What are the chances?

There are two things, among many, I've learned about WAS that simply blow me away. The first is that because Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome results from an X-linked recessive trait, it affects only males. The second is that about 4 out of every 1 million boys born in the United States have WAS.

I think about "X-linked recessive trait" often. It could probably make me crazy if I let it. The reason being is that my partner and I created our family with the help of a gestational surrogate and an egg donor. We looked at hundreds and hundreds of egg donor profiles, both proven and first timers. We also looked at anonymous, semi-anonymous and known donors. Initially, we only thought of going with a proven donor with no consideration of whether she was anonymous to us or not. We thought the odds of a pregnancy would be better with a proven donor. However, after hours and hours of back and forth discussion, we kept coming back to the profile of a first timer. She was intelligent, thoughtful, athletic and detail oriented, as well as beautiful. We figured all of the proven donors got their start somewhere. We were willing to give her that start.

Our donor and her family's medical history were clean as a whistle based on her profile, which we considered another positive. All of the medical tests done by our fertility clinic came back clean as well. However, it turns out that our egg donor was a WAS carrier and she didn't even know it.
Really?! What are the chances?!

This question leads me to the second thing I've learned. The odds of being born with WAS in the United States if you're a boy is 1 in 250,000. Once again, that is 4 in a million.
Really, those are the chances.

My partner often reminds me that if we hadn't chosen this particular donor, although we might have a child, we wouldn't have Hunter. A world without Hunter is something I can't even imagine. So, in all honesty, I need to let the fact that we chose this egg donor go.