Now I will tell you about my 60 / 40 rule and I hope that it will help you!
A lot of the patients I talk to find it hard to motivate themselves into egg donation treatment.
It can be for many different reasons so here I will tell you about just some of them:
They might have been through several years of failed IVF attempts and they have started to lose their hope in becoming parents.
- May they have some ethical issues about using another woman’s egg to get pregnant?
- They have two different emotional processes going on; one is to accept not being able to use their own eggs, process it and cope with that fact, the other process is to motivate themselves to try something new — donation?
Patients in this situation often ask me: ‘How do I know if I am ready for this kind of egg treatment’? ‘How do I know when it’s the right time’?
What I know after years of experience in talking to patients is that you cannot sit and wait for that 100 percent feeling; that feeling that we normally feel when we are about to make a very important decision, the 100 percent feeling that tells us we are doing the right thing!
How can it be possible to feel sure about what to do when you are having to turn to the second-best alternative? For most of the couples and single women I talk to egg donation is not and has not been their first choice- everyone wants to have genetic children!
But now they find themselves in a situation where there are only two choices left:
- Continue their lives without children?
- Do donation? (as adoption and foster home is no longer an option for them)
Then they need to ask themselves the question that I ask my patients:
Do you think it is ok and enough if you let 40 percent of your thoughts and feelings cope with the emotional aspect that you cannot have genetic children and the other 60 percent of you is motivated and focused on doing egg donation treatment?
I believe and I see that a lot of my patients get relief when they hear that they don’t have to feel that egg donation is 100 percent right for them before they start treatment! They still have time to process what they have been through in past fertility treatment and time to accept and normalize the donation treatment.
If 60 percent of you says that donation is right, then do it! You need to grab your chance while you still have it!
If you are unsure what to do, or your partner is unsure tell him, or her about the 60 / 40 rule, don’t sit and wait for that 100 percent feeling as it might never happen and then you have lost your chance!
I wish you the best of luck!
Tone Bråten
