Mother of three Melanie Boivin went from juggling family life with work life to fielding questions from the media last week, all because of an act of motherly love.
The 35-year-old lawyer with the Canadian government had decided to freeze her eggs so that, one day, her seven-year-old daughter Flavie may become a mother herself.
You see, Flavie has Turner syndrome, which means one of her two X chromosomes (which determine her sex) is either missing or defective. This will make her infertile when she matures. It is a rare condition that affects one in every 2,500 girls.
The French-Canadian Ms Boivin lives in Montreal, with her financial analyst partner Martin Cote, also 35, and their three children: 11-year-old son Jamie, seven-year-old Flavie and two-year-old Clara.
Although Flavie is affected by a syndrome that also causes growth impairment and potential health issues such as heart defects, she is mentally unaffected.
Ms Boivin told reporters: 'Flavie is full of life. She is always happy and smiling and she is a very social child. She is brilliant in school.'
This is the first time that a mother- to-daughter donation has been made, though there have been cases of sister donating to sister before. Donating eggs is nothing new, but there is a shortage of egg donors in Canada since legislation in 2004 prevented women from selling their eggs.
Health activists praised the ban, saying that it prevented poor women from selling their eggs. But it leaves someone like Flavie with little hope to have her own child in the future.
The family's story came to the media and therefore public's attention at the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Lyon, France.
Singapore-trained Dr Seang Lin Tan, who led the team involved in extracting Ms Boivin's eggs, presented details of the egg donation at the Lyon Convention Centre on July 3.
He is the director of the McGill Reproductive Centre at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal and, two years ago, spearheaded an egg-freezing programme for cancer patients at risk of menopause when they had chemotherapy. He said that Ms Boivin had made an emotional appeal to the hospital's ethics committee for the procedure to go ahead.
It will still be Flavie's choice as to whether she uses her mother's eggs or those from a complete stranger, he said.
Dr Tan sees nothing wrong with mother-to-daughter donation. He said: 'I put it up to the ethics committee for special clinical consideration.' The committee approved the procedure.
It was not an overnight decision for Ms Boivin and Mr Cote.
She told the media: 'For a year I was thinking about it and did some research on the Internet, and was discussing it with my partner because we were concerned about the ethical questions. Would I look at the child as my grandchild or as my own?'
The couple were also concerned about the financial, physical and emotional impact on Ms Boivin and the rest of the family.
'After a year I was convinced there were more advantages than disadvantages,' she said.
The conviction came from Ms Boivin's desire to help her daughter.
She said: 'The role of a mother is essentially to help her children and, if I could do anything in my power to help her, I had to do it.'
'I told myself if she had needed another organ like a kidney, I would volunteer without any hesitation and it is the same kind of thought process for this,' she added.
Even though her daughter is just seven now, Ms Boivin said she was running out of time. She said: 'I had to act because I was going to be 35 and fertility diminishes with age.'
Experts have cautioned that Ms Boivin's donation might actually be too late as egg freezing is best done at a younger age.
The mum of three has already had to endure two painful treatments in order to freeze her eggs: hormone injections for six weeks followed by egg extraction. The third and last harvest will take place this summer.
Although she has 21 eggs frozen in liquid nitrogen, more are needed because 85 per cent of them will not survive the freezing, melting and fertilisation process.
Said Dr Tan: 'No one knows how long eggs can be frozen for. But we do know that children have been born from embryos frozen for more than 10 years so we hope it does not matter how long these eggs are frozen.'
There is no time limit on the storage of eggs in Canada.
The eggs, when the time is right, will be thawed, fertilised and implanted into Flavie's womb.
Dr Tan said: 'We know that this technique works, and there is a 40 per cent chance of a live birth.'
Ms Boivin said that her extended family had been supportive.
The only negative reaction had come from an ethics professor in Toronto who did not think the interests of the unborn child had been taken into account.
The critics speak up
The negativity has risen since her story was made public. Comments on the BBC news site were mixed, but the public seemed to side with the ethics professor. Experts who have spoken to the press have also expressed concern as to the psychological welfare of the as yet unborn child.
Ms Josephine Quintavalle, from Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said: 'Such a baby would be the sibling of the birth mother at the same time as the direct genetic offspring of the grandmother donor.
'In psychiatry, we are hearing of more and more children suffering from identity problems and, specifically, a condition called 'genealogical bewilderment'. Could it get more bewildering than this?'
Ethics academic Margaret Somerville was quoted as saying: 'We have to think about what we are doing when we are running around nature. Giving birth to your own sister completely screws up the normal transition of life.'
Other experts have said in the press that mother-to-daughter donation provides another option for people with infertility.
Said Dr Tan: 'The reality is that by the time (the child) thinks of doing this, say in 20 years from now, society's attitude will be different.'
And as far as Ms Boivin is concerned, it is not the biological aspect that is as important as caring and raising the child.
She said of Flavie's future child: 'She would be the real mother as she would be caring for the child.'
Whatever the defenders or detractors say, Ms Boivin is clear on her motives for donating her eggs to her daughter.
She said: 'I do not want to (make her feel) obliged to use the eggs, I want to give her the option. The thing I was most sad about her syndrome was her fertility issue. I was trying to open a door for her.'
