egg donation.

Accepting egg donation treatment

For Esther and her husband, this was a devastating blow. They considered not having children. With the help of a friend who became a mother through egg donation and based on her sister’s opinion that egg donation was an opportunity that science had made available to become the mother of a healthy child, she decided to go ahead.

“It’s common among couples who must resort to egg donation to undergo a process of acceptance. Surrounding yourself with other couples who have gone through the same thing and accurate information helps to change how you view the procedure and see it as an opportunity instead of a sentence,” our psychologist explains.

The importance of experience in highly complex cases

Esther began her egg donation treatment in Barcelona with great enthusiasm, but without success. Only 3 embryos were obtained even though there was no sperm problem. In the third and final cycle, she achieved the positive beta that soon became a miscarriage according to her doctor. After a month of continuous bleeding and severe abdominal pains, her doctor mentioned a possible ectopic pregnancy, which prompted her to bring forward the appointment with Dr Crespo scheduled for several months later.

“When Ester arrived at the practice in May 2016, I encountered a woman in a serious condition. During the ultrasound in the first visit, we saw she had an ectopic pregnancy and with a hematosalpinx that meant the tube was about to burst. She also had an excess of fluid in the right tube, a hydrosalpinx resulting from a previous infection. We didn’t even finish the visit. By midday, we scheduled an urgent Salpingectomy (surgical removal of the fallopian tube) for both tubes. Fortunately, within a week Esther felt fine and was back to normal,” Dr Crespo told us.

Personalised strategy for egg donation cases

In June 2016, barely two months after Esther and Manuel had an emergency visit to the Equipo Juana Crespo, the process of searching for a specific donor began. Her treatment strategy also included uterine metroplasty (correcting a “T” shaped uterus, removing polyps and cleaning fibrosis) by surgical hysteroscopy, performed by Dr Fortuño and his surgical team. In about two months, Esther was ready to start her personalised cycle and begin embryo transfer with the perfect uterus.

Ten embryos were obtained. Eight were of very good quality. In early October 2016, two blastocysts were transferred to her. On 19 October, Esther told us from Barcelona that her beta had yielded 777.6 mIu/me

After a ten-year journey, the dream became true

On 2 June 2017, Heracles was born, a gorgeous baby boy. His parents are head over heels in love with him.  When we spoke to Esther, she said that from the outset, she was sure she’d achieve her dream. Over this period, as with many of our patients, we have established a really special bond. Esther is a first-time mother at 46, but we’re sure she’ll soon be back to visit us and expand the family. She has 6 wonderful embryos waiting for her at her home in Valencia