Celine Dion and her miracle twins

I don't usually like to get too caught up in celebrity baby watches but did anyone see Oprah's show with Celine Dion the other day? Celine introduced her twins from her home in Florida. Those baby boys are just precious and I couldn't be happier for Celine and her family. I've been following her story since she announced her difficulty with conceiving and like many others have been wishing her the best outcome. I knew she was going to be successful because of her determination and positive outlook. I loved seeing her in her jammies, without make-up along side her babies; her gratitude for her blessings was truly apparent. I wasn't able to embed the Oprah clip but here is a link.

http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/At-Home-with-Celine-Dion-and-Her-Miracle-Twins-Video

AFA Telephone Support Group: Dealing with Miscarriage and Early Pregnancy Loss

You're Invited to a FREE Telephone Coaching Support Group  Wednesday, February 23rd    Dealing with Miscarriage and Early Pregnancy Loss  Many of us have persevered and stayed the course, became pregnant only to be followed by loss with major set-backs, sadness and disappointment.  This FREE AFA TELECOACHING group will explore the aftermath  of miscarriage, while managing our grief and healing. During this one hour group conference call, you will receive  information on: getting the support you need be present for ourselves and our partners in healing together and apart communicate with family and friends effectively return to work and routine accept, let go, and move on WHEN: Wednesday, February 23rd   WHERE: Telephone Conference Line (call-in information will be  given at time of registration) TIME: 9:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Eastern time FACILITATORS: Emily Laitmon, LCSW and Joan Winograd, LCSW   COST: FREE!    For further information and to register contact:   Emily Laitmon, laitmon@aol.com, 212-988-2054, 914-633-4224  Joan Winograd, joanwino@aol.com, 212-362-4003     Emily Laitmon, LCSW, is a psychotherapist in private practice in NYC and Westchester specializing in women's issues, couple counseling, relationships and family building.  She is also a bereavement counselor and offers support to several hospitals and genetic depts. She is a group facilitator and coach for AFA.  Ms. Laitmon has written articles and led seminars on emotional challenges of infertility and couple therapy.  She has experienced  repeated IVFs resulting in a daughter and adopted a son. Joan D. Winograd, LCSW, has been a therapist specializing in infertility issues, as well as pregnancy loss, for the over 20 years, having personally dealt with such issues.  She practices on the Upper West Side in New York City, and sees individuals, couples and groups, and has spoken extensively on the subject. She is a Coaching Support Group Leader with the  American Fertility Association.

How to Hire a Reproductive Attorney written by Melissa Brisman, Esq.

Heartfelt Egg Donation, LLC provides a legal Services Agreement/Contract for each egg donation cycle as part of our services and is included in our agency fee.  Our agreement is drafted by a reproductive law attorney and is customized for each egg donation cycle. We always suggest that you have a reproductive law attorney review the document and answer any legal questions you may have. Below is an article written by Melissa Brisman, Esq. that will help take the mystery out of how to hire a reproductive attorney.
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How to Hire a Reproductive Attorney written by Melissa Brisman, Esq. A version of this article originally appeared in the Winter 2006 issue of Conceive Magazine.

If you’re facing fertility challenges and turning to assisted reproductive technologies, you may need some expert legal advice. To make sure you get the best, you’ll need to do some interrogating. Because reproductive law is still in its infancy (no pun intended!) there are still very few attorneys who specialize in this area. That’s one reason it’s especially important for any prospective parents to research the qualifications of the lawyer they’re hoping will assist them on the path to parenthood. For instance, a family law practice is substantially different from a law firm specializing in reproductive law. Firms advertising themselves as specializing in family law may be willing to take your case, but may not have the expertise to handle it as well as an attorney specializing in reproductive law. Websites and Internet message boards can offer a wealth of information when you start your research. Once you narrow down your search, you should get answers to the following questions before retaining the services of an attorney or firm.

1. How much experience do you have in this specific area?
Obviously your attorney’s professional experience is crucial. You’ll want to make sure he or she has the expertise and qualifications of a reproductive attorney rather than a more general family law practitioner. The subtleties and ever-changing legislation in reproductive law mean you really need someone who specializes in this field and keeps up with all the latest developments.

But once you ascertain professional expertise, personal factors become important, too. The issues that come up in reproductive law can be quite delicate and intimate, and you need to feel comfortable with the attorney who is representing you.

Both factors need to be in place—professional qualifications and a good personality match—before you can be sure you’ve found at attorney who will give you the information and advice you need while protecting your interests and understanding your particular situation in this unsettled area of the law.

2. Does your law firm offer any services other than “legal”?
The list of things to do when you’ve started on the road to family-building through assisted reproductive technology can seem infinite. You’ll ask yourself: How will I find and manage the money needed to pay all these people? What about my insurance? Who will coordinate all the “little things”? How can I find a gestational carrier and/or egg or sperm donor if I need one? It goes on and on. You may wish to consider a “one-stop shopping” approach by choosing a law firm that offers all of these services, and more. By hiring this type of firm you can cut your “to do” list to a manageable size. And while the law firm offering all these services may charge more money than other firms, the cost can still be substantially less than if you were to pay for each of these jobs individually.

3. Do you charge a flat fee or an hourly rate?
Before you sign a retainer agreement with a law firm, you should find out about the way the firm charges for its services. For instance, some attorneys work on a contingency basis—meaning they are only paid if their work is successful—but this is not appropriate in the field of reproductive law, and you should steer clear of any attorney who offers this payment option. Most attorneys charge an hourly rate, which means you’re billed a set amount for every hour (or part of an hour) that the attorney is working for you. But since it’s nearly impossible to foresee the amount of time your case will take (especially in such a constantly changing area of the law), this arrangement means it will be virtually impossible for you to know how much your legal
fees will wind up costing.

Considering all the unforeseeable expenses prospective parents encounter, it’s a great advantage to know up front what your legal fees will be. You can do that if you hire an attorney who works on a flat fee basis. When you retain an attorney for a flat fee, you can budget for your legal fees in advance. Of course, there may be some additional expenses, such as court filing fees, but these are usually minimal.

4. Where are you licensed to practice law?
Attorneys must be licensed by each state to practice law there. As you will discover when you begin your search for legal advice, individual lawyers and firms in this field come from all over the country. It’s a great advantage to have an attorney who is licensed in the states relevant to your case. Your attorney should be licensed in any states in which any medical procedures are being performed. And if you’re using a “third party” (egg donor, sperm donor, surrogate/gestational carrier), you should try to have a lawyer licensed in at least one (and ideally more) of the states in which the individuals reside. Of course, it would be impossible to find an attorney licensed in all 50 states, but it is important to find an attorney licensed in the state(s) where your clinic is located, where your baby will be born, where you live, where any third parties live, and where the IVF procedure will take place, etc.

5. Do you have a knowledgeable and experienced support staff?
When you retain an attorney, you’re not just hiring one lawyer, but the entire law firm. One sign of a good attorney is having a capable and confident staff who can assist you when the attorney is unavailable. Although a lawyer’s support staff can’t offer legal advice, they can ensure that all other aspects of your case are handled in a timely and professional manner. (On the other hand, a “solo practitioner” who has no office staff, or an attorney with poorly trained or inexperienced personnel, can make the entire process more difficult.) If possible, try to find out how long the employees have been working with the attorney; a high turnover rate may indicate some problems in the office itself.

Melissa B. Brisman is an attorney who practices exclusively in the field of reproductive law and is considered by her peers to be a leader in her profession.  Ms. Brisman’s experience and qualifications are unparalleled.  She employs an experienced and qualified staff of legal and administrative professionals and is licensed to practice law in Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and   Pennsylvania.  Ms. Brisman has a practice, Melissa B. Brisman, Esq., LLC, located in Montvale, New Jersey, offering a full range of legal services in connection with gestational carrier arrangements, ovum, sperm, and embryo donation, and adoption.  In addition, Ms. Brisman is sole owner of Reproductive Possibilities, LLC.  Reproductive Possibilities, LLC is an agency offering a donor record-keeping service which maintains contact information for intended parents and their anonymous ovum donors for a period of years following a donor arrangement.  Reproductive Possibilities, LLC also facilitates gestational carrier arrangements.  Ms. Brisman is also sole owner of Surrogate Fund Management, LLC, a company that manages escrow in connection with reproductive arrangements.

Series: Egg Donor Frequently Asked Questions - #8 What Happens Once I'm Selected to be an Egg Donor?

What happens once I am chosen by an Intended Parent and agree to be their Donor?

• The entire process should take between 6 to 8 weeks.
• If the Intended Parents and you agree to meet, we will schedule a meeting that will be facilitated by Heartfelt Egg Donation.
• You will receive a contract and you will meet with an agency-appointed attorney for legal consultation and contract review.
• We will schedule your initial required psychological evaluation and testing and medical evaluation.
• The treating physician will counsel you through the process and inform you of your schedule and how and when to begin taking the fertility medication.
• You will be scheduled for a procedure that will remove the eggs from your ovaries. This procedure usually takes about 30-40 minutes and is done under sedation in an outpatient setting.
• You will receive your compensation check within 7 days after the retrieval.

How long will it take to be matched?

This is not something we can predict. Some donors have been matched within one week of applying; others have taken as long as one year and some may never be matched.

How much time will I have to take off from work or school?

Appointments are usually early in the morning, so little or no time is missed. You will need to schedule an entire day for the egg retrieval. If your retrieval requires travel to a city where the Intended Parents doctor is located you may have to take additional time off of work or school. All travel and accommodation requirements will be arranged and paid for by Heartfelt Egg Donation on the behalf of the Intended Parents.

How much will I be paid and when will I receive the check?

Heartfelt Egg Donation has signed an agreement with the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART) that states that we will abide by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) Ethics Committee Guidelines governing the payment of egg donors. The guidelines pertaining to appropriate donor compensation specifically state: "Total payments to donors in excess of $5,000 require justification and sums above $10,000 are not appropriate." Donors will not be compensated over $10,000 under any circumstance. Typically, you will receive your check within 7 days of the egg retrieval.

Testimonial: A Kind Thank You

January is always a contemplative month. Like many, I look back on the previous year and all that's happened and think about the possibilities of the new year not just for me personally and professionally but for the prospective parents and donors I work with at Heartfelt Egg Donation. The most exciting thing about doing what I do is learning that there are successful pregnancies and babies being born to well deserving parents. 

This letter came recently and I truly appreciate the kind words.

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Dear Suzanne, 

Lord knows that this letter of thanks is very long overdue but I hope that you will accept my apology for the delay nonetheless. 

At this time of year as we all reflect on our many blessings I am constantly reminded of how fortunate I am that I found you and your agency to help me in my endeavor to create a family. Words cannot adequately express my sincere gratitude for everything that you did for me. 

First and foremost, you are a person true to your word which is a rarity in today's society. You have integrity and to me that is priceless. I would recommend you to anyone going through the donor process. You were reliable, returned every phone call and e-mail in a timely fashion and made me feel very secure during an otherwise stressful time. I never once had to worry about things on your end. I honestly felt at all times that you had everything under control and that you had my best interests at heart. The fact that my husband and I received a refund from you of money that was not spent adds testimony to your honesty. 

I am truly grateful to you and my donor for providing me with this incredible opportunity to form a family that I wouldn't have been able to do on my own. I don't want to jinx anything but I can say that as long as things continue to go well there will be lots of celebrating in the new year on the East Coast. 

I'll keep in touch, 

S.

25 Reasons to Donate Your Eggs, by Abbie Waters

Provided by: Abbie Waters of FertilityNation.com.

You’ve started thinking about donating eggs. You’ve done a little research online looking at egg donor agencies and programs. Maybe you’ve even made a list of the pros and cons of egg donation. But you’re still on the fence, unsure of what to do. To help you make your decision, here are 25 more things to think about!

25 reasons to get off the fence and become an egg donor
1. It will help you get over your fear of needles.
2. You’ll be making a child without getting stretch marks.
3. You’ll get to witness the wonders of modern medicine first hand.
4. It will make you feel powerful in your ability to make positive social change.
5. Many women and men desperately need eggs to make their families, and you could help them do that.
6. The entire egg donation process only takes a few months.
7. You’ll learn cool words like human menopausal gonadotropin.
8. You’ll learn more about the ethics of egg donation and assisted reproduction.
9. You’ll get to see ultrasound images of your ovaries. If you ask, you can probably get some copies for your wallet.
10. You’ll learn more about your body, your menstrual cycle, and human reproduction in general.
11. Donating eggs will give you an appreciation of the beauty and power of your body.
12. Donating eggs will give you an amazing symbolic connection to a family.
13. The experience will deepen your capacity to empathize with others’ suffering.
14. If your recipient is infertile, you can raise public awareness about infertility.
15. If your recipient is gay, you can raise public awareness about gay parenting.
16. The compensation could help you pay off your debts or start your retirement savings.
17. “I’m an egg donor” makes a great conversation starter at parties.
18. All the medical examinations and meetings with the egg donor agency will develop your communication skills.
19. Going through the entire process shows others that you are a dedicated person who accomplishes your goals.
20. You’ll be able to look back on the experience with pride.
21. The egg stimulating drugs they give you will temporarily make you a living fertility goddess.
22. You’ll have plenty of time to update your Facebook profile while waiting at doctor’s appointments.
23. You’ll be a member of a very small, very unique “sorority” of women who have donated eggs to others.
24. It will be a story you can tell your children and grandchildren.
25. You might be lucky enough to experience the joys of Lupron-induced hot flashes!

So what about you? What reasons would you give to a young woman thinking about becoming an egg donor?

Video: Meet the Twiblings and More on the Twiblings - MSNBC/NYTimes

This is a wonderful story regarding Third Party Reproduction, specifically gestational carriers and egg donation. You may click on these links for the original NY Times piece and for the reply to comments posted from the Author and Mother, Melanie Thernstrom. I love that Melanie has nicknamed her egg donor their Fairy Goddonor. To some it may seem silly but to those who go through this it makes perfect sense and is an easy term for their children to understand. I appreciate Melanie and her gestational carriers, Melissa and Fie, for being brave with sharing their story.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year from Heartfelt Egg Donation! We are so grateful for all of our 500+ Facebook community friends, colleagues and beyond. Cheers to you and a New Year bursting with possibilities!

Lemon Blossoms - renewed faith, hope and possibilities

Pandora's Box? Gail Sexton Anderson, Ed.M.

Heartfelt Egg Donation coordinates and encourages open and semi-open communication and arrangements between intended parents and egg donors if they decide this is the best route for them. I truly value Gail Sexton Anderson's voice in the egg donation community. Have a look at her recent blog post below and her insight regarding direct contact between parents and egg donors.

Pandora's Box? By Gail Sexton Anderson, Ed.M. 

Some fear that allowing intended parents and egg donors to have direct contact could be opening Pandora’s box.  My experience, of over 13 years, working with couples and egg donors is that knowledge soothes the fear of the unknown rather than creating problems. I have conducted many meetings between couples and egg donors and I can say they have been wonderful meetings were all parties walked away feeling better for having met.

When the donor gets the opportunity to meet the couple she is helping she has a stronger sense of commitment to the process. I’ve found that many donors would say to me after having met the couple that they were surprised how nice the intended parents are.  They had been expecting some wealthy and superficial individuals rather than a normal everyday caring couple longing to be parents. The donor often finds it more rewarding to when they get the opportunity to meet the couple.  Donors who done completely anonymous cycles as well as cycles were they have meet the intended parents wish they had been able to meet the all of their couples.

When intended parents meet their egg donor it acts to reinforce their choice and to take away many of the fears they may have.  I have found that most intended parents have the desire to feel like they know the egg donor.  It can be a very scary thing to put so much trust into an individual who will in essence be taking the mothers place in the gene pool. The meeting can help the couple to experience the egg donor as a multifaceted individual whom they can feel comfortable moving forward with in an IVF cycle.  I have found that intended parents also feel a strongly sense of closure when they have been able to meet their donor.
I’m not suggesting that all couples and donor should meet but I am suggesting that we are not complicating issues but actually simplifying issues by not creating such a taboo around meeting and future contact. The bottom line is that the more the parties know about each other more the comfortable they usually are.  Not knowing may cause the parties involved to make assumptions about each other that may not be founded in reality and may also cause anxiety in many cases.

I am finding that many intended parents are becoming more and more open to having some sort of contact with their egg donor and even more so wanting to have the option for future contact for the benefit of their future child.  Trying to keep these parties apart creates more fear than is really merited.  Most couples and egg donors have good boundaries and are not likely to become burdens to the each other.

Let’s also remember, at the bottom of Pandora’s box was hope.

Survey: Families through Gamete Donation Language

One of the challenges and frustrations many parents have with Third Party Reproduction is the language and definitions associated with egg donation. 

 

The Language Committee of Parents Via Egg Donation,  a nonprofit organization, is creating a document to reflect the language of families created through gamete donation. Just as Positive Adoption Language (PAL) finally legitimized and clarified the role of birth and adoptive families, so too, do we intend to educate as to how and what to call the various participants of families created through assisted reproductive options.

The intent is to distribute this document to the media and to others so that journalists will have appropriate language to use in describing our families. To do this, we would like to know what language you as parents, siblings, and professionals in the field of family building prefer to use.

Answers to these questions are completely anonymous. Please help us know what language is appropriate to use when describing families of gamete donation. The entire survey should take approximately 15 minutes.

The survey can be found here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/gametedonationlanguage

*** When you take the survey please remember to click NEXT at the bottom of the screen ad continue on to the second page. There is another page with another set of questions. I think there are 30 some questions in all. 

 

Thank You.

Carole Lieber Wilkins, MFT and Britta Dinsmore, Ph.D., Co-Chairs
Parents Via Egg Donation

Study: Egg donors happy they helped out

By Alan Mozes
HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 27 (HealthDay News) -- Most women who serve as egg donors retain a positive take on their experience a year later, new research indicates.

Researchers polled 75 egg donors at the time of egg retrieval and one year later, and found that the women remained happy, proud and carefree about their experience. "Up until now we've known that donors are by and large very satisfied by their experience when it takes place," said study lead author Andrea M. Braverman, director of complementary and alternative medicine at Reproductive Medicine Associates of New Jersey in Morristown. "And now we see that for the vast majority the positive experience persists."Braverman and colleagues from the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in Piscataway, N.J., were scheduled to present their survey findings Wednesday in Denver at a meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

A year after donation, the women said they seldom worried about either the health or emotional well-being of the children they helped to spawn. They said they only think about the donation occasionally and rarely discuss it. The donors also reported that financial compensation was not the number-one motive for facilitating another woman's pregnancy. Rather, a desire to help others achieve their dreams was pegged as the driving force, followed by money and feeling good.

Women who said the donation process made them feel worthwhile tended to be open to the notion of meeting their offspring when they reach adulthood. And most donors were receptive to the idea of meeting the egg recipients and participating in a donor registry. "These findings are only one year out, and this is part of a five-year ongoing study," cautioned Braverman. "And life changes a lot in five years, so it'll be interesting to see if this lasts that far out. We can't say yet. But so far we're seeing that the feelings persisted during the beginning of the journey. A year out, we're not seeing a change in donors' experience. And that's kind of a good thing."

Linda Applegarth, director of psychological services at the Center for Reproductive Medicine and Infertility at the New York Presbyterian Hospital--Weill Medical College of Cornell University, described the study as "very useful," but expressed little surprise with the findings. "I actually routinely meet with donors a year post donation, particularly with donors who want to donate again," she said, noting that about 65 percent of her center's donors choose to repeat the process. "And I would say anecdotally that my experience matches the study findings," she added. "Many do choose to donate again because they have had a very positive experience," Applegarth explained. "And in addition to whatever had motivated them to donate in the first place, after they've donated, the experience often takes on new meaning for them, in a positive way. So their motivation becomes more multi-faceted, because they really do know that they've made a difference." Donors don't obsess about the experience, Applegarth said. "They move on with their lives. And this, I think, speaks well to the fact that there are any number of us who work with donors and try to be very sensitive to them and what they're doing, and want to make sure that they have a good experience with the donation," she said."We consider the donors as patients, and in that respect they're as important as anyone involved in the experience," Applegarth added.

Touching on the issue of egg donation from a different perspective, a second study to be presented at the conference found that women who serve as donors have a significantly different psychological profile than women who actually provide the service of carrying a baby to term. Compared with egg donors, the so-called "gestational carriers," or surrogate mothers, were found to have a higher degree of "belief in human goodness" and "contentment with life," researchers from Northwestern University in Chicago found. Carriers were also observed as having a stronger sense of "social responsibility."