“Overwhelmed by the kindness of strangers"

Update 2011

Sadly the story ends in frustration in November 2011 as Emma's diary confirms. They still hope for a happy outcome eventually, a sentiment that will be shared by all who read about their experiences.

Extracts from emma's diary

2008 -July 2009: We reach the end of yet another failed cycle of treatment, only one egg was collected but it turned out not to be viable. When we get the call from the clinic to say the egg could not be fertilised we crumble and for days we don’t know what to do with ourselves.

August-Oct 2009: I turn a corner emotionally. I accept that I can never be a parent genetically but being a mum isn’t about cells and DNA, it’s about loving a child unconditionally. It’s about tirelessly caring for and nurturing a little human being; helping them to grow and to feel safe and loved and to know that they can count on you completely. A mum is there to help and support a child as they grow up and find their own identity and their own place in the world. Whether our child comes from my egg or from a donor doesn’t change that fact.

Jan 22nd 2010: Oh my god, we’re in the Leicester Mercury!

Jan 26th 2010: We can hardly believe it, five women have already contacted the Leicester Fertility Centre! Two turned out not to be suitable but three could still possibly become donors. We are so excited we’ve barely slept.

Feb 8th 2010: We’re starting to worry that we haven’t reached enough people. The total number of calls to the clinic now stands at only 10 with several dropping away after the first call. We are reminded once again that it took 93 women to respond before a London couple found their donor. We won’t give up though! The posters go out today so fingers crossed that lots of places will be willing to display them.

May 8th 2010: We had no idea the egg-donor process would take so long, the wait is getting really hard now.

Jun 22nd 2010: The waiting goes on. Perhaps we were a bit naive when we started this process six months ago. We were so elated that the clinic received lots of calls from possible donors and we imagined that the screening process would fly by and that treatment might start as early as March. If someone had told us we would still be struggling to even find a donor six months later that would have been really hard news to deal with.

Sep 18th 2010: Exciting, amazing, wonderful news! We have finally, at long last been matched to a donor. Words just can’t express the enormity of it all, thank you so so much! Even more than that; after all the anxious waiting and worrying it looks like a second donor has actually been found who will be donating to others on the Leicester waiting list. We couldn’t ask for more if we tried, we are absolutely over the moon!

What we do know is that it is an amazing, remarkable, generous, giving and very rare woman who agrees to become an egg donor.

The roller coaster of emotions that has taken a Groby couple from sadness to elation

After a year of emotional highs and lows Emma and Mark, the Groby couple who appealed for an egg donor earlier this year, have been matched with a donor and started treatment. “Exciting, amazing, wonderful” were the words Emma used when she heard the news about the match. At the start of the campaign she said “Even at this stage we feel overwhelmed by the kindness of strangers, thank you so much. For those women who have come forward but are not suitable we want to thank you too, your desire to help lets us hope that there are others out there who would also be willing to give this amazing gift.”

"There really is nothing we want more in the world than to have a child together and to experience all of it, the birth, the sleepless nights, the house cluttered up with high chairs and toys. Having waited for ten years, the thought that we are still years away from our dream fills us with an incredible sadness and with a deep seated fear that it may never happen at all," Emma said earlier this year. But with this latest development their wait is hopefully at an end.

“We had practically given up hope at the point when our donor was confirmed and then within days a second donor was announced”, Emma said. “The result has been a year filled with extremes of hope, anxiety, disappointment and most recently elation. It's hard to believe that we will finally start treatment; we keep having to remind ourselves that with a donor the probability of success is excellent. I don't think either of us will quite believe any of it until we actually meet our little boy or girl for the first time.”

The treatment process takes several weeks so we the couple won't know until the end of November if it has been successful or not. “We simply can't imagine a more perfect Christmas present than to be told that treatment has worked and that we are expecting a baby.”

The couple had spent £20,000 on fertility treatment and suffered three miscarriages before they launched a public appeal for a woman between the ages of 19 and 35 to come forward as an egg donor. They had lost each of their babies within the first nine weeks and were then told that although Emma had no viable eggs they have every chance of a successful pregnancy with the help of a donor. The couple had 2000 posters printed and posted them to 500 locations, hoping that places such as Libraries, GP surgeries, charity shops and Universities would agree to display them.

Their appeal was reported in the Leicester Mercury in January and within days five people had contacted the Leicester Fertility Centre. But as the months passed it became clear that there was no quick fix, “We had no idea the egg-donor process would take so long,” said Emma in May. “The wait is getting really hard now. Every week or so there is an appointment with Mo at the clinic and a nail biting sense of anticipation. Will the latest news be good or bad?”

The appeal hasn't just brought results for Emma and Mark. A second donor has come forward giving hope to another Leicestershire couple who will also be treated at the Fertility clinic.

October 2010

The original story of the appeal in January 2010 -

"Our hopes have been raised and dashed so many times that it has often felt too painful to go on"

Three miscarriages

"Our hopes have been raised and dashed so many times that it has often felt too painful to go on. The most heartbreaking part has been the miscarriages. We've had three pregnancies but each one lost within 9 weeks. I can't find the words to express the agony of trying for so long, feeling incredible joy when treatment succeeds only to have our baby cruelly snatched away. What we now know is that I have no viable eggs but with the help of a donor we have every chance of a successful pregnancy."

"There really is nothing we want more in the world than to have a child together and to experience all of it, the birth, the sleepless nights, the house cluttered up with high chairs and toys. Having waited for ten years, the thought that we are still years away from our dream fills us with an incredible sadness and with a deep seated fear that it may never happen at all," added Emma.

1 in 6 couples affected

Emma and Mark Sadly are not alone on this painful journey as fertility problems affect one in six UK couples. When the only answer turns out to be egg donation the wait can stretch into many years and for some it ends in disappointment. “It is hard to describe the agony of childlessness when the one thing you want most in the world is to be a family,” said Emma. “Although having a donor from Groby would feel too close to home for us we hope that our campaign might encourage local women to consider becoming egg donors for others on the waiting list.”

Earlier this month they heard from a local couple who have been waiting for four and a half years. She went through cancer as a teenager; her ovaries were irreversibly damaged by chemotherapy drugs and so an egg donor is their last hope. “It is a rare and wonderful woman who agrees to go through IVF to help a childless couple,” said Emma. “When we first arrived in Groby we were still hoping that conventional IVF would bring us our dream but we now know that an egg donor is our final hope.”

Thanks for the support

“We would like to thank our friends and neighbours in Groby for their words of support and also the dozens of people who have been in touch from all over Leicestershire and beyond,” she added. “We've heard from many others who like us are going through this painful journey, some right here in Groby. It really would be a dream come true if our campaign found us a donor and also helped some of the countless others also going through this agony.”

The couple have had 2000 posters printed and are posting them to 500 locations, hoping that places such as Libraries, GP surgeries, charity shops and Universities will agree to display them.