Case Study 6
Premature menopause, donor embryo

Mr and Mrs E did not wait to start a family after they got married but when nothing happens after a year, they sought medical help. At first, the problem seems to lie with her husband’s poor quality sperm, so IVF was advised by a fertility centre in Europe. Half-way through the program, the couple were advised to cancel the treatment cycle because Mrs E’s ovaries produced only one follicle (many follicles are necessary in each cycle) despite given large doses of FSH (a hormone that stimulates the growth of follicles in the ovaries). In fact, her ovaries are going to fail soon (i.e. stop producing eggs).

Mrs E was told that the only way for her to get pregnant is to use eggs from a donor but inseminated with her husband's sperm in what is called a donor egg treatment cycle or adopt a child.

The couple was devastated as they were not ready to adopt a child. Being immigrants in Europe, they were hot hopeful to find any Chinese women willing to donate her eggs. Age is also catching up. She was thirty-nine years old then.

Her friends suggested that she try IVF centres in Asia where the chances of available Chinese egg donors are higher. They surfed the internet and found the websites of a few IVF centres in Singapore. They were really glad that Thomson Fertility Centre replied promptly to their query. Although TFC offers egg donation programs, it does not recruit egg donors as the Ministry of Health in Singapore does not permit advertisement for egg donors.

Nonetheless, the chief scientist from TFC put them on the waiting list for donor eggs from other patients undergoing IVF and who are willing to donate eggs for altruistic reasons and for frozen donor embryos instead. However, both options take time.

Just as the couple were about to give up, TFC informed them that a couple has decided to donate their frozen embryos to foreigners. The couple immediately flew to Singapore.

The preparation of the womb to receive the frozen embryos took 6 weeks, a large part of it involves self medication (oral tablets and injections). Eventually, five donated embryos were thawed of which four of them grew overnight in the laboratory and three of them were placed in Mrs E’s womb. After 2 tense weeks of waiting, Mrs E was confirmed pregnant by her doctor in Indonesia. A baby girl was born nine months later, a reward for their perseverance. Although biologically not their child, when they held the baby in their arms, they knew that she was meant for them having traveled thousands of miles to conceive her.