A Midwife's Donor Embryo Journey with Shared Beginnings: From Recurrent Loss to Motherhood

Rachel spends her days catching babies. As a midwife, and before that, a labor and delivery nurse and an ICU nurse, she has stood in the room for thousands of families' first moments. What her patients didn't always know was that, for years, she was living the other side of that story: the waiting, the losses, and the quiet exhaustion of trying to build her own family while helping everyone else build theirs.

Today Rachel is home in Chatham County, North Carolina, with her husband, Brian, and their son, Ben, born this spring through Shared Beginnings' donor embryo program. This is her story.

A PCOS Diagnosis and the Start of a Long Road

Rachel and Brian started trying to conceive in 2017, not long after Rachel began working in labor and delivery. She had been told before that she had polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and that conceiving might not be simple, so the couple went in with their eyes open. Still, nothing fully prepares you for how long "not simple" can stretch.

After about six months without success, Rachel was referred to a fertility clinic. A few rounds of intrauterine insemination (IUI) didn't work, and the couple moved on to in vitro fertilization (IVF). Their egg retrieval produced seven PGS-normal embryos, a number that felt, at the time, like a guarantee.

It wasn't. The first embryo transfer failed. The second resulted in a pregnancy, then a miscarriage. A third transfer failed. A fourth led to another early pregnancy loss.

"You just really think that it's going to happen," Rachel says of those early years. "Done all the things, and you just, you know, it's kind of like you just really think that it's going to happen."

Finding a Smaller, More Personal Kind of Care

After two losses and four transfers, Rachel and Brian needed something to change, not necessarily the science, but the setting. They moved their care to Atlantic Fertility, where Rachel already knew and trusted Dr. Peavey, and reunited with Becca, the nurse who had cared for her during her very first round of IVF years earlier.

"We needed a little bit more kind of hand-holding and tenderness," Rachel explains. "After that many embryo transfers, and having those two losses, we needed a fresh set of eyes. We needed a different environment." From the first appointment, she says, it felt like family, a feeling that only deepened as their journey continued. Even now, she finds reasons to bring baby Ben back for visits.

At Atlantic, Rachel and Brian tried one more time with their own embryos. A new egg retrieval produced a single embryo; its genetic testing came back inconclusive. They decided to transfer it anyway. It didn't work.

Reaching the Decision to Pursue Donor Embryos

That was the moment Rachel calls the hardest of the whole journey, not a single crisis, but a slow, honest reckoning. "We're kind of deciding: do we even continue to do this? What do we do? Where do we go from here?" she remembers. She and Brian took time to sit with the possibility that IVF with their own embryos might not lead to a child.

Dr. Peavey had mentioned Shared Beginnings before, but Rachel and Brian had wanted to try once more with their remaining embryo first. When that attempt didn't succeed, they were ready to have the conversation for real.

Choosing donor embryos meant confronting what Rachel describes as a real and necessary grief: the quiet mourning of a biological connection they wouldn't have. "There is always a certain level of reproductive grief when you're thinking about moving forward with a donor egg, donor embryo, or donor sperm," she says. "Coming to terms with the fact that you may not have that, that's a real thing, and it's something that's necessary to talk about and think about."

Shared Beginnings' in-house mental health support, led by Dr. Eshel, helped her work through it. "She has such a unique perspective, and I love that she's part of the team, that you're required to see her, because she brings a lot to the table that I never even thought of before we spoke with her."

On the other side of that grief, Rachel and Brian arrived at a simple, grounding realization:

"We didn't really need each other's genetic material to feel like our family was going to be complete."

Choosing Donors Who Felt Like Family

Rachel and Brian ultimately chose Shared Beginnings' Donor Embryo Selection program, drawn by the combination of thorough medical screening and higher success rates. "We kind of knew that our kid was not going to look like us necessarily, so that wasn't really a factor," Rachel says. Instead, she and Brian focused on family health history and the extensive genetic testing behind each embryo, reports so detailed that Rachel enlisted a friend who works as a genetic counselor to help her make sense of them.

What ultimately felt right, though, wasn't a spreadsheet of traits. It was the donors' own words. One donor had included a handwritten note explaining that an aunt had struggled with infertility, and that helping another family felt like the right way to honor that. Another wrote that while he didn't want children of his own, he believed helping someone become a parent was one of the greatest gifts he could give. In her questionnaire, the egg donor mentioned her favorite comedian was Ali Wong. "I was like, that's my girl. That's the one," Rachel laughs. "It just felt like starting over."

How do you tell your family you've decided to use a donor embryo?

Rachel and Brian shared their decision with extended family through a group chat, framing it simply: they were moving forward with a donor embryo, and this was their child, loved without condition. The response was overwhelmingly supportive, though it took her father a little extra explaining before he landed on, "Okay, here we go. We're on the ride with you."

That openness has stayed central to how Rachel is raising Ben. She's intentional about listening to the perspectives of donor-conceived adults, not just other parents, and about making sure Ben grows up always knowing his story rather than discovering it by surprise later in life. Shared Beginnings' resources, from children's books to guidance on these conversations, have been part of that groundwork from the start.

Pregnancy After Loss, and a Son Named Ben

Carrying a pregnancy after two prior losses brought its own anxiety, made more complex by gestational diabetes, gestational hypertension, and preeclampsia along the way. It also gave Rachel a new lens on her own patients. "It's a hard thing to go through," she says. "I definitely wanted to reassure them in a different way, like, we can look with the ultrasound anytime you want. I got you."

Ben was born in April. Rachel describes the isolation of infertility as something she still feels compelled to talk about, loudly and often, because she remembers how alone it made her feel, and how much it means to hear from someone who's been through it. "What I can guarantee you is that you will be cared for," she says of the Shared Beginnings team. "And that goes a long way."

Rachel's Advice for Anyone Considering Donor Embryos

Asked what she'd want other intended parents to know, Rachel doesn't hesitate:

• Listen to donor-conceived voices, not just donor-conceived parents. Understanding how donor-conceived adults experience their own stories shapes how you can raise your child with honesty from day one.

• Talk about it openly. "I've met a lot of people who also have kids who are donor-conceived, and have had people say, 'Oh, I never knew that was an option.' It just opens up dialogue, and there's never anything wrong with that."

• Ask every question. "I never felt like I couldn't ask a question or that I was bothering anyone. Stephanie genuinely wants people to feel good about the choices they're making."

• Trust that the process can hold your real life. Between hospital shifts and a newborn, Rachel says the clarity of Shared Beginnings' process, clear steps and clear expectations, lifted a mental load she didn't know she was still carrying.

Rachel's path to Ben wasn't short, and it wasn't easy. But it led her to a team, and a program, she describes simply as family, and to a son whose story she can't wait to keep telling him, one chapter at a time. "He's ours. He's incredible."

If you're considering donor eggs or donor embryos, schedule a consultation with our team, or explore our programs to find the path that's right for your family.