My husband and I had already had a son through Donor Eggs Australia and their program in Cape Town. Our wonderful donor in South Africa had been through a cycle on our behalf in early 2018 and we were so excited and delighted that it had worked for us first time.
Our visit to Cape Town in 2018 was just sheer pleasure. The Clinic was organized, friendly , polite and made us feel at home on our first visit. We, of course, were nervous and anxious. Nikki had explained everything to us in such detail and everything was synchronized by Donor Eggs Australia. There was literally no detail that they had not covered with us and we had so many questions which were answered so patiently and in detail that we felt very well looked after, both here in Australia and in Cape Town. Cape Town is an exquisite city to visit.
We fully intended to have a small gap between our children as we had been through so many years of infertility with no success. We wanted to return to Cape Town in 2020 to try and have a sibling for our son who was thriving and growing day by day.
Everything was in place for our travel at the end of March 2020 and I remember first hearing about a virus around February 2020, but I gave it no further thought as I had heard about SARS before and it had never really affected us here in Australia. How wrong we were. Australia started to talk about closing borders and this happened 10 days before we were due to leave. We were devastated when this happened but were also horrified at what we were seeing happening in the northern hemisphere. We really believed that this would be controlled, and we would soon be back to normal.
As the situation dragged on and on, we really lost hope that we would be able to travel to Cape Town for a quick embryo transfer. We were in touch with Nikki and Denyse constantly. They were ready to help us get to Cape Town and the Clinic in Cape Town remained open throughout. We decided that we would see if I could travel by myself for a quick embryo transfer in Cape Town and we set about trying to get permission to travel. With a special letter from Dr Bernstein and Donor Eggs Australia, I obtained permission to travel and I went out to Cape Town in December 2020. The Clinic is in the grounds of a hospital and their infection control was superb and I felt safe. This was a short visit due to only being a frozen embryo transfer and I was back on the plane before I knew it! I had to go into quarantine and fortunately I was put in a NSW Health Facility which was an apartment with a separate bedroom and living room. I needed more of my medication and Nikki was so kind to drop off the medication for me. Because there were nurses and doctor on site, I was able to get a blood test at the correct time. To say that I was excited when I got a positive pregnancy blood test would have been the understatement of all time !! My husband too was over the moon, but we could not even have a hug as I was by myself in quarantine. However, we were able to go for our first pregnancy scan together and were so excited to see a lovely , healthy heartbeat at our first scan.
The cherry on top was that we gave birth to our daughter and sister in September this year and our family is complete. We are so grateful to our very special egg donor who made our dreams come true and to Dr Bernstein, Nikki and Denyse who assisted us every step of the way, despite all the unprecedented world events, we were able to proceed and be successful.
BD & HD (2021)
*Images used in this article are not image of patients or their children.
