interested in your thoughts on this one....

from the daily mail, september 3, 2008   http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1052247/Shes-suing-NHS-delays-forced-conceive-baby-donor-egg--So-Greta-Mason-honest-just-plain-selfish.html

it is a bit of a long read, but pretty captivating....

With his thatch of dark hair, olive skin and eyes which are already turning brown, newborn Jaden Mason is not  -  lovely though he is  -  the blond, blue-eyed infant his mother Greta always dreamed of having.

As she cradles her 8lb 7oz son, surrounded by congratulations cards, 42-year-old Greta is clearly besotted with him and insists that whatever fears she might have harboured about bonding with her baby evaporated the second he was placed in her arms.

'As soon as the midwife laid him on my chest I took one look at him and felt a surge of love,' says Greta, who lives with her husband Chris, 43, in Worthing, West Sussex.

'We waited so long to have a baby that neither Chris nor I can stop marvelling at how beautiful he is.'

It helps that Jaden, conceived via IVF using an anonymous donor egg from Spain and Chris's sperm, looks just like his father and the couple feel blessed that his safe arrival by emergency Caesarean has ended 13 years of childlessness. They are a family at last.

So surely Greta must be as contented as the nine-day-old baby slumbering in her arms? Well, no, not exactly.

For she still yearns deep down for the baby she believes she should have had, indeed was entitled to have, using her own eggs rather than a donor's.

'I look at Jaden and he is so wonderful that I can't help but wish he is all mine,' says Greta with disarming honesty, 'so despite my joy at having such a beautiful baby, I can't help but feel bitter I have been cheated out of that and the genetic baby I always thought I'd have with Chris hasn't happened.'

Last week, before Jaden's birth, Greta announced she was taking the remarkable step of suing her health trust claiming she was denied the right to have her own biological child and forced to conceive using donor eggs because of NHS delays in treating her.

She claimed a barrage of unnecessary fertility tests followed by a six-year wait for treatment meant her eggs were too old to be used in IVF treatment and she could only conceive using a donor.

She described the loss of the chance to have her own flesh and blood baby as 'devastating' and a 'shattering blow' and posed the question to herself: can I really love a baby who's not all mine?

Her extraordinary and controversial legal action prompted a wave of furious e-mails and letters from readers who accused Greta of being 'ungrateful' and ' selfish.'

Others expressed concern that she would find it hard to bond with her baby, because he shared none of her characteristics and questioned whether a cash-strapped NHS should be offering free IVF treatment at all if the taxpayer is left open to compensation claims.

This is Greta and Chris's first interview since the birth of Jaden. They say they have been wounded by the ' hurtful' comments made about them and say that their son's arrival, while joyous, has not totally diminished their feelings of bitter regret that Greta will never bear her own genetic child.

They refuse to be cowed by the criticism and say that just because other people may feel uncomfortable, it doesn't make what they honestly feel any less real or indeed natural.

'Of course we are overjoyed that Jaden is here,' says Greta, 'but there is still a twinge of sadness, the niggle that he is not genetically related to me. It isn't a question of love or feeling that he is not my child.

'Now that he is here I feel that he is totally my baby. I also love him more than anything  -  and feel incredibly protective over him as any mother would  -  but the fact is that I had always dreamed of having a flesh and blood baby who would inherit my genes with my husband.

'I have been reduced to tears by some of the cruel remarks people have made about us. The most hurtful thing has been those people criticising us saying I should feel grateful for the fact that I have a baby.

'I am incredibly grateful, but it doesn't change the way I feel. I am just being honest about very delicate emotions. The truth is, this seems to be a taboo subject.

'People are reluctant to talk about these kind of emotions, but I can't believe I am the only mother who has conceived a baby by donor egg who feels this way.

'You cannot sweep reality under the carpet and not face up to the fact that a whole part of Jaden's life is missing.

'For example, we will have no idea of the health issues on his side of the family and I worry about how we will explain his birth to him.

'I am thinking about Jaden. How will he feel when he understands that although I gave birth to him, I am not his genetic mummy?

'Will he be upset about the way he is conceived? I love him but when he is older, will he love me?'

Chris, who works for large transport company, adds: 'It is sad that Greta doesn't feel she can say "Oh, look Jaden's got my nose," for example, but I tell her Jaden has his own looks, he looks like Jaden.

'But I defy any man who loves his wife to say he is completely happy that he's had to have a baby using another woman's egg. When you marry someone it is only natural to want a family with them.

'And while words cannot describe the overwhelming feelings of sheer happiness I feel now to have a son, I feel terribly guilty about the suffering Greta's had to go through to have my baby.'

Some might regard Greta's decision to talk so candidly about her disappointment as incredibly brave, while others might consider it selfish.

After all, how will Jaden feel growing up knowing  -  not just that he was conceived using a donor egg  -  but more pertinently that his mother would have preferred a genetic child of her own?

Furthermore is the NHS really to blame for her predicament or is her legal action merely a symptom of our times where women feel they are entitled to their own baby if they want, when they want, and if it doesn't happen naturally then through IVF  -  of which there is no guarantee of success  -  funded by the taxpayer?

Greta is at pains to point out that while, for some women, a donor egg is the only way to conceive, for her it was an avoidable option as it was Chris rather than her who suffered the fertility problems.

She argues that had the NHS waiting lists not been so long, her own perfectly healthy eggs could have been used before age deteriorated their quality.

'It annoys me that people seem to automatically assume that it is always the woman's "fault" when a couple has difficulties having a baby,' she says, 'but in our case the fertility problem was with Chris, so it seems unfair that I was the one who ended with the baby who is not genetically related to me.'

Life is unfair, as many people can testify, but Greta vehemently believes the NHS should be held accountable, even though, you would have thought, if she'd been that desperate have her own genetic baby they might have considered going private to begin with.

As it was, they ended up remortgaging ttheir house to pay the £15,000 cost of undergoing private IVF treatment using a Spanish donor egg to have the baby they longed for after being told there were virtually none available in the UK.

'In hindsight, we naively trusted the doctors, that they knew what they were doing and there was a reason why we were not a priority case,' says Chris.' We didn't try to jump the queue  -  we waited patiently for the IVF treatment on the NHS.

'However, if someone had told us in the beginning that we would have to wait so long for treatment and then that during that time Greta's fertility could wane so much, we would have gone privately earlier.

'What is terribly upsetting is people who think because we are suing we must be mercenary people.

'But we are doing this to stop the same mistake happening to someone else  -  to stop others having to use a donor egg when, if they were brought in for fertility treatment earlier, they could have had their own genetic child.

'There are also hardly any egg donors so surely it is in the interests of the doctors to try to use people's own eggs and not leave them so long on a waiting list that they become menopausal.'

Married in 1993, Greta and Chris dreamed of having a family together and they started trying for a baby together two years later when Greta was 29.

After two years of trying without success, they were referred for fertility tests and in October 1998 initial results indication that Chris's sperm count was zero.

Further examination demonstrated that he was in fact producing sperm, but mobility was the problem and for it to be used in fertility treatment it would need to be extracted directly to fertilise Greta's eggs.

The couple now believe they should have undergone ICSI straightaway  -  a type of IVF where sperm is directly injected into the egg in a test tube and the fertilised embryo then implanted in the womb.

Greta claims that instead of offering this, doctors insisted on a barrage of further medical tests to check her fertility including a laparoscopy  -  keyhole surgery to check if her uterus was normal and her Fallopian tubes unblocked  -  even though she had become pregnant in a previous relationship and miscarried.

All tests, which also showed her eggs were healthy, came back normal and the Masons were placed on the NHS waiting list for IVF.

'I yearned for babies,' admits Greta, 'We hadn't even considered accepting that we would always be childless. I simply couldn't see a future without a family.'

It would be four years before they received their first appointment and a further two before they reached top of the list for IVF treatment.

By this time Greta was 40 and was devastated to learn that in the time they had waited, her eggs were too old to be successfully used in IVF.

She insists that at no point did doctors warn her that her fertility would wane as she grew older and she assumed that  -  because women do have babies in their late 30s and 40s  -  there would be no problem with her eggs.

'We have since discovered that doctors should have checked my hormone levels to ensure that as I was getting older I did not reach the menopause, but this wasn't done,' claims Greta.

'If these vital hormone tests had been done, the doctors would have had an early warning that my eggs were getting too old and they could have brought us in for IVF treatment earlier.'

Having been told their only hope of conceiving was with a donor egg, they reluctantly decided this was their only chance of having a baby and, discovering a severe shortage of donors in the UK, sought private IVF treatment in Spain.

'There, egg donors are more plentiful because unlike in the UK, donating sperm and eggs is still anonymous,' says Greta, 'but because fair-haired donors are rarer in Spain, guaranteeing a baby with blue eyes like me would have meant a wait of another year in Spain, so we opted for the next available donor.

'Not ever being a mother was something that was simply too painful to contemplate, so I never gave up hope there would be a child one day,' she says.

'Just because I am upset I couldn't use my own eggs doesn't mean I am not incredibly indebted to the woman who donated her eggs.

'I know it is a very painful process to go through and when I think of her, I can only imagine she must be a very loving and caring person to even consider donating.

I only wish that when I had my IVF I could have produced lots of eggs myself because I would have gladly donated them so another couple could have their longed for baby.

'But the fact remains that without that six-year delay we could have been parents a long time ago and we could have had a child that was genetically both ours rather than being forced to pay out for a donor egg.'

Which is why, despite being delighted with their new son, they are continuing their legal action against Worthing and Southlands Hospitals NHS Trust.

In response to the claim a trust spokesperson responded: 'We are aware of the concerns Mrs Mason has regarding the treatment she received while a patient at the trust.

'However, given that they are the subject of an ongoing claim it would not be appropriate for us to comment further.'

For the moment the Masons are adjusting to becoming new parents. They have several frozen embryos in storage  -  created at the same time as Jaden  -  and will with time consider having a full blood brother or sister for their son.

They intend, when the time is appropriate, to tell Jaden the truth about his conception and hope it will not affect his feelings for them.

'The fact that our baby isn't genetically mine raises issues not only for us, but for him. His donor was anonymous and there will be constant reminders of this in the future,' says Greta.

'I am sure there are some people who have babies by donor egg or sperm and never tell a soul.

'As it is  -  it will be my name on his birth certificate and to all intents and purposes I am his mother  -  but I have to be honest with myself and voice my true feelings.

'It is fantastic to see Chris with his own genetic son. I know Chris would have ideally liked us to have our own genetic child between us but I could never have denied Chris his own son. So there are no regrets and no way I wouldn't have gone ahead,' says Greta.

'Obviously, now Jaden's here, we wouldn't swop him for the world  -  not for our own genetic baby or any other baby.

'Now I feel so protective of him that I only have to look at him or hear him cry and I want to hold him straightaway. He's our child and we love him.'

But will Greta ever stop thinking about the blond, blue-eyed baby she might have had?

********

alright....your thoughts ???

mine:

1) no ownership: she couldn't have done her own testing to determine the quality of her own eggs? what sort of woman in today's world DOESN"T know about declining quality of eggs as women age?

2) she's worried about how her child will feel once he discovers he is not her biological child..she should more worry about the incredibly hurtful things she is saying in this article!

3) i wanted all my children to have charles' lovely eyelashes. can i sue our ivf clinics because they dont? certainly one way to pay their school fees?

WHAT DO YOU THINK? does she have a point??? any sympathy i had is kind of gone because i feel so sorry for her wee little laddie.

Comments

[Coral]

All the blogs I have read of IVF have totally informed writers - she did not keep informed. Her fault.

She also whines too much. "I am grateful, but whine, whine whine."

Poor child, he will find these interviews on the net when he is older, and I wonder what he will think?

[Lala]

I agree, you have to be your own advocate! However - six years is an awfully long time to wait for treatment. I'm too distracted to read the article fully though, mild contractions.

[becky k]

as a new mother to a child conceived through ivf in the UK, i have to say i am a bit more sympathetic to her. we were really lucky to have a short wait for our first two nhs-funded cycles (6 mo and 9 mos) but only were successful with try #3 which we had to self-fund. however, we have friends in other postcode areas who got three free tries and/or had much longer waits. you are conditioned here to not make waves when you wait and i can see how she would have done that, trusting that "the system" was good and that doctors knew best. it's really not a fair system and most women who aren't reading ivf blogs have little idea how fragile their fertility is. i think this case is important for exactly the reason she says - so that other women take notice and education gets better, so that it doesn't happen to others. and can't you all empathise with the head-banging against the wall frustration as cycle after cycle was lost in the wait???

[tess]

hi becky
congratulations on the birth of your baby. and thank you for sharing your opinions. we dont have the nhs, so i really appreciated your post.

i do understand the frustration of waiting. i can empathise with the loss she feels and the frustration, but i look at magazines like jane, marie claire and they do have articles about declining fertility, and even articles declaring 40 something celeb mums who've just had twins do make a note of "declining egg quality." whether it is my epilepsy, cervix that never quite smears regular, or my infertility, i research my diagnosis and condition and long term possibilities. i don't just leave it to the doctors.

i did mention my sympathy for her, but she is losing me because she so clearly needed grief counselling before doing this donor cycle, and coming to terms with it. her statements (who can guarantee that a cycle with her eggs and her husbands sperm would have been successful anyway??) are going to cause her child a great deal of pain, and although i have sympathy for her situation, when i read those hurtful words, that is where i begin getting upset.

[Dad aka GDad Blake]

I would like to hear the NHS version of the events before reaching any decision.
Love to all.....Dad

[Trace]

Hmm, I don't know anything about British rules regarding fertility treatments. What is the NHS? I gather from the other commenter it's a goverment agency that pays for fertility stuff? Hmm, in the US we pay for ART ourselves. If you're not getting the service you want, suck it up and pay. Why not switch if you're put on a long waiting list? Why wouldn't you be PROACTIVE and do research online? How could someone be so naive to NOT know their egg quality decreases with age? It's all over magazines you see in the line at the supermarket. Open a Redbook or Womens Day. If becoming a mother was so important why didn't she do anything to help herself. Research is FREE. Plus, she didn't tell the doctors to do the procedure she wanted? Why? I know the other commenter said British culture is not like that, but I don't buy it. I don't really have any pity for her and feel sorry for the son who will read this article someday and probably feel like crap.

[becky k]

the NHS is the national health service and is a government funded health service that provides all medical care in the uk. it's free yet different local health boards provide different levels of free care for things like ART or procedures that might be seen as elective. once you exhaust what they provide for free, you are on your own. you can either pay the NHS and jump the queue or go privately.

with waiting lists, you often think you are there and then get pushed down the list. the situation is much worse in england, where this lady is, than in scotland where we are. but even in scotland, if the eligibility changes for a procedure you might find yourself bumped and a 2 year wait becomes 3 and so on. sure, greta could have done more for herself but i can imagine her like many others being caught in the system.

infertility is an emotionally charged issue. and also experiencing male factor inf, i really can relate to some of her frustrations. she said some hard things that are difficult to say about your child and perhaps are hurtful but they are real issues that anyone in her situation would face. she's just saying them out loud and i'm glad we didn't have to come ot the point to make choices she had to make.

and we can say all we like about magazine articles and celebrities (who are probably lying about what they've had done anyway) but the average bear is clueless about real fertility issues. i'm even annoyed at the article saying they "implanted" fertilized embryos into the womb. as harsh as this article is and as hard as these thoughts are to hear greta say, i still hold that this is an important case in the uk to bring more understanding and fairness to the system. it seems counterintuitive to me to provide an invaluable service such as IVF to couples that is then made less successful because of administrative hurdles and a lack of holistic care. and then we add a mental/emotional care need on top due to the damage done to the mum and kids...

[lyns]

not having read any of the above comments here is my opinon:

1. I have had not EVER had a fertility problem..Rick and I pass in the hall I am get preg!!!

2. I can understand her frustration with the system that they made her wait and then take more tests instead of harvesting her eggs and using them once they figured out Chris's problem... that seems to be the main issue here.

3. Didn't they think of Surragacy???

4 I don't feel at all sorry for her now simply b/c they choose to use a donor egg and concive that way...of course she loves her baby..she carried it for nine months and no matter whose egg it is HERS!!!!

5. She had 6 years of waiting to figure out another option...didn't she think through the ramifications of using a donor egg? Didn't they consider harvesting her eggs before they aged???

6. B/c I have not EVER struggled with this I don't know.... I don't know what it is like to yearn for a child and a family so much that I was willing to do ANYTHING to concieve.... I don't know what my body would do ramped up on IVF hormones...i don't know if I could handle the pain and disaapointment that comes with failed tries and miscarriages...

7 I think what this family needs most is to forgive themselves..... she needs to heal and stop the guilt of an older body and a failed system....and come to a point of accptence and deal with it. They need to CHOOSE JOY!!!!

8 They need to foucs on the NOW... Jaden and the family they now have and stop worrying and trying to re create something isn't ever going to happen!!!

That is all I have... is my opinon valid??? I don't know b/c I won't ever have to make those decsions.... xo lyns

[Not On Fire]

Wow! How could you not be worried that the message you are sending to your kid is that "we sued because we didn't get what we wanted and what we got was you!". Yikes!

[elaine d]

I'm with you, Tess. I understand that this woman went through years of frustration but that doesn't excuse the way she talks about her baby as if he is in some way inferior because he doesn't carry her genes! I fear for his future with a mother with that kind of attitude. As the mother of an adopted child who is not genetically related to either my husband or me, I find her attitude very offensive. I do hope she sees the need to get some kind of counselling to help her deal with her sense of loss so that she can get on with being the mother that this child deserves.

[Rebecca]

I think the woman has NO EXCUSE for not doing her OWN research on her and/or her husband's fertility issues. It's not a secret that women's eggs deteriorate, not that I'm from the UK, but c'mon, they have all sorts of info on the net, and I learned that kind of info in middle school.

I do not personally have major fertility problems, but I definitely would never wait around for the government, no matter where I lived, to take action FOR me. I had trouble conceiving my last and I put a lot of effort to find the source of the issue. Plus, here in the US, IVF is anything but free. People pay through the nose for cycle after cycle.

As far as her comments about the baby, inexcusable. What if she had adopted? Would she love that baby even less because it shared absolutely no genes with either of them? I feel sorry for the little babe.

Some people want their 15 minutes of fame, it's a shame to use a baby for that. I'm not really getting how she's justified to "sue" the system for not allowing her to use her eggs whilst they still had a shelf life. She should have used a little self motivation to research her situation, instead of sitting on her keister waiting for the government to come around. A lot of things wouldn't get done around here if I waited for them!

[Boulder]

I guess I wonder why she didn't go to a country where she was more likely to wind up "seeing" a child that she had imagined having. That feels odd to me. If you know that you have always thought of your child as a brunette with green eyes, why go to Sweden? Or if you see your child as blonde haired with blue eyes, why head to a Mediterranean country? I mean, why use that donor/facility/country?

I don't know how I feel about her vocalization of her own issues, specifically because there *is* a baby now.

But I can truthfully state that this has been one of the single greatest reasons for my reluctance to go through donor egg. Not so much that I want a child to look like I do, but because I've craved the connection to my own past. Call that shallow, or call it what I think it to be - a pride passed down to me from my parents and grandparents. If you have that in your life, it can be a pretty hard thing to let go of. I'd like to have my child to have a chance to have my grandfather's eyes, or my father's hair, or my mother's smile, just as much as I'd like to have my child have my husband's eyebrows, or his chin, or his quick wit.

I'm sad for her, and for the child that will someday read that story. Hopefully, they will both recover and feel whole.

(PS - to lyns - if her eggs are bad, surrogacy doesn't really help, and it is far more expensive than donor in most locations.)

[Suzanne]

I'm with you Tess, the only person I feel sorry for is the baby. I live in the US so we didn't have our efforts to have a child funded by a national healthcare system. Regardless of who is funding it, the patient should always be their own advocate and educate themselves. After three failed medicated IUI cycles and two failed IVFs (one ending in miscarriage), we moved on to donor eggs. We were successful and now have a 15 month old daughter.

Not for one second did I lament the loss of passing my genetic material on to my child. I was too busy thanking God that I had a healthy beautiful child. Even now as our fiesty toddler makes some days a challenge, I am so happy that I have her because there are so many infertile couples who are still waiting for their miracle to happen.

[lyns]

my surrogacy question was b/c she had a long time waiting for a baby... didn't they explore EVERY option possible to have a baby with her egg and his sperm??? Couldn't they harvested eggs when they were good and used them later? It goes back to my point about her needing to have explored all the options and not sueing a government program....

My husband and I were talking about this last night and he made an interesting point...its an ethical question... no matter how you look at it (and perhaps this is part of the underlying issue) there is now another woman in their relationship...part of what she is feeling is this sense that no matter how you look at it this baby is NOT hers.... so on top of the guilt she already is feeling she now is feeling utter failure.... just a thought...

[Auntie Pammie]

I only have two comments re: this woman.
,, in this day and age how could she NOT be more self motivated to do her own research re: her fertility and its other issues? If she did not have internet , the library offers it for free as well as an abundance of other ressources.
,, personally I feel she is a
selfish Ungrateful sod.I guess she is in the mindset that unless the child is 100% genetically yours it is not "your" child, I feel for these narrrowminded people who think this way as they are denying themselves the greatest gift of all.

[Petal]

What she has done and said just baffles me. Incredibly unbelievable. Greedy cow! Now wants the money back from remortaging the house now that there is a credit crunch or what!

She/they had time to research a donor and do it privately in another county so what on earth did they do for 4 years while waiting for a NHS appointment? Just waiting for the postman?

Did she/they do counselling before? There is no way she could miss any article in a mag, newspaper, headlines hard copy or online about declining fertility in the past few years. Unless they are hermits living a hole waiting for NHS to worry about them.

Not saying her reaction is not normal for someone in her case but usually steps can be take to minimise those risks. And sometimes it is worth to keep quiet and only discuss with your shrink not the world where you look more greedy than anything else. I hope for the kid's sake that she never falls miracously pregnant with her own kid. She should act like she really is grateful, shut up and get on with life oh and regular checks that she does not develop any sort of post natal depression.

[Sara]

I have a lot of sympathy for everyone in that article. Of course I feel for the child. Some children have real issues with being donor-conceived, and having an article like this floating around may someday play into lingering issues that the child may have. However, I also feel very sorry for the couple. Yes, they weren't very proactive, but the readers here are all assuming that they knew that there was an issue that they needed to be proactive about. There are a lot of people out there who just trust their doctors to do the right thing. Their doctors said you need this test and that test, wait in this queue and that queue. Surely a naive patient can be forgiven for thinking that this meant that the DOCTORS thought that they had time. I admit that I absolutely can't imagine waiting around for six years like that (if I had the economic wherewithal to do explore alternative options, which it appears that they did), but I am naturally an information seeker and a bit of a control freak. Some people are more mellow and optimistic. I really don't think it's responsible for a doctor to put them on a waiting list and run a bunch of tests, all the while knowing that by the time their turn came up it might be too late, without TELLING them that.

If they're suing for money, then I don't agree at all. However, if they are trying to raise attention to a problem, then I can understand their point. At the very least, the NHS wasted a lot of public money running those tests while making sure that nothing useful came out of the outcome.

As for the comments that they should have had the tests earlier, or harvested her eggs earlier, harvesting the eggs presents pretty much the entire cost of an IVF cycle, and freezing eggs or embryos lowers your chances of success. So, that would be equivalent to self-funding treatment while shooting yourself in the foot at the same time. The tests can be expensive as well (a laparoscopic surgery is almost as expensive as IVF in some cases, so that really does represent wasted resources on the part of the NHS.

I think that those of us (myself included) that are not used to a government-sponsored health service might be much more accustomed to seeking choices and to considering health care to be our own responsibility than people that grew up in countries with a NHS. I did IVF in Korea, which has an NHS, and could have had half of the costs covered by the system, but as a resident expat who isn't used to the system, I didn't even think to ask!

[Coral]

"With his thatch of dark hair, olive skin and eyes which are already turning brown, newborn Jaden Mason is not - lovely though he is - the blond, blue-eyed infant his mother Greta always dreamed of having. "

Hmm, I wanted a blue eyed, blonde kid, I got two green/brown (both hazel) eyes and dark haired kids, any ideas who I can sue???

She is still weird.

[Jody]

The couple sounds incredibly ill-informed -- even in their choice of donors, since they could have gone to South Africa, for example, which has been a donor-egg "destination vacation" for a while. And those of us in the US system (and Canada?) seem to share the bafflement that they just sat around waiting in this queue -- even a brief reading of IF blogs shows lots and lots of British women going elsewhere to get treatment, because of the long waits at home.

I also agree with whomever it was that wrote they should have gotten more counseling before they did donor egg, to come to terms with the loss of a genetic connection (which most people would agree is a loss, even if not a huge one for particular folks).

I don't know -- I am not going to waste a lot of sympathy for these people, but it does seem as if they were very poorly served by the system. No, there's no guarantee that they would have conceived with her eggs and his sperm if they had acted when she was 36 -- but their odds would have been much better.

Why they didn't go private when they found out their diagnosis escapes me, really. How you can get through a lap procedure without someone telling you that your eggs are on a timeline also baffles me -- I do believe that was the IF doctor's obligation. No IF doctor in the States would see a patient in her mid-30s and not inform her that time was of the essence. They wouldn't leave that piece of information unsaid.

[JoeInVegas]

I am more disturbed at the attitude of her and others regarding the treatment she did receive. The line "we have friends in other postcode areas who got three free tries" - THOSE AREN'T FREE TRIES - somebody had to pay for them. To take the attitude that other people are responsible for paying for your choices seems to be a more generic attitude. If you are physically incapable of having kids, sorry, that's God's choice, suck it up and live with it, don't assume that I and other taxpayers are responsible.
(sorry Tess, shouldn't use your place to complain).

[Lowa]

We must pray for that wee innocent little lad:( I am seriously scared for him:(

[kate]

I am shocked by how anyone could not feel a child that they carried in her body for 9 months is not truly her child. You carried that baby under your heart, you nourished it, cared for it, doesn't that make it your baby.

My heart breaks for her baby not that he might not have a genetic bond to the woman that gave birth to him but the fact that she is upset he is not from her egg. She feels robbed? You have got to be kidding me. I can not even fathom what she is saying it is simply ridiculous. She should be happy to have a healthy baby.

I also question people like this that feel if it is not their baby biologically they could not love it as much as if it was. I would think any child that you raise biological or not biological you would love because that is a person you have seen day in and out, cared for, protected, raised. Blood or not blood does it really matter? I don't know but again I feel sad for the baby that grows up with these two as parents. Hopefully she can look past her sorrows and truly love Jaden as he deserves.

[Mel]

I do feel sorry for her. She says repeatedly she loves him and is grateful for him. She wants a biological child, it is 1st choice for all of us. Natures way of ensuring our line is continued. For many this is sadly not possible and clearly for some the longing doesn't go away. She wants to see change and she is making it happen. She, rightly or wrongly, is taking action and doing something about this. I don't believe he will feel unloved or unwanted one day as he so clearly is but I do hope she will sort out her issues by the time he gets old enought to understand.

[tripleblessings]

This is a sad story at many levels. Yes, it sounds like her health care service offered too little, too late, and this should be addressed through a formal complaint procedure or public investigation. A six-year wait for treatment is not at all reasonable.

But it is questionable whether earlier IVF/ICSI treatment would have been successful, so I doubt that the lawsuit will succeed. And it certainly seems to contradict the couple's statements about how happy they are with their new baby.

I feel that this couple should have undergone counselling before making the choice to use donor eggs. In fairness to the child they were trying to conceive, the couple should have dealt with their frustration, anger and grief at the loss of a biological child before beginning the donor cycle. It would have been better to address all those questions about how to talk to their child about his conception before they made the final decision to choose that donor.

I guess there is a tendency in court cases to state the supposed harm suffered in the strongest possible terms, perhaps to exaggerate it, in order to win the case. I hope that this couple have now accepted their family situation, and have fully bonded and rejoiced in their healthy baby son. If not, it's time to go for counselling, before their relationship with the baby is harmed by these unresolved issues.

There is no taxpayer funding for IVF in Canada. Couples must pay all the costs themselves, but the wait times are less than one year at most clinics.

Of course, there is no guarantee of success, even with many treatment cycles. The real tragedy comes to those couples who desperately want a child and are not successful with any form of assisted reproduction techniques, or adoption. I will save most of my sympathy for those who have suffered years of infertility, or the loss of a beloved child.

[Karen Ritchey]

How I would have loved to have been able to carry for nine months,my two children, who we adopted. How I would have loved to have been able to tell them stories of before they were born...having had the privilege of giving birth and adopting... there is no difference in how my children are viewed by their parents. I correct people when they ask...'which one is yours'? These people are lucky not to get hurt!
For this mother to have had the privilege of carrying her child for nine months, regardless of whose cotton pickin' egg it was...should thank God and her lucky stars that she got to be a mom. Period.
Get over it lady, and celebrate this miracle baby. Thanking God for the different ways He has of creating families...Karen