Our Fertility Journey
Building a Family
We decided to work towards building our family during our residency training. However, in 2014, Ponnila was diagnosed with premature ovarian insufficiency, a condition where she is unable to make eggs. We tried assisted reproductive efforts to try to stimulate her ovaries to grow eggs, but after several failed attempts, we realized that we would likely need to choose an egg donor if we were going to carry a pregnancy. While this choice came with a need to reframe our goals, we ultimately understood that how we raised our child would be just as important, if not more, than the genetic material we passed on.​​
Egg Donation
Searching for egg donors, however, proved to be challenging. Egg donation is not a regulated service and it was challenging to know and confirm that the eggs we would be receiving came through proper channels where the egg donor would be well compensated for their gracious contribution. As such, we elected to look through University based egg banks. Unfortunately, the egg donors that came through these and other channels backed out for personal reasons and we were left again at square one.
At this time, we were lucky enough to have another egg donor come into our life. She offered to donate eggs to our family, and although we did not know her, the kindness, love, and generosity she showed in her offer demonstrated incredible humanism; these qualities were ones that we would love for any future child, and we accepted.
Bringing eggs and embryos across states lines, however, proved to be our next challenge. Our donors eggs were located in a different state and the FDA ultimately never provided approval to transfer either eggs or embryos to NY state. So we traveled across the country for IVF cycles once our embryos were created.
Elusive Hope​
Our first pregnancy was conceived after our first IVF cycle. Our daughter, Mila Charles Marinescu, made it to 19w4d gestation. Unfortunately, she had a rare genetic condition that would have made her quality of life incredibly poor. In the setting of what eventually resulted as severe fetal growth restriction and hydrops fetalis, Ponnila also began to experience elevated blood pressures and renal dysfunction. It was unsafe for her to remain pregnant, and thus, we made the incredibly hard decision to end the pregnancy for which we had waited so long.
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Ponnila trialed 5-6 cycles following her pregnancy with Mila. However, none were successful.
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Surrogacy​
It was at this time that we reached out to our family and friends to share where we were with our pregnancy journey. We had considered surrogacy, but again surrogacy is not a regulated service and it was challenging to find agencies that would properly represent surrogates as well as our family.
As we were searching for agencies, one of our residency family friends reached out to us and offered to be our surrogate. It was a tremendous moment of love and genuine care for us that was given willingly, despite the risks of pregnancy. We ultimately accepted and began the process of medical and legal clearance.
Unfortunately, almost 2 years into the process, no cycles were successful. We are so grateful to this family who have become part of our own and who have given us the gift of hope and unconditional love. However, continuing with the process of surrogacy was not something we felt was the right thing for our family.
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We still hope to share a life with any child that might find his/her way into our family and are looking into adoption as a way to do this.
We have the means to support a child and hope you know that this child will be loved so very much and will be given every opportunity to live life to the best it can offer.
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