Heartbreak, jealousy, and then one ‘golden egg’. How actress Camille Guaty finally became a mom with donor egg

Camille Guaty had played a pregnant woman on television plenty of times, but it was beginning to seem like a role she might never play in real life.

She and her husband had been trying to conceive for a year with nothing to show for it. She went to the doctor to get her hormone levels checked, the possibility of IVF in the way-way back of her mind.

“I did the test and my levels came back really low,” she recalled. “My AMH level was a .54 and I didn't know what it meant. It was my first time hearing ‘AMH, FSH.’” Was that bad? How bad? Her doctor summed it up this way: “‘Your ovaries are acting like those of a 50-year-old woman.’” Guaty was stunned. She was not a 50-year-old woman. The doctor told Guaty she would probably need to do IVF to get pregnant.

She was upset by the news but got on board quickly, focused on her dream of becoming a mother. Guaty and her husband did round after round of IVF, banked embryos and did transfers… zero took.

“Not being able to get pregnant, it was heartbreaking,” she recalled. But despite the constant cycle of hope, disappointment and grief, she kept trying. “I was not going to stop until I physically couldn't do any more or we were bankrupt.”

Guaty found a new doctor who put her on a six-week program with different medications. She was hopeful… Then she went to her baseline appointment. The doctor gave her unimaginable news: “You have no follicles.” Guaty was aghast. Of all the terrible fertility news she’d heard so far, nothing compared to this. “I was like, well, if that isn't a sign, then I don't know what is.” Guaty finally accepted that giving birth through IVF was not an option.

She leaned on her girlfriends to get through that time (not to mention cookies and wine). After some difficult conversations and soul searching, Guaty and her husband made a choice: they would try donor egg, and if it didn’t work, they would adopt.

As soon as they made that choice, something shifted. She didn’t feel jealous of the prospective donors or see them as a threat anymore. “They became more of just a blessing.”

But finding a Latin donor was not easy, and Guaty, whose ethnicity is Puerto Rican and Cuban, wanted someone who bore a passing resemblance: “Like me 10.0” she joked. After a few more setbacks, she found her donor.

They got one embryo. One. But Guaty’s doctors told her not to worry. “They were like, ‘Camille, this is your golden egg. We are going to take such good care of this egg.’ And that was my guy. That was little Morrison.”

Ironically, after all the work she went through to find a donor who shared her dark hair and complexion, Guaty thinks Morrison looks exactly like her blonde, British husband. But now she just laughs about that. Because whether or not they look alike, whether or not they share DNA, Guaty knows that Morrison is hers, all hers, in every way that matters. 

Camille Guaty is a paid partner of Donor Egg Bank USA, to help educate and provide support for those considering donor egg.