My girlfriend and I have spoken long and hard about if we get married how we would go about having a child together.

About 7 years ago with the pregnancy of her only child with her ex-husband she was diagnosed with a cancerous disease which the doctors told her she would have to have a hysterectomy. Being that at the time she was tired of the way her husband was (smoker, drunk, jailbird) she figured that she would never want to get pregnant with him anyway so she went ahead with the surgery. Also the doctors did not give her any other options as to saving of eggs, etc.

Fast forward to the present. She regrets ever getting the radical hysterectomy or not saving eggs because she says had she known I would be coming into her life she would have done things different.

My question is this: Has anyone heard or does anyone know of a solution to our predicament other than adoption (which has not been ruled out)

I was thinking that perhaps it might be conceivable to take a donor egg, remove the nucleus (or the genetic information from said nucleus) & transplant information using her genetics into this egg to create an egg that is similar to what she would have had 7 years ago.

I know it sounds far fetched and really sci-fi-esque, however, both me & her long deeply to have a child of our very own.

What other ways do you know of that we could effectively have a child that is both a union of her & my genes?? Is there another way?

BTW, this will be my first post, after lurking a while.

Hmmm....I don't know. I'm assuming they removed her ovaries, too, then. (they don't always remove them)

So you're pretty much talking about cloning - removing genetic material from one egg and inserting new material is cloning right? (I looked on http://www.humancloning.org/threeways.htm and that's what it sounds like)

Some claim to have cloned a child but I doubt that it will become a mainstream procedure anytime in our lifetime.

So, unless you pursue cloning, I don't think there is any way for you and your girlfriend to have a biological child together if she no longer has any eggs. I'm sorry.

I believe she has had both ovaries removed.

From what I have read (after posting the above) , nuclear transfer is not cloning in the sense that you are not creating an exact replication of an already existing human being, it is the joining of two complete different genetic codes.

Thanks!

I think eventually there will be a way to do a gamete transfer so that a donor egg could be imbued with your wife's genetic information and fertilized by your sperm. However, that is years away (thus far only tested in mice, I believe), and I think the egg would still bear some genetic markers from the donor. Does she have any sisters that would be willing to donate?

There's an interesting article about reproductive technologies here. http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1046/j.1469-7580.2001.19840385.x/abs/

Hope that helps. I wish you much luck and patience in your quest.

She has two sisters, both of which have offered to donate if the need arose.

Her best friend since high school has also said that if she was asked she wouldn't hesitate to donate an egg. Although in that instance I would feel a little strange, being that it is her friend.

Thanks for the link, off to read it now!

You will also need to find a surrogate to carry the baby (as she has no uterus to carry it in) and that may be fraught with difficulty too.