Donor eggs and perseverance made parenthood possible
For eight years, Juliana and her husband, DC, desperately wanted to start a family. The emotional and physical challenges that accompanied infertility stretched their patience, tested their perseverance, and ultimately hardened their resolve to become parents. When they came to us seeking fertility care in Connecticut, they couldn’t have known that donor eggs, or the generous gift of egg donation, would finally complete their family.
Facing joint infertility, the couple had struggled to conceive. After multiple rounds of IUI and eight rounds of IVF, the feelings of loss were palpable and mounting. Especially heartbreaking were pregnancies ending in miscarriage.
“When I started to try to get pregnant, I kept a count of how many of my friends were getting pregnant while I wasn’t,” Juliana remembers. “When I got to 12, I just had to stop.”
Park Avenue Fertility and Reproductive Medicine strives to personalize fertility care in Connecticut. Understanding their greatest wish was to become parents, Dr. Andrew Levi suggested an alternative path: Would they consider egg donation?
“Dr. Levi was so supportive,” Juliana recalls. “It was hard to say no to my DNA. But after we talked about using donor eggs, I realized I had so much love to give, which is what matters most.”
Egg donation overcame fertility struggles
Once Juliana and her husband selected an egg donor, the plan was to retrieve the donor eggs and fertilize them through IVF, with Juliana receiving an embryo transfer and carrying the pregnancy.
The embryo transfer happened on December 5, 2023, which marked her mother’s birthday. But Juliana’s mother was unaware it was monumental day for her daughter. Juliana did not share many details of her fertility journey with anyone other than her husband and her Park Avenue medical team, who became an extension of her family when undergoing fertility care in Connecticut.
“Sharing that information was just too painful, and unless people are going through infertility, it’s so hard to understand,” Juliana recalled. “It’s now why I want to tell my story about egg donation because it’s important to give hope to others.”
After the embryo transfer, Juliana waited an excruciating 10 days to learn she was pregnant. That news was both joyful and positively overwhelming.
“It was nerve-wracking because I just wanted to get to the three-month point,” Juliana says. “I was so nervous just praying it would be OK.”
Donor eggs became the gift of a lifetime
Juliana returned to visit Park Avenue in the fall of 2024 with her newborn daughter, Ayla. Her gratitude runs deep for the entire staff who could personalize the science and the mystery of fertility treatment. Her personal heroes showed up in the role of a nurse, embryologist, financial coordinator, support staff and especially our caring fertility expert, Dr. Levi, who even fielded her anxious calls on Christmas in those earliest days of pregnancy.
That level of personalized fertility care in Connecticut, and an egg donor, she says, made all the difference.
“If I could give a piece of advice, I would say don’t hesitate for a minute to consider donor eggs,” Juliana said. “Egg donation has given me the most amazing gift. The only way to describe it is absolute magic.”
