From infertility to egg donation to overwhelmed mum to founder

Samantha Gadd is the reason my daughter has blue eyes, and why my son’s legs are nearly as long as mine.

Our unconventional but bloody epic family. Photo from NZ Herald article/ Marty Melville Read the NZ Herald story →

Sam was our egg donor. I’m sharing our story because I want to show those going through infertility, that it isn’t something you need to hide, there are so many ways to make a family, and DNA doesn’t matter a shit when you’re holding your baby in your arms. I will never be able to thank Sam enough (there are no words). Within months of meeting Sam I went from years of infertility hell to being pregnant. She gave selflessly and has become a great friend. If she ever needs a kidney I'm fighting to be top of the donor list!

The NZ Herald shared some of our story. But they missed lots of the bits I think are important - so here it is my words:

The shame that we need to ditch

There’s so much shame when you are struggling with infertility. I’m an open book and a chronic over-sharer, and even I didn’t want anyone outside close family and friends knowing I was going thorugh infertility treatment.

Not having nosey people ask questions is one thing, but this wasn't that. I was ashamed, I felt like I was broken, that something was wrong with me. I was failing at lifes most basic purpose (to reproduce).

I knew I’d need some medical help. I’ve had 10 surgeries for endometriosis. But I didn’t think my fertility was completely screwed.

At at 29, my AMH hormone, which shows how many eggs you have left, came back “undetectable”.

IVF is a numbers game. You need 10-plus eggs to get one or two that become good embreyos. We did four rounds of IVF always getting one or two eggs, just enough to get hopeful. Never enough to get a a great embreyo. It was soul-destroying.

For five years, the well-meaning* questions kept coming. Then came the well-meaning* advice about not leaving it too late, from people who had no idea of the horror we were living through. *Well-meaning definition: Someone nosey and often opinionated who hasn't considered what they are asking is really insensitive to someone they may not know is struggling to get pregnant.

So I came up with a line for whenever someone asked if we had kids: “It’s a work in progress.” It said we wanted them, hinted at complications, and usually closed the topic.

The coffee that changed everything

Sam and I, from aquantencies to whānau.  Photo from NZ Herald article/ Marty Melville

Sam and I had met a few times at a Venus networking group. Then we met for a coffee 1:1 and she asked if I had kids. I gave her my line.

Anyone who knows Sam knows she’s curious, and someone you just open up to. So I told her the truth: we’d reached the end of the road with IVF and needed an egg donor.

She said something I never expected: “Well, I could give you some eggs.”

I raced home to tell my husband He looked up her LinkedIn photo. “She looks nothing like you. Isn’t that a bit weird?”

I didn’t care if my kids looked like me. I just wanted them.

Two minutes after meeting Sam, Tyler told me he knew she was perfect. “You’re exactly the same kind of person: confident, open, authentic, high energy.” Funnily enough we both became Tech Founders and were diagnosed with ADHD months apart (so yeah very bloody similar).

No rule book

In New Zealand you can’t buy eggs. We didn’t have friends who could donate, and we had no idea where to turn. Then along came Sam.

But there’s no to-do list for building a relationship with someone who’s giving you their DNA to create your children. We had no role models and no examples to follow. So we worked it out together.

First, our two families met for lunch. We talked about our values and put our worries on the table.

Mine? That Sam would want unlimited access to our future family. That faded fast. Sam wanted to be in the kids’ lives, but not too involved. She didn’t want to be their mum. And I wanted our kids to know her and her children.

Then it landed. “How about you’re their aunty?” Her kids would be our kids’ cousins. We’d do what aunties and cousins do: birthdays, catch-ups, and a steady stream of cute photos. We were both really happy with that approach.

The medical side came next, through Fertility Associates. Sam had meetings with the specialists, did the required counselling and took daily hormone injections before her egg retrieval. She gave us 21 eggs, and 14 fertilised. I felt really uncomfortable knowing someone who I barely knew was going through that for me: daily injctions, and retrievel isn't super fun. Certainly a lot more than a sperm donor goes through (a few dirty mags and a cup).

Anyone who’s had fertility treatment in Wellington probably knows Andrew Murray. This was a wee while ago, but we called him McDreamy (Grey’s Anatomy fans, you know). He was always in an immaculate three-piece, sharp tie and tan. Tyler even remarked that if some other man was going to get me pregnant, he was very glad it was one as good-looking as McDreamy.

Our very first embryo worked. But once I was pregnant, there was one thing I quietly worried about. Sam has three beautiful boys she adores, but I knew she’d always wanted a girl. What if, after everything she’d done for us, the first thing I did was deliver a girl made from her?

So I had a scan just about every week from 12 weeks. So many scans, until we found out Meihana was a boy. I was so relieved.

And honestly? At his 16-week scan, he already looked identical to Tyler.

Our first embryo became our son. Our second became our daughter.

Aunty Sam with Bowie Belle, the day after she was born.

Our extended whānau

Today, Meihana and Bowie Belle call her Aunty Sam, and Sam and her family are our extended whānau. Tyler’s tā moko even has a section for Sam and her kids.

Tyler and I are both Māori, but Bowie had blond hair as a baby. When asked about it we'd very proudly tell them how we made our family.

We’ve always been open with our kids too. They’ve heard different versions of the story at different ages. But they’ve always known how wanted they were, and how many people came together and worked so hard to bring them into this world.

The latest version? I told them that being made with an egg donor is quite rare. They’re both avid Pokémon card collectors, so they were thrilled. In their world right now, rare is the best thing you can possibly be.

My rare Pokémon babies, Bowie and Meihana.  Photo from NZ Herald article/ Marty Melville

We need to talk about all the different ways families are made, so we stop getting hung up on what a family is “supposed” to look like.

I love my kids just as much, if not more, because of what we went through to get them. Although when one of them really acts up, I do whisper to Tyler: “That’s your DNA.” (It’s usually one of my traits causing the trouble.)

Why it’s easier to talk about now

Here’s something I’ve noticed. Once our babies arrive, many people who underwent fertility treatment find it easier to talk openly about.

Maybe it’s because we got through it. The story has an ending now, and it’s a happy one.

Or maybe it’s because once you’re holding your kids, you realise it doesn’t matter a crap how they got here. They’re yours. Full stop.

Probably a bit of both. But it shouldn’t take a happy ending to make it OK to talk about. The people who need that openness most are the ones still in the middle of it.

To anyone still on the fertility journey

I see you. I feel for you. My heart aches for you. Nothing I’ve been through in my life has been harder.

And to those who have moved on without the kids you hoped for: I see you too. Your story matters just as much as mine.

For those still in it, the only advice I can give is what helped me.

1. Tell people. Once I did, I didn’t need excuses to skip baby showers, or white lies about all the doctor’s appointments. Being more open is how I found Sam.

   
   

2. Work out what actually matters to you. Not what society tells you should matter. For me, it wasn’t a mini-me running around with brown curly hair (Tyler’s genes are so strong they’d have looked like him anyway). What mattered was having kids. Ideally I’d carry them, but I realised I actually gave zero shits about DNA. That was a shock. Honestly, with some dodgy cancer genes in my family, it was probably for the best.

   
   

3. Change the question. “Will I be a mum?” was soul-destroying. So I stopped asking it, and thought about what being a mum actually meant to me, not the cheesy picture we paint. Then I told myself: “I will be a mum. I don’t know when, and I don’t know how many steps it’ll take. IVF, egg donor, surrogate, adoption.” I’m a bloody determined person, and I knew I’d get there.

   
   

4. Don’t pause your life. We lost years not taking the new job, not going on the overseas holiday, because we were so busy working on the life we wanted. All our time and energy went into an exhausting journey, when we could have been distracting ourselves and enjoying a great few child-free years together. You don’t know how long it will take. Hopefully it’s quick, but it can be really long. So take the new job. Book the overseas holiday. And if you get pregnant a month into a new role? You’ll figure it out. There are worse things that can happen.

To the people who held me up

To my friends and family, especially my mum, my closest friend Sarah and of course my husband. You listened every time I called in tears after another bad result from the clinic. You were there every time I got super excited about starting a new round, while secretly thinking “please let this work”, because you knew you’d be the ones picking up the pieces.

Without you the most difficult time of my life would have been impossible. I love you, and I will be forever grateful for how you helped me make this family.

A note for the intentionally child-free

I put every fibre of my being into having kids. Years of fertility treatment and alternative medicine. Every dollar we had. Everything I had emotionally.

So people might assume I think everyone should have children. I don’t. Choosing not to have kids is such a valid life choice.

I wanted my children desperately, and I still fell into a huge chasm of motherhood burden and mental load. Being a parent is a blessing. It’s also a huge responsibility, and it changes every single aspect of your life. If you’re only thinking “maybe I should” because everyone else thinks you should? Then it's probably a no.

So many of my friends have chosen to be child-free, and they’re very happy with that choice. They also make the very best aunties. They arrive with all the excitement and joy of not being around kids 24/7 that we just can't muster up anymore.

We all need to choose our own path, and every one of those choices is valid. I’m really, really happy with mine.

Our three popsicle babies

Fertility Associates is built for one thing: Making money by making babies. It isn’t set up to connect people with egg donors. There are people out there willing to donate, but because you can’t pay donors, there’s no incentive to build systems that make it easy.

That put us in a strange position. We had three perfect embryos left over. At the time, you couldn’t on-donate embryos made with donor eggs, so we waited, and paid thousands of dollars to keep them in storage until the law changed.

When it finally did, Sam, Tyler and I were so excited to offer someone the chance to have one or more of them. But it was impossible to find people with no systems.

So our embryos hit their 10-year expiry date. And now I have three little expired popsicle babies in my freezer at home. We think we’ll plant a tree. We just have to figure out how to get them out of their awkward little plastic tubes first.

There’s so much room for something better. There’s the occasional Facebook group, but sadly, those spaces get taken over fast by men offering to “naturally inseminate” 🤮.

So if there’s a person out there who wants to build a safe way for egg donors, sperm donors, people with embryos, and the people who need them to find each other: I’m all for it. I’ll jump on that bandwagon and help you wherever I can.

From work in progress to PAM

Five years deep in infertility, I never imagined I’d build an app for busy mums. I didn’t know if I’d ever get to be one.

But I think that journey is exactly why the mental load hit me so hard once the kids arrived. And honestly? I was pissed off. I went through hell to get these kids. I wasn’t about to let school emails, sports registrations and calendar juggling steal my joy of being their mum.

So I built the personal assistant I wish I’d had. And after 60,000 downloads and hitting number one in the App Store a few times, it seems PAM is the PA a lot of us need.

Read the NZ Herald story →

Meet PAM →