Our journey through infertility, failed adoptions and now parenthood through the miracle of embryo adoption/donation.

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Communication....or the lack thereof

We all have pet peeves. Some hate nail biting. Others hate incorrect use of words. I have one. Okay, I have several (I am quite picky) but the one that is probably my biggest pet peeve is non-communication. Several years ago I was the asst. manager of an optical office. My "boss" was a 22 year old kid that I did not get paid enough to babysit. He was also one of those that never returned calls or forgot to call to inform patients that their glasses were ready. I hated for him to answer the phone because I knew that if it was something that needed a return phone call it was not going to happen and then I would have to try to take care of it. I feel that if you work in customer service, or just if you are a decent human being, you should communicate. I was not perfect but I tried my dead level best to return calls.

Since we started this journey for baby number two back in February we have met more than our fair share of bad communicators. And it is DRIVING ME CRAZY!!! The whole things started with the first donor couple I met through Miracles Waiting. We started with emails and we both responded very quickly. I was completely honest about anything and everything concerning our lives so that there were no surprises. We spoke on the phone and she "chose" us though she was preferring someone that could do the FET right away (we knew it would be about 6 months). I did tell her that if at any time she needed to choose a different couple that could do the FET now that I understood but asked that she please inform me right away and she assured me that we were "the ones" but promised to communicate.

So things began moving forward and I was speaking with the coordinator at her clinic to get things started. Here we found communication to be an issue. The coordinator was bad about returning calls. So I emailed and while she would respond it was only to answer half of the questions I had asked. Or she would refer me to someone else in the clinic and I would have to bounce around, never really getting answers. Then one day I was told that the clinic was getting "conflicting information" from the donor couple. I was floored. I emailed them and........nothing.

I posted soon after about this and that day I received an email from another woman that had embryos and she really felt that our family was a great fit. The story went much like the one above. At that time hubby and I decided to quit all attempts at a known donation and to return to anonymous as we had done previously. My heart was a bit sad at this as I had hoped to have a relationship with the donor couple. But I was so done with this lack of communication.

Fast forward to now. We are ready to go! We just need to decide which clinic to go with and there are two that we really like.  One I am not sure of the details so I called last Wednesday and left a message for the donor coordinator. Her voicemail states that she will return your call within 24-48 hours. Late Thursday I tried to reach her a second time and I was then informed that she was out of the office until Monday. On Monday I called again and left yet another message. Then I went to the internet to search out reviews of this clinic and while a lot was really good there were several people that mentioned how difficult it was to reach the donor coordinator. Some as far back as 2008. This really bothers me. How am I supposed to trust this clinic if they cannot return simple phone calls? The other clinic we are considering has been great about calling back and for that reason we will most likely go there.

Now I must go. I need to call the car dealership that has yet to return our 3 phone inquiries regarding a van that they have for sale.

2 comments:

  1. I could not agree with you more. I just had a similar post about the same thing. People don't seem to care if they are treating you fairly because we need them a whole lot more than they need us. I had finally lost my patience with the company that we use for donor embryo. Mistakes all along the way!

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  2. That is one of my pet peeves, too! Our SW is not a very good communicator and it drives me insane! How hard is it to give the simple courtesy of a reply??

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